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thenightling · 5 years

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My thoughts on Marvel’s War of The Vampires

Recently Marvel comics did a storyline called War of the Vampires.

In this story Dracula’s castle is destroyed and several vampires are vying for power. There are warring factions apparently trying to gain dominion over all the vampires of the the Earth.

The supernatural members of The Avengers and their allies are forced to get involved. Blade: The Vampire Hunter gets recruited into The Avengers main roster.

Dracula turns up in his old man form, looking frail and weak, and deliberately surrenders himself to the Russian government and he is taken prisoner. (Avengers issue 014, 2019.)

And yes, Dracula conjures an electrical storm for dramatic effect during his entrance because Dracula is a freakin’ primadona! I love him. :-P

The Avengers want to take him back to America where they can better watch and keep him. They consider him a proverbial living weapon and don’t want the Russian government to have him and potentially use him as a weapon. Dracula claims he just wants some peace and quiet and is tired of the constant fighting and death.

While captive Dracula deliberately goads Tony Stark by telling him that his father came to him begging and offered anything (including Tony, in childhood) if he could be made immortal.

It briefly looks like Dracula is trying to provoke Tony into taking him from the Russians to drag him back to the America to be held by The Avengers in Avengers Tower. However this is misdirection from the writers and not his actual plan and he does not want to leave Russia at all. His deliberately creates a distraction.

He creates a prison riot by psychically influencing the prisoners but does not try to escape even though he had the perfect opportunity. He merely does this to prove to Stark that he can and that he is right where he wants to be, affirming his claim that he has surrendered himself and is tired of fighting.

Further note: They have all these elaborate restraints on him. An anti-bite face mask (that still allows for speech), a chest plate that’ll stake him if he gets too frisky (First time I saw that was in Boom Comics’ Dracula: Company of Monsters. Someone’s stealing from someone else), heavy chains, covers on both his hands to keep him from using his claws, devices that somehow prevent him from taking bat, wolf, and mist form, and some sort of IV system to keep him semi-starved and weak / possibly drugged. But no one thought to dampen his psychic powers? The Raft (Superhuman prison) can do that but the Russian equivalent (currently being visited by Tony stark) can’t?

Red Widow has the cruel task of interrogating him even after he has told them many of his secrets. She rounds up all of Dracula’s vampiric previous lovers (and there are quite a lot).

She tells him she’ll torture and kill them slowly unless he shares everything with them. If he does share all the knowledge he has, she’ll kill them quickly. Either way they die.

The scene also reveals that Dracula has male and female lovers.

Marvel’s Dracula has now been confirmed as having had male and female lovers. This is not the only bisexual or panasexual Dracula in pop culture. The German production of the Frank Wildhorn Dracula the Musical (Dracula das Musical) gives him brides and grooms in his castle and Dario Argento has said his version of Dracula is bisexual, and Marvel has now confirmed that their version of Dracula has had male and female lovers.

The first victim in the torture-interrogation is this pretty, androgynous creature.

I don’t know much about this pretty elfish, semi-androgynous character. I’m not even entirely sure the character is male (but others have Identified him as male). In any event Dracula wept blood tears when this unnamed character was killed. And he (the lover) was clearly willing to die for Dracula.

I don’t know his name so I am going to call him Samuel. And in my mind he was the pretty castle librarian whom Dracula became infatuated with. There. Headcanon achieved.

Further note: Usually if you make Dracula cry, it means he’ll take brutal and violent revenge. This is a universal truth with all versions of Dacula. Never make him cry.

Seriously, I want to know this guy’s story. Dracula cries for him! In front of his enemies, he weeps for him! Did Dracula make him a vampire or was he already a vampire when they met? Give us this story, Marvel! Who is he???

Later it’s revealed that Dracula’s capture was part of an elaborate scheme so that he would get dumped in Chernobyl.

But this is precisely what Dracula wanted all along.

It is in this vast, isolated, irradiated wasteland that Dracula has decided to re-establish his kingdom of the vampires. Everything was part of his elaborate plan just to re-establish his vampiric kingdom.

But based on his reaction to the lovers being slaughtered, I don’t think that part was quite in his plans. So again, I ask, who was that pretty male lover whose death brought Dracula to tears?

By the way, I freakin’ love this story. I just hope Marvel doesn’t screw it up by doing something cliche like letting the radiation from Chernobyl mutate the vampires living there.

Further note: Many of the vampires in this storyline were semi-innocent and sympathetic and some of the heroes were just douches, such as seeing “heroes” killing a coven of vampires who plead that they were peaceful and never fed on the innocent and literally said “Please don’t hurt us.” and begged for their lives. “The good guys” ladies and gentlemen.

It’s a good story but I’m tired of deconstruction. I like my heroes actually having compassion and mercy. You shouldn’t have to make good characters asses to make the antagonists sympathetic. Marvel’s Dracula was already likable since Tomb of Dracula.

A few other things I didn’t like.

1. Captain Marvel is shoehorned into the story even though it could very easily have been told without her. It’s blatantly obvious that she was only in there to promote her new movie And it was shameless. She’s crammed onto each cover so heavily that if I was just judging by the cover I wouldn’t even know Dracula was in this story!

Also, for some reason Captain Marvel is now immune to Ghost Rider’s Penance Stare because of course she is! At this point I feel like asking who is left who is NOT immune to The Penance Stare?!? Morbius is immune, The Punisher is immune, and now Captain Marvel is immune.

This is getting as bad as Mjolnir. A few years ago Loki (who was acting as protagonist in his own solo comic, Loki: Agent of Asgard) ended up under the "inversion spell" during the Axis event / storyline. The spell inverted his personality. Since he had been on a redemption arc this made him betray his friends, act selfishly and self-righteously. And somehow "because he no longer felt guilt" was able to lift Mjolnir. Now let's look at Ghost Rider's Penance Stare. Morbius is immune to the Penance Stare because he feels constant guilt for the lives he's taken. Frank Castle is immune to the Penance Stare because he feels no remorse for anything he's done. It would seem they are using the "Morbius reasoning" that Captain Marvel feels constant guilt. But constant guilt for what? She (the comic book version) doesn't have as many sins as her cinematic counterpart and even then she was being manipulated by aliens who played with her mind. Marvel keeps making too many excuses to allow the current "Flavor of the month" or "Cool kid" to do things to make them super special. Currently by their logic if you feel no guilt you are immune to Ghost Rider's Penance Stare AND can lift Mjolnir. That pretty much means all you need to be the best of the best in Marvel is to be a sociopath. Too many people are being allowed to lift Mjolnir and too many characters are immune to Ghost Rider's Penance Stare.

2. She-Hulk now looks ridiculous. She looks like Lobo from DC comics but painted green. And she no longer answers to She-Hulk (because acknowledging she’s female and being proud of it is somehow anti-feminist... somehow? HOW does this make sense!?!?) Going by “Hulk” just puts her in her cousin’s shadow, something that was the complete antithesis of the character and probably the opposite of what they intended with that stupid name change.

3. Less than a year ago Marvel promised it would stop doing so many events and now while one event was going on (War of the Vampires) the banner across each cover and on the splash page promoted the upcoming War of the Realms. It’s literally just one “big” event after another. The events have lost all means. Now mere story arc titles are called “events.”

4. The cover art is very... boring. Too many comics are heroes and villains lunging at each other in mid-battle. It’s stale and uncreative. And I, a fan of Marvel’s horror properties, can barely tell there are vampires in the story. Hell, Dracula’s a key player and he’s not on any of these covers.

But for all my complaining I did love this storyline. It was fun. Dracula was cunning and manipulative. His bi / pan sexuality isn’t treated like a big deal and felt natural for the character. And most of it was very well illustrated. I also like the new costume for Dracula, it looks less like a warrior drow (something I hated since 2010). and I’m glad to see Dracula in use in Marvel comics now for something other than a mere Halloween event. And I love the ending with Dracula forming his new kingdom at the end of Avengers, issue 017 (2019). Just don’t screw it up by mutating them from Chernobyl radiation. That’s stupid and cliche. In general this was good though, refreshing compared to what Marvel Comics has been these last few years.

#Marvel Comics #War of the Vampires #Count Dracula #Marvel's Dracula #Iron Man #Tony Stark #Blade: The Vampire Hunter #Avengers: War of The Vampires #Avengers 014 through Avengers 017.

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