Mission Street.
Back home, in his room, with the door closed, he’d read it from cover
to cover, memorizing the names of the characters—Frank Drake, Clifton
Graves, Jeanie and, of course, Count Dracula himself—as well as the
storyline, until he could recite the script.
In the first issue, the skeptical hero, Frank Drake, discovers that he’s
a descendant of Count Dracula and has inherited a castle in Transylvania.
With the intention of turning the castle into a vampire-themed tourist
resort, he travels to Romania with his best friend, Clifton Graves, and
Frank’s fiancée, Jeanie (
she doesn’t need a last name,
Finn noted, with an
unfamiliar flush,
not with boobs like those
). Clifton discovers the skeleton
of Count Dracula in the castle’s dungeon and pulls the stake out, bringing
the vampire back to life. Dracula attacks a village barmaid and kills her.
The vampire returns to his castle and overpowers Frank Drake, who tries
to prevent Dracula from turning Jeanie into a vampire. He drives the
Count away with Jeanie’s silver compact mirror. But before he vanishes,
Dracula issues a cryptic warning:
“Know this, Frank Drake—you’ve won but
a battle . . . in the final analysis, the game is mine—as it always has been—
will always be—mine—forever mine!”
And indeed the game turned out to
be Dracula’s—Jeanie had been transformed into a vampire.
Finn sighed in ecstasy. Then he read it again, from start to finish.
Then he read it once more. It was perfect.
Harper’s Drugs always seemed to carry comic books later than the
date on the cover, something that had never bothered him before his first
issue of
The Tomb of Dracula
. The following week he asked Mr. Harper about it and he’d told Finn that they’d already travelled a long way by
the time they got to Parr’s Landing. He haunted the drugstore for a week,
then two, then three, but there was no sign of issue two.
In desperation, Finn sat down at the desk in his bedroom and wrote
a letter to Marvel Comics in New York City, using the address he’d found
on the bottom of the first page, and taped a twenty-five cent coin to it.
Dear Marvel Comics
, he wrote.
I am a recent reader of your Comic Book
Series,
Tomb of Dracula
. I live in Parr’s Landing, Ontario, Canada where
it is sometimes very hard to buy your products. Can you send me Issue #2?
I have enclosed 25 cents (in Canadian money) for the comic plus postage to
my country. My address is c/o Gen. Delivery, Parr’s Landing, Ont. Thank you
very much. Sincerely, Finnegan Miller.
As it happened, the fates elected to smile on young Finn Miller—
some kind soul at Marvel returned his twenty-five cent coin along with a
manila envelope containing a copy of issue number two.
Dear Finnegan Miller
, came the reply.
Here is a copy of the second issue
of
T.O.D
. We hope you enjoy it. We are returning your twenty-five-cent coin.
May we suggest you put it towards a subscription? We don’t send out mags
from our office as a rule, but are happy to help you out this one time. Sincerely,
your friends at Mighty Marvel.
Finn’s joy knew no bounds. Issue number two was even more lurid
than its predecessor. This cover featured Dracula turning into a bat in
front of a huddled clutch of terrified Londoners cowering in an archway
as a woman in a miniskirt lay crumpled at the Count’s feet, obviously
dead. The lining of Dracula’s cape this time was a glorious blood-red.
The issue’s tagline shrieked, A SHRILL
SCREAM
SPLITS THE AIR IN
LONDON AT MIDNIGHT
—
WHO STOLE MY COFFIN
?
Well, obviously Frank Drake did,
Finn gloated. Now all hell was going
to break loose. He flung himself across his bed, rummaging in the paper
bag of candy from Harper’s Drugs till he found what he was looking for.
He bit the tip off one of the grape-flavoured Pixy Stix straws, and then
poured the sweet-and-sour powder onto his tongue, letting it luxuriate
there for a moment before he
Back home, in his room, with the door closed, he’d read it from cover
to cover, memorizing the names of the characters—Frank Drake, Clifton
Graves, Jeanie and, of course, Count Dracula himself—as well as the
storyline, until he could recite the script.
In the first issue, the skeptical hero, Frank Drake, discovers that he’s
a descendant of Count Dracula and has inherited a castle in Transylvania.
With the intention of turning the castle into a vampire-themed tourist
resort, he travels to Romania with his best friend, Clifton Graves, and
Frank’s fiancée, Jeanie (
she doesn’t need a last name,
Finn noted, with an
unfamiliar flush,
not with boobs like those
). Clifton discovers the skeleton
of Count Dracula in the castle’s dungeon and pulls the stake out, bringing
the vampire back to life. Dracula attacks a village barmaid and kills her.
The vampire returns to his castle and overpowers Frank Drake, who tries
to prevent Dracula from turning Jeanie into a vampire. He drives the
Count away with Jeanie’s silver compact mirror. But before he vanishes,
Dracula issues a cryptic warning:
“Know this, Frank Drake—you’ve won but
a battle . . . in the final analysis, the game is mine—as it always has been—
will always be—mine—forever mine!”
And indeed the game turned out to
be Dracula’s—Jeanie had been transformed into a vampire.
Finn sighed in ecstasy. Then he read it again, from start to finish.
Then he read it once more. It was perfect.
Harper’s Drugs always seemed to carry comic books later than the
date on the cover, something that had never bothered him before his first
issue of
The Tomb of Dracula
. The following week he asked Mr. Harper about it and he’d told Finn that they’d already travelled a long way by
the time they got to Parr’s Landing. He haunted the drugstore for a week,
then two, then three, but there was no sign of issue two.
In desperation, Finn sat down at the desk in his bedroom and wrote
a letter to Marvel Comics in New York City, using the address he’d found
on the bottom of the first page, and taped a twenty-five cent coin to it.
Dear Marvel Comics
, he wrote.
I am a recent reader of your Comic Book
Series,
Tomb of Dracula
. I live in Parr’s Landing, Ontario, Canada where
it is sometimes very hard to buy your products. Can you send me Issue #2?
I have enclosed 25 cents (in Canadian money) for the comic plus postage to
my country. My address is c/o Gen. Delivery, Parr’s Landing, Ont. Thank you
very much. Sincerely, Finnegan Miller.
As it happened, the fates elected to smile on young Finn Miller—
some kind soul at Marvel returned his twenty-five cent coin along with a
manila envelope containing a copy of issue number two.
Dear Finnegan Miller
, came the reply.
Here is a copy of the second issue
of
T.O.D
. We hope you enjoy it. We are returning your twenty-five-cent coin.
May we suggest you put it towards a subscription? We don’t send out mags
from our office as a rule, but are happy to help you out this one time. Sincerely,
your friends at Mighty Marvel.
Finn’s joy knew no bounds. Issue number two was even more lurid
than its predecessor. This cover featured Dracula turning into a bat in
front of a huddled clutch of terrified Londoners cowering in an archway
as a woman in a miniskirt lay crumpled at the Count’s feet, obviously
dead. The lining of Dracula’s cape this time was a glorious blood-red.
The issue’s tagline shrieked, A SHRILL
SCREAM
SPLITS THE AIR IN
LONDON AT MIDNIGHT
—
WHO STOLE MY COFFIN
?
Well, obviously Frank Drake did,
Finn gloated. Now all hell was going
to break loose. He flung himself across his bed, rummaging in the paper
bag of candy from Harper’s Drugs till he found what he was looking for.
He bit the tip off one of the grape-flavoured Pixy Stix straws, and then
poured the sweet-and-sour powder onto his tongue, letting it luxuriate
there for a moment before he
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