And Then I Read: THE COMPLETE DRACULA

Images © Savage Tales Entertainment, LLC.

Writers Leah Moore and John Reppion have carved out a niche for themselves at Dynamite adapting literary classics for comics, and the level of commitment, research, and writing skill they bring to it is impressive. As I said about their Sherlock Holmes story, of all the literary, comics, film and television adaptations of Bram Stoker's Dracula I've encountered, none have captured the true flavor and excitement of the original work as well as this one.

"Dracula" is an epistolary novel, meaning one told completely through letters, diaries, newspaper articles and other similar documents, without any other overarching narration. In one sense it puts distance between the reader and the events described, in another it brings a level of immediacy and realism hard to capture any other way. And Stoker was particularly clever in allowing his readers to know much more about the Count and his activities than any one of his characters, a great way to build suspense. Unlike every film version and all other comics versions I can recall, this one follows the epistolary plan as much as can be possible while still using illustrations to convey the images. Through the use of letter and diary excerpts in many different fonts (some that work well, some that don't, but that's another matter), as well as newspaper articles, etc, we get the story points, while the images bring a second level of involvement. It's brilliant work by the writers.

Another aspect of this story that I found interesting was seeing how Leah and John handled the character of Mina Murray, here in her own story, but so often the central character in Leah's father's series THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN. I found the character in both to be very much the same, though as Leah points out in the afterward, Mina is literally thrown to the wolves about halfway through the book by Van Helsing, and Leah's thoughts on that are also eye-opening.

I wish I could say the art is as successful as the writing, but I can't. At times the art worked fine for me, but often it pulled me out of the story because of its unevenness, and the inconsistent look of the characters and the entire approach. Apparently there are some sections done by different artists, which explains some of it. On pages like the one above, many of the interior scenes seem to have been posed by actors and photographed, then the photos were painted over to give it a more artlike look, but it's not done consistently, and in places you can see what seem like pure photos, while some of the faces seem like actors wearing really clumsy and poorly done makeup.

Other pages seem completely painted, as the one above, and all of the more fantastic scenes, where photos wouldn't have been practical. The look of the characters changes enough that at times I wasn't sure who was who among the men, not helped by the similarity of their clothing. Reading this book is a bit like watching a play where different actors and actresses slip in and out of the same roles, and the set and scenery morphs as well. An earnest attempt, but an uneasy result.

I can overlook all that because of the fine writing, which brings the story to life in comics form as never before. Recommended.