Lord of the Damned, Vlad Dracula Appreciation 2019

[Lonewolf36]

I'm not sur Ava really fits either though. Wasn't she a young teenage kid living on the streets of Brooklyn. To go from that to being in charge of some Russian super hero program seems kinda weird.

I think Red Widow is either a revived Yelena Belova or a clone of her. Yelena goes by the codename Crimson Widow on the Avengers cartoon. Also didn't the Red Room make several clones of Yelena?
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Yelen...28Earth-616%29
https://avengersassemble.fandom.com/wiki/Crimson_Widow

[Rosebunse]

He didn't give two poops his son got beheaded, doubt he cares about vampire redshirts

That son was the one who once succeeded in killing him. I'm not surprised that Dracula would have him killed, especially when the vampires who served with him were loyal enough to ask Dracula for some mercy for him. Dracula had to get rid of him. The only son Dracula has shown any love for at all was Janus, who is nowhere to be seen. He wasn't culled, he wasn't killed by the Red Widow, he just isn't there. My guess is that if he is anywhere, Dracula just kept him out of it because he realized that he wasn't fully in control of the situation.

actually the gypsy witch been in canon since the black and white Dracula stories from the 70s. Chris Claremont and Marv Wolfman did quite a few of them and explore Dracula past even as a human.

Damn, you're right! I thought it was a retcon but it's not, at least not completely. Marvel writers are digging deep here and it makes you wonder what else they're going to come up with.

Dracula might not be a hugely powerful being, but he is smart, can breath in space, and more than anything, Dracula is a ruthless survivor. That is a dangerous combination.

I think Red Widow is either a revived Yelena Belova or a clone of her. Yelena goes by the codename Crimson Widow on the Avengers cartoon. Also didn't the Red Room make several clones of Yelena?
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Yelen...28Earth-616%29
https://avengersassemble.fandom.com/wiki/Crimson_Widow

Interesting choice. Given how Aaron is digging for his characters, I wouldn't be surprised.

[MichaelC]

Dracula might not be a hugely powerful being, but he is smart, can breath in space, and more than anything, Dracula is a ruthless survivor. That is a dangerous combination.

He's not exactly low on power. He's almost as powerful as Storm, Mesmero, Shadowcat, Vermin, and Sabretooth combined. That's nothing to sneeze at.

[Rosebunse]

He's not exactly low on power. He's almost as powerful as Storm, Mesmero, Shadowcat, Vermin, and Sabretooth combined. That's nothing to sneeze at.

It really isn't, but again, we're talking about him trying to become a cosmic threat. Or at least more up there with Kang, Apocalypse, and Doom. Actually, I would rank Doom into a league of his own at this point.

[The One and Only]

He's not exactly low on power. He's almost as powerful as Storm, Mesmero, Shadowcat, Vermin, and Sabretooth combined. That's nothing to sneeze at.

Especially when he was juiced up on Sif's blood in The Mighty Thor#332-333. He gave the Thunder God quite a tussle, but burned through it quite fast. Dracula also said that the blood he drank from Apocalypse in the course of the X-MEN:Apocalypse Vs. Dracula gave him quite a power boost as well. Before En Sabah Nur lobbed his off. Also remember, even without a boost in power, Dracula gave the X-Men quite a thrashing, and damn near turned them into juice boxes before Storm. Who he had under his thrall, or thought she was, turned on him back in issue 159 of that mag.

[phantom1592]

It really isn't, but again, we're talking about him trying to become a cosmic threat. Or at least more up there with Kang, Apocalypse, and Doom. Actually, I would rank Doom into a league of his own at this point.

Yeah... See that's the problem with Dracula and Vampires in general. They're meant to be extremely powerful threats... against humans. And yet... most of his greatest enemies are still Humans with sharp sticks. It's one of the reasons that I don't care for mixing him in with things like the Avengers... Even the X-Men were basically 'humans' with a little something extra. Eyebeams and Phasing is well and good, but their skin and blood is still pretty human. (Still don't think he would be able to man-handle colossus that way...) But against the Avengers? Cosmic heroes like Ghost Rider and Thor and the likes... Ehhhh It starts to stretch my suspension of disbelief. Either he'll need a major power bump... or they'll need to be dumbed down... but something is going to be a bit off if he's a threat to their likes.

[MichaelC]

Personally it's humans I've never bought as legit threats to Dracula. He's got too many powers. And frankly, humans really weren't that big a threat to him without the element of surprise back in Tomb of Dracula, at least after the first dozen issues or so. They even ambushed him with a barrage of silver bullets, and it hurt him badly, but he managed to turn to mist, the bullets fell out of him, and he reformed healed.

[Rosebunse]

Yeah... See that's the problem with Dracula and Vampires in general. They're meant to be extremely powerful threats... against humans. And yet... most of his greatest enemies are still Humans with sharp sticks. It's one of the reasons that I don't care for mixing him in with things like the Avengers... Even the X-Men were basically 'humans' with a little something extra. Eyebeams and Phasing is well and good, but their skin and blood is still pretty human. (Still don't think he would be able to man-handle colossus that way...) But against the Avengers? Cosmic heroes like Ghost Rider and Thor and the likes... Ehhhh It starts to stretch my suspension of disbelief. Either he'll need a major power bump... or they'll need to be dumbed down... but something is going to be a bit off if he's a threat to their likes.

Personally it's humans I've never bought as legit threats to Dracula. He's got too many powers. And frankly, humans really weren't that big a threat to him without the element of surprise back in Tomb of Dracula, at least after the first dozen issues or so. They even ambushed him with a barrage of silver bullets, and it hurt him badly, but he managed to turn to mist, the bullets fell out of him, and he reformed healed.

Personally, I think on just a sort of natural level, vampires aren't really meant to be that powerful. They're a stepback for humanity, a curse. They aren't like mutants or gods, who one can see as being an evolution or improvement on normal humans. They're walking corpses who feed off of humans and who have to either spread their disease or create more of themselves using a spell. They are stuck being what they are.

So how is Dracula supposed to work around that?

[MichaelC]

I disagree with the premise. Vampires are a supernatural race created by Chthonn. Like demons and fairies and other supernatural races, they have weird weaknesses, but that doesn't stop them from being immensely powerful. So it's not so much that I think Dracula has to "work around" something, so much as I disagree with your fundamental premise applying to all versions of vampires, in particular Marvel vamps.

[Rosebunse]

I disagree with the premise. Vampires are a supernatural race created by Chthonn. Like demons and fairies and other supernatural races, they have weird weaknesses, but that doesn't stop them from being immensely powerful. So it's not so much that I think Dracula has to "work around" something, so much as I disagree with your fundamental premise applying to all versions of vampires, in particular Marvel vamps.

I meant Marvel vampires here. I'm just applying this logic to Marvel vampire because, well, it's just less confusing that way.

And again, them being a raise created by Chthonn doesn't change my mind about them. They are extremely powerful, but again, they are a cursed race created with no evolutionary point and no reason to exist besides being a problem and to spread their curse.

[MichaelC]

Logic? They're a fictional race who are whatever the writers want them to be, and that includes being beings of immense power.

[XPac]

He's not exactly low on power. He's almost as powerful as Storm, Mesmero, Shadowcat, Vermin, and Sabretooth combined. That's nothing to sneeze at.

He's not low of power, but the problem is he's high on weaknesses. That's always been the achilles heel which makes vampires managable even by normal humans under the right circumstances.

In Avengers for example, once Stark and T'CHalla developed tech to generate UV light, it sort of meant the vamps could really be beaten at any point in the story. A lot of the fights could have ended a lot sooner had T'Challa not been so invested in trying to cure the vamps rather than kill them.

He's nothing to sneeze at, but at the same time I don't think he'll ever really be a top tier threat.

[Rosebunse]

Logic? They're a fictional race who are whatever the writers want them to be, and that includes being beings of immense power.

That's the thing, while this rule certainly applies to Dracula, especially in this setting, as XPac point out, vampires come with a ton of weaknesses. I mean, let's compare Dracula to Morbius: Morbius can go around in sunlight without wearing one of those reflective pendants, Morbius can survive being staked, Morbius can go into churches and doesn't have to be invited into a home.

Dracula is smart because he can work around his weaknesses, but that doesn't change the fact that they are weaknesses that must be accounted for. And if a writer does blatantly ignore them, then they aren't doing it right.

[MichaelC]

Y'know that works both ways, right? Dracula has summoned a hurricane so powerful that it completely annihilated an entire city down to the foundations. If he doesn't just keep at a safe distance as an intangible patch of mist hidden among the clouds as he essentially nukes his enemies with weather-control, is that also bad writing?

[comicscollector]

Dracula is on the preview of History of the Marvel Universe by Mark Waid and Javier Rodriguez.Great that Dracula origin will be in this upcoming Limited Series.