UNCANNY X-MEN ANNUAL #6: Blood Feud!

Drac is Back!

Originally Published 1982

We begin at Bard College, the small liberal arts school in Annandale-On-Hudson, New York, where Jean Grey's father teaches (and which, coincidentally, counts among its alumni one Chris Claremont.)

Our concern, however, is with a visiting anthropology professor by the name of Rachel Van Helsing. Fans of gothic literature may recall that Van Helsing is the surname of the vampire hunter in Bram Stoker's Dracula, but of course when a student mentions this connection, he is politely corrected:

Of course, as fans of this blog know, Bram Stoker's book may technically be fiction, but the man he wrote about - Count Dracula - is very real, and very much alive and active here in 1982, as Rachel finds when she arrives home:

So I suppose that makes Stoker's book what, fanfic?

But as to what he wants, we will have to wait to find out.

Elsewhere (on the other side of the two-page spread) our tween X-Man Kitty Pryde is throwing a bit of a fit:

It seems she has just had it confirmed that her parents are indeed going through with that divorce we heard something about sometime ago (in, coincidentally, the last issue where Dracula appeared.)

As a 14-year-old is wont to do, Kitty cries and rages and smashes a picture of what is apparently her parents (although they don't really look how they had previously appeared.)

As she cries herself to sleep, Kitty fails to notice a strange shadow moving around her room...

Later that night, Kitty is visited by Storm, who suddenly, and apropos of nothing, reveals she is a bloodthirsty vampire once again.

After feeding on all her fellow X-Men, Storm transforms into a Woman-Bat and flies off to meet her vampiric master, Count Dracula.

Now wait a minute! I was not entirely clear on the rules of Vampirism in the Marvel Universe, but it seemed to me that Drac was perfectly willing to let Storm go on with her life, having broken his hold on her and never being made into a full vampire.

Oh, of course, it's all a dream; Storm has not been compelled to re-embrace the dark, bloodsucking side. However, she realizes that the dream was a message form Dracula, a summons of sorts, and she generates a wind to fly off to meet him.

Kitty awakens, and, seeing Storm fly to meet Dracula, realizes "the game is afoot." What game would that be? And why is Kitty talking like Sherlock Holmes? Who knows, but it probably has something to do with her abrupt decision to put some very non-PG moves on Colossus.

Yikes.

The next morning, Storm has flown under her own power to Cornwall, England, to an old manor house, where she meets Dracula's new consort...

That's right, it's Rachel V, repping the undead in a stunning turnaround! And offering a swanky buffet to boot.

Dracula arrives and informs Storm that he does still hold power over her, he had simply promised not to use it - and he breaks that promise now because it's necessary. Yeah, I've heard that line too. Dracula explains that he really just needs Storm for one more task - a heist, which happens to be her specialty as the former Junior League Champion Thief of Cairo Street Urchins.

In the nearby town of Pendarrow, there is a book that contains a spell for the obliteration of vampires. In fact, it was Rachel who stowed it there, but she cannot be the one to retrieve it, either because she does not know all the security protocols (as a precaution, in case she, you know, got taken by Dracula) or because she is a vampire now and the house was built on an ancient energy that is anathema to the undead, or both. I'm not entirely sure how much more of a vampire Rachel is than Storm that Storm can enter but Rachel cannot, but either way, as a human in the service of Dracula Storm can enter, and is a master thief, so, bing-pot.

Unfortunately, once inside, she runs into a familiar face who is also in the market for an ancient Vampire-obliterating Spell:

She's not alone either: she has brought Colossus along as backup, seemingly under some kind of spell of obedience. While the Russian keeps Storm busy, Kitty grabs the book from its safe:

Ororo discerns that Kitty is not quite herself, but before she can inquire any further - and Kitty teases that maybe she, like Ororo, is just showing another side of herself - the young'un gets away using her phasing power, and Storm hies off as the police and/or occupants of Pendarrow Castle fire on the intruder.

After a dream in which she re-lives the harrowing experience of her parents death (where she was buried alive and developed her claustrophobia) Storm awakens to find herself back at Dracula's pad (sleeping in a  offin no less!) The Lord of Vampires and the Archaeology Professor determine that they've had it with human-Ororo's bumbling and that if she is to be any real use, she will have to be made a full-Vampire!

Luckily, the X-Men (Cyclops, Wolverine and Nightcrawler) "zark" their way in, just in time to save Storm and tussle with Dracula and Rachel.

Kitty and Colossus rush into the fray, chasing Dracula into the catacombs beneath his manor. Cyclops explains to Storm that Kitty and Colossus had stolen the Blackbird but of course they have LowJack on it so they were able to follow, then using Wolverine's senses managed to track them here.

The rest of the X-Men journey into the basement to confront Dracula (and, I suppose, find out what the heck is going on with Kitty and Colossus) but in the scuffle, Wolverine is made into a servant of Dracula!

In the chaos, Kitty begins to read the incantation, and Dracula begins to disintegrate, but Nightcrawler stops her, knowing that this is dark magic and if she completes the spell her soul will be forfeit (remember, Kurt was raised by a Roma sorceress queen.)

As the X-Men watch, the force possessing Kitty transforms and bids the X-Men to finish the job and kill Dracula.

It's... it's... who is that?

Dracula, however, recognizes this person as his own daughter. He smacks her down and declares his intention to turn the whole X-Men team into vampires, just so they won't be able to attack him again. When suddenly...

Yes, I was one of those random spears from earlier, thrown with deadly precision by...

A decidedly un-bedazzled Rachel, who is just flat-out sick of being Dracula's consort, realizing again that this guy has got to go.

Rachel burns her hands making a cross to burn Dracula's flesh down to the bone, but she says he can't truly die unless his head has been severed from his body (right, right.) Wolverine volunteers for the gig (likely displeased at having spent five minutes as a Vampire servant) but the castle begins to collapse around them and they have not a second to lose to escape.

Looks like he won't be getting the Final Death. Guess he'll just have a little death.... you know, as a treat.

The group adjourns to the cliffs where Wolverine does manage to provide a mercy killing to Rachel, who, having fulfilled her life's purpose, would like to not go on living cursed to hunger for human blood, thanks.

From there, "Kitty" helpfully explains everything - she is in fact Dracula's daughter Lilith, possessing Kitty. She was created as her father's nemesis, a powerful vampire who could do anything she wanted, except kill Dracula, the thing she wanted to do most of all. So, like the Man in Black from LOST, she manipulated the situation once she knew about the Montesi Formula for Oblitaring Vampires, so that Dracula would summon Storm and then she could use the X-Men to kill Dracula.

As she dips out, she lets us know that Kitty's soul is safe, as is Colossus', and that Dracula died enough that his hold on Storm is broken and now she's never going to become a vampire after death, so don't worry about it. Everything is fine!

With that all wrapped up, we are left ambiguously, as Wolverine and Storm ponder their experiences.

Further Thoughts:

The first time the X-Men went up against Dracula, I noted that it seemed like the sort of thing they could have saved for an annual - if you've got an antagonist as powerful and as pedigreed as Dracula, with so much marquee name value, why use him in a 22-page "villain of the month" formula? Especially since that issue, like this one, featured the work of rising star artist Bill Sienkiewicz?

Although Sienkiewicz doesn't get to do a ton of experimental stuff, he does show an advanced technique all throughout with his use of pacing and framing. Right there with him is Glynis Wein, the book's faithful color artist, who along with Bob Wiacek's heavy ink pen, helps convey a lot of the moodiness before it settles into merely a good superhero jaunt.

I'm happy to report that the Dracula-themed annual we have here is a very good comic, perhaps the best annual they've done yet. This outing being a sequel means we get to revisit Dracula's relationship with the X-Men, particularly Storm, and put them through the complex heist plot, with the X-Men in between Dracula and Lilith. This is an annual that really earns its 40 pages, with the story not diverted or padded out in any undue way. Even the dream sequences, which can sometimes come off as filler, keep the story momentum going and provide room for some cool Sienkiewicz stuff. (It's also interesting that between Kitty's issues with her parents - which also calls back to the first Dracula issue - the Dracula-Lilith feud and Storm's fever dream about her own parents' demise, there's an interesting, subtle thread through here.)

All this intrigue does catch up to the story in the form of some hurried exposition at the end as Lilith answers all our question breathlessly in continuous speech balloons before disappearing. This is the sort of thing that tends to happen in big stories - think of Margali Szardos only having a few panels to clarify how Nightcrawler may or may not have been a murderer after the X-Men's long, luxurious tour of hell, or Magneto only briefly reflecting on his time in the Concentration Camps at the end of issue #150. It's a trade off with no clean solution - you don't really want to spend too many panels going back and forth: what about this, oh, what about that?