Universal Monsters: Dracula by James Tynion IV and Martin Simmonds

[thwhtGuardian]

For my money Werner Herzog’s ‘Nosferatu’ starring Klaus Kinski is by far the best adaptation but I do have a soft spot for Bella too.

As for an update or quasi-sequel? Those are more often misses than hits in my opinion. The Strain by Guillermo del Toro would probably be the best modernization and the only decent "sequel" is maybe Anno Dracula. Both of which have already gotten comics, so I'm okay with playing it safe here.

[Alan2099]

Actually I was talking about the more recent comic adaption. A few years back (I think it was only a few) where they actually got rights to Lugosi's likeness and made an accurate adaption of the novel in comic form with Lugosi as Dracula. It's worth looking up.

[Hypo]

Let's Talk About Our Friend, Dracula

Back at SDCC last summer, I had a great catch-up with Alex Antone from Skybound. I had known him from my DC Days. He was letting me know about a few licensed properties they were about to put in production, and I was pretty clear about not wanting to do anything but creator-owned for a good long while. But then he said the magical words “What do you feel about the Universal Monsters?” and my eyes LIT RIGHT UP.

He hadn’t realized that Martin and I were coming up on what we knew was going to be brief sabbatical on Department of Truth, while I worked on the Television adaptation (which I’m excited to get back into now that it looks like the WGA strike is over). I was considering doing something small and outside the box in a creator-owned world, but honestly, once I heard that the Universal Monsters were on the table, I started to think about Martin Simmonds incredible artwork and how it would tackle a character like Dracula. I kept my cool in the meeting, but I’m pretty sure I texted Antone later the same day to be like “What if Martin comes and does this with me?”

The story of Dracula runs concurrent to the original film, working hard not to contradict or overwrite it while giving it a complete shape of its own. I think the best taste of what Martin and I have been cooking comes from my write-up before the first script of the book….

Okay, Let’s talk vibes.

Martin, we’re coming at familiar territory here, and we’re not breaking away from the core. This is a story taking place in Edwardian London, not an aggressive modernization of the source material. Our job is to take that prompt and push it as far as it can go. To capture the central feelings and horror of Dracula and visualize them in a stunning dreamlike way that’s only possible in the comic book medium. We want to SURPRISE people here. We’ve talked about some of this in text, but I want to drill down on the central feel of the project.

I want to play with dichotomies in this book. The most central dichotomy is that between the grounded structured REALITY of Doctor Seward, and the NIGHTMARE FANTASY of Dracula. When Dracula is not on the page, the visual feel of the book should be stripped down, even if it isn’t truly black and white, it should FEEL black and white. Detached, distant, and clinical. When Dracula is on the page it should be a phantasmagoria of color and power. Dracula is pure sexual power and seduction. He does not fit or follow the rules of reality as Doctor Seward understands them. He is man and beast all at once. When we deal with someone under the influence of Dracula, we should see the phantasmagoria almost radiating off of them, even though they are still in the confines of the literal, true world. I want the dissonance between those two tracks to HIT the reader hard every time we lean into them.

One of the key images from the original film I want you to think of a lot are the close up shots on Bela Lugosi’s eyes. The almost hypnotic light and shadow effect there. I want to start there and lean in as far as we can. That hypnosis is how we’re going to capture the transfer of his power from himself to his victims.

The secondary visual theme we’ve discussed Martin, is the idea of using old textbook illustrations and mixed media when it comes to showing the animals in the book. There are the animals that Renfield eats/tries to eat (flies, rats, spiders) and there are the animals that Dracula can transform into (bats, wolves). When we strip the Dracula away from this, they are as they would be to Seward. They are literal and finite and ordered, but when, let’s say, we see Dracula as a bat, we should see the phantasmagoria of horror spilling out from the Bat.

If we push this central idea to its extreme, I think we’ll have a really fucking cool comic book.

Now, let’s get into it.

[thwhtGuardian]

I finally got a hold of this...and other than the amazing art I found it sadly underwhelming. While I thought tying Renfield to the ship and planting the sailors deaths on him was a nice way to bring him and Dracula to England the rest lacked any sense of energy.