The Young Van Helsings

The picture to the left is from an issue of Sword of Dracula, Season 1, in an issue drawn by William Belk. It shows our grown-up character Ronnie in her teenage years, wandering the world with her siblings. When I started adding these flashbacks and references to the comic I started filling in backstory in my mind-- what would those early years have to tell us about why Ronnie is the way she is, why she's so hard on herself, yet so confident and commanding at the same time-- and why her sister is such a -- what would be the word...

Anyway, while Greg hammers away at the art on THE DRACULA WAR, I've been experimenting with exploring these earlier stories in a new form-- prose. Which is kind of wild, taking characters we've seen on the comics pages and suddenly walking around with them. More on that progress soon!

Monster figures from the 80s

Sometimes it's worth plugging another blog-- this time allow me to draw your attention to The Gallery of Monster Toys.

In this case, I've linked to the not-particularly-impressive but still really playable 1980 Remco monster figures. You may recognize some of these as the figures I've used to create the series of images called "Mummy and Creature."

Louis Jourdan was Dracula

Today we look at French actor Louis Jourdan as the Count in the fine 1977 BBC production of "Dracula."

This is one of the first times an actor has made me think about the line, "And please, leave here some of the happiness that you bring." For of course this is exactly right-- Dracula is charming, here an elegant Continental of exquisite breeding and education. This is Dracula was an ultra-esthete. He offers fine wine, speculates on the origins of names, muses on the habits of englishmen and explains the rules of the castle with a certain amused detachment-- all told, there is nothing about this man that suggests that, later, he will become a beast, and will destroy the happiness you bring-- that because of him you will "leave it here."

A fine performance.