wednesday comix: CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED: DRACULA

When I was only small, my elementary school would have these fucking rad events called Book Fairs. A few times a year, a small room off the cafeteria was filled with books books books you could buy buy buy. They were open late-ish so you could come back after dinner with your mom or dad and...you know, buy some books. As a nerd, I really looked forward to these fairs, and my mom always obliged my nerdish tendencies (she still does, by the way). We'd go and I'd come home with a small armful of gems: some Judy Blume, some Beverly Cleary (Ramona Quimby for the win)...and certainly anything horror-related. As the books were aimed at grade-schoolers, the pickin's were slim, unless you count Bunnicula (which I do). One particularly magical year- of course it was 1981- they had the Classics Illustrated edition of Bram Stoker's Dracula. As you can imagine, young Final Girl snatched that shit up. I mean, who could resist Dracula in a purple suit- complete with see-through purple cape!- floating around in front of his green castle? Certainly not I, and thankfully not my mom, either.

The story was adapted by Naunerle Farr and Nestor Redondo. As I grew up to be a fairly well-read comics fan, I've become familiar with the late Redondo's fantastic work through the 70s and 80s on titles like House of Secrets, The Witching Hour, and Conan. He concentrated heavily in horror-based comics, for which his gothic flair is particularly well-suited. Of course, when I was poring over Dracula again and again, my opinion on his amazing draftsmanship wasn't one that would...well, include words like "draftsmanship", but I still knew beautiful art when I saw it. Seriously, You couldn't count on 3456892358984292 hands the number of times I've gawked at this book. The linework and inks are so good, I kind of want to eat them.




Many comics have become about detail, about cramming as much crap into a panel as possible; of course there are big exceptions to this (Mike 'Hellboy' Mignola is the first that comes to mind), but to me there's simply an overabundance of unnecessary information on the pages. I don't know where this came from- the Image boom in the 90s, from editors or from the artists themselves- but it's resulted in artists not being able to maintain a monthly schedule. Working together, Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers could crank out 8-9 pages a day, in no small part thanks to the fact that there's not a lot of extra stuff on the page. You get everything you need as a reader and it's creative and gorgeous, but it's simple.

This is all my big old lady complainy-way of saying that the panels in Dracula have atmosphere to spare and lush environments, but it's streamlined. Take, for example, one of my favorite pages:

The back of the book also has some sweet WORDS TO KNOW:

• ancestors
• bloodthirsty
• chapel
• howling
• ignorant
• superstition
• vampire

and some reading comprehension questions:

• What is a blood transfusion? What good was a blood transfusion after being attacked by Dracula?
• What animals could Dracula change into?
• How can a person protect himself from a vampire?

I certainly hope for the sake of all teeny tiny nerds out there- especially the horror nerds- that book fairs are still alive and well and they sell amazing comics like Dracula. How else are kids supposed to learn about words like "bloodthirsty", or know what sexy vampire ladies look like? Won't someone think of the purple suits?