Buy it. Buy it all. Buy it now.

Tomb of Dracula is right up there with Conan the Barbarian, Howard the Duck, and Master of Kung Fu as must-read Marvels of the 1970s. The early, pre-Wolfman stories flounder a bit, as the various writers (Conway, Goodwin, Fox) work out Drac's history, powers, and weaknesses but they also set up the series' core supporting cast. Wolfman's scripting can be overwrought at times, but his plotting is solid and his characterizations superb. His Dracula is one of the most complex comic book characters ever. The majority of the stories in Dracula Lives are set in the past, detailing Drac's origin and backstory. Colan is on hand from time to time, but it's interesting to see how other artists like Neal Adams, Mike Ploog, Jim Starlin, John Buscema, Alan Weiss, Vicente Alcazar, Dick Yers, and Val Mayerick interpret the king of vampires. Later issues feature an adaptation of the Bram Stoker novel by Roy Thomas and Dick Giotdano. Somewhere down the road, you'll also want to pick up Giant-Size Chillers #1 (which ties in directly to ToD) and Giant-Size Dracula #2-5 (more tales from Drac's past as written by Chris Claremont).

Trust me, dude. You want these.

Cei-U!
I summon the enthusiastic recommendation!

I read Tomb of Dracula about 4 years ago (an "Essential" volume). Most compelling. Great art. But having read it over 2-3 days, it did make me wary with Dracula constantly avoiding capture/death.

Incidentally, I can recommend The Dracula File, originally published in Scream! (1984).

TOMB OF DRACULA was a bit of a mess when it started. As on multiple other occasions, Roy Thomas wanted to do this, but passed it on to his pal Gerry Conway, universally held as one of the worst writers in comics. However, Gene Colan REALLY wanted to do this series, and practically fought off anyone else who might have been in the running to get on it. It was initially planned as a B&W magazine, but when the 1st issue of SAVAGE TALES failed due to distribution problems, it was put on hold for a couple of years. The 1st issue, when it finally materialized, the art had to be re-formatted to fit the color comic size, and reproduction of Colan's art was dodgy.

Once it got into motion, there was the usual chaos on the inking front, as they had Vince Coletta, Tom Palmer, Ernie Chan, Jack Abel & Colletta again taking turns before they thankfully settled down to Tom Palmer. Colan & Palmer had proved to be an INCREDIBLE combo during their run of DR. STRANGE, and from issue #12-up, remained in place until the final issue #70.

Conway bailed after 2 episodes, followed by 2 issues by Archie Goodwin, 2 by Gardner Fox (who somehow never seemed to fit in with the way they did things at Marvel), and then, Marv Wolfman. Of the 5 writers involved (including Thomas), Goodwin seemed to be the only one who knew what he was doing, but he never seemed to want to hang around long on any one series (other than his time on IRON MAN, which, ironically, is probably my least-favorite of all the work Goodwin ever did).

When he started, Wolfman was the WORST of the bunch!!! But my feeling is, Wolfman saw TOD as his big opportunity, and decided to stick around and make a mark for himself. Apparently, through sheer stick-to-it-iveness and determination, he slowly improved, and after about 20 consecutive issues, actually started to become a better writer. When I read the entire run in ESSENTIAL TOMB OF DRACULA, the most annoying thing in his early issues was the then-common bad habit of introducing elements of the NEXT storyline, one page at a time, in the current storyline. Every time these stand-alone pages crop up, they're really irritating, and painfully out of place. But apart from that, it's interesting to see a guy totally out of his depth get better and better right before your eyes.

By around #50, Wolfman had gotten pretty damned good, and the last 20 issues of the book are widely considered among the finest from anybody in 70s Marvel.

An amusing anecdote, is that-- somewhere along the line-- I forget exactly where-- Gene Colan felt burned out on doing the series, and took a break to do other things. However, about 6 MONTHS later, he felt refreshed and asked to come back. Incredibly-- Colan had been SO FAR ahead on the schedule... that when he came back, he found out, he HADN'T missed an issue. As a result, the book had Colan on ALL 70 issues in a row without a break.

The ESSENTIAL books, wisely, kept the GIANTS and DRACULA LIVES stories separate from the main run. I believe the GIANTS were somewhat part of the continuity (though mostly done by other artists), but the bulk of the DRACULA LIVES stories, done by rotating creative teams, mostly focused on other eras in time, and can be read in any order desired. I've sometimes thought it might be fun to read them in chronological sequence, according to what year they took place in.

There's a Japanese animated film that actually adapts the last year or so of TOD rather faithfully, though from what I've seen of it, it does absolutely NOTHING to capture the look or feel of the comics. A shame.

At some point, a B&W magazine version of TOMB OF DRACULA began, and Marv Wolfman & Gene Colan hoped to continue on from where #70 left off, doing different types of stories in the different format. However, after only one issue, the editor on the book apparently decided to pull rank and show who was boss, by replacing Palmer with Bob McLeod, and both Wolfman & Colan left right after that. The revived series became a round-robin of creative teams, and quickly floundered before being cancelled.

I read the first two Essential volumes (reprinting #1-49) years ago, and it was very, very good.

If I were you, I would start with ToD. Its a solid series that built on the Stoker concept, while borrowing from popular, then contemporary vampires from TV and film to make Dracula "fit" in the modern world. I would also suggest you read his key appearances in the second Doctor Strange series (it took forever for Marvel to realize that the Sorcerer Supreme would be the perfect adversary for a vampire, but it paid off better than one can imagine) and this one-off:



This summer 1974 special would seem an unlikely meeting, but Spider-Man already dipped his toes into horror waters battling characters with Morbius. The Dracula confrontation is short, strange and interesting.

While I would never go as far as to crown this the best Marvel monthly of the 1970s (the decade's first 4 1/2 years of The Amazing Spider-Man wins that in an unquestionable landslide), it is in the top 10 Marvel titles from that decade.

Cei-U already said basically what I think but I'll add my voice to his praise of ToD as one of the very best examples of 70s Marvel comics. Actually I'd say One of the best extended runs by a creator team ever, never mind Marvle or the 70s. I thnk it's worth starting from the beginning because the Colan artwork is stunning from #1 (though I'm aware not everyone's a fan of his style) and while the as a series the book doesn't have much flow, I think each individual issue is still a really good comic on its own.

I'd also say that Wolfman finds his feet long before #50 (sorry to disagree with Profh011), so if you're thinking of reading only his run I'd start much earlier - from memory, somewhere in the #20s, or probably even before that (and you'll still be missing a lot of great stuff!).

I don't think I've read the Giant-Size Spider-Man comic Tarkantino recommended, so no opinion on it. In general, I don't like mixing superheroes with other genres, partly because I find it almost always works to the detriment of whatever makes the other genre enjoyable, but also because of the disparities in tone and atmosphere, though I suppose those two problems do overlap. However, I haven't dared hold on to this as a hard and fast rule since I was a teenager, when the Claremont-Byrne MTU Spider-Man + Red Sonja issue prved me wrong.