Issue six of “Dracula: The Company of Monsters†is proof that vampires have a sense of humor, what with all the sinister delight they manifest. Considering how many times they bare their fangs, all those smiling faces are probably no accident – they let us know these characters are vampires in a way that the dialogue is too cool and self-satisfied to bother with. Never mind that it starts to get old pretty quick, or that showing their chompers jeopardizes the secret of their real forms. If you were an apparition who couldn’t die, maybe you’d be smiling, too.
Evan, on the other hand, hasn’t been doing a lot of smiling since Dracula got him involved in a dilemma: Betray his uncle and become the count’s apprentice, or suffer worse than Abbott and Costello when they met Frankenstein. As if being in an eminent boogieman’s line of fire weren’t enough, Evan’s uncle Conrad isn’t much of an angel, either – on top of being a vampire who robs people of their mortality for kicks, he masquerades as a merciless businessman. One who’s got a funny way of thanking employees for their services.
When you’re dealing with guys as extreme as this, you’d better have some fearless vampire killers on hand. The ones we have are a femme fatale and a tough from Romania, and given that we never find out their names, their cultural background is pretty much the only character development they get. Although a little insight would’ve let us get to know these two better, at least it’s clear that they take pleasure in slaying vampires, which makes them come across as Eastern European Ghostbusters, if you remember that jingle about how busting makes them feel good.
With all the flak those “Twilight†films have gotten lately, you have to wonder why there are knockoffs of them that get away scot-free. Of course, you could say “Dracula: The Company of Monsters†and “Twilight†are both ripping off Bram Stoker’s opus, but at this late date, so many people have revamped Stoker’s material that fussing over it seems like a fool’s errand. Still, if you’re going to revisit “Dracula,†do it right – the count’s personality gives him a right to be over-the-top, but when his co-stars are fighting to keep up with mysterious traits of their own, everybody winds up looking foolish. You know a comic involving Dracula has problems when its principal character isn’t even the most notable thing about it.
Leave a Reply