During the horror craze of the 1970's, vampires in general--and Dracula in particular--were a hot commodity in comics, just as they were in other mediums. Television at the time featured a lot of vampires, including the original telefilm "The Night Stalker," and even an episode of the cop drama "Starsky and Hutch" had a vampire. And there was, of course, the Dracula telefilm featuring Jack Palence as the Lord of the Undead. And, of course, Hammer's Dracula movie series was still running in the early '70's. The decade was indeed kind to the Vampire Lord and the rest of his brethren.
Hence, it isn't surprising that vampires were so popular in comics, and that no less than three comic book companies had a Dracula series featuring their own unique interpretation of the Vampire Lord. Marvel had a popular four-color series called TOMB OF DRACULA and a quarterly four-color comic called GIANT-SIZED DRACULA, along with a black and white mag titled DRACULA LIVES. Their version of Dracula was undoubtably the most popular to appear in comics, as the four-color series was the second longest-running horror comic that Marvel published during that decade, and their version of Drac was an amalgam of traits taken from the Universal and Hammer film series, combined with inspirations acquired from Bram Stoker's original novel. Let's also not forget that Marvel had an entire black and white mag, VAMPIRE TALES, devoted exclusively to stories of the Undead.
Skywald published several Dracula stories in a series that had no sense of interconnected continuity at all, but merely featuring different vampires who called themselves "Dracula," reinterpreting the legend with each tale.
Warren was quick to jump into the fray with its own Dracula series. Their main interpretation of Dracula was distinct from the popular Marvel version in that he was a basically noble man who fought virulently against the bloodlust which caused him to commit an endless series of evil acts, and he was also an agent of the demonic god-like entity known as Chaos. In other words, he was evil, but constantly guilt-ridden over his blood-sucking ways.
In fact, Dracula had a fairly long history in the Warren chronicles.
He first appeared in a two-part story, "The Coffin of Dracula," which ran in CREEPY #8-9 [both parts reprinted in CREEPY #48], which can barely be called a series, and it ran in the pages of CREEPY many years before its companion title EERIE began shifting from stand-alone tales to series stories. This two-part story was largely a gimmick of a tale, featuring a soul-clone of Dracula who can best be named "Dracula-Varney" [I now thank Prof. Chuck Loridans of the MONSTAAH website for first describing in an online article the nature of Dracula's soul-clones; but more on this down below]. That version of Dracula was introduced by the late Archie Goodwin. The next time Dracula appeared in a Warren comic was in an entirely unrelated manner. EERIE #13 featured a reprint of the comic-adapted version of the Bram Stoker short story "Dracula's Guest." Since that story did appear in a Warren comic, I will index it below.
By the early '70's, Warren's version of Dracula was returned by Goodwin, this time making the decision to connect his past with that of Warren's vampiric super-star, Vampirella. Yes, Warren's interpretation of the Vampire Lord became a blood-sucking extraterrestrial, much like Vampi herself was then depicted as in the years before Harris revealed her--and Drac--to be the victims of a game of false memory implants courtesy of the "mad god" Chaos. The Warren Dracula's history was tampered with further by T. Casey Brennan, and the Lord of the Undead spent several issues both battling and courting Vampirella in her own mag.
From there, Warren moved Dracula into his own short series in EERIE, which ran concurrently with the Marvel and Skywald versions. This series was interesting (though complicated by time travel elements, something author Bill DuBay seemed to ignore) but was hampered by the fact that it ended right in the middle of an exciting cliffhanger, and was never resolved. This series ran in EERIE #46-48, one of Warren's early continuing series in EERIE, before the mag began devoting most of its pages to continuing series. The next time Dracula was seen in a Warren comic, a mere two issues after the series ended, it was an entirely different version of Dracula with an entirely different origin--once again making him a human being transformed into a vampire by Satanna, the first vampire of Drac's particular strain of vampirism. This must have irked the many readers who were likely hoping to see the cliffhanger in the series resolved. Instead, they got a well-crafted but entirely unrelated story, featuring a version of Dracula completely different from the one they were just recently following in a series.
Warren's main version of Dracula (i.e., Dracula-Mordante) returned for another, equally short-lived but completed series in VAMPIRELLA #39-41--the only series devoted to a male character to appear in that mag--this time scripted by Gerry Boudreau in a series that acknowledges events from the first series but occurring well after the unseen resolution to the aformentioned cliffhanger had ensued.
Following that, an unidentified version of Dracula appeared in THE ROOK #10, in the Sherlock Holmes story. After this, Dracula was seen no more in the Warren chronicles, though the Dracula-Mordante version of Dracula would appear again in the Harris chronicles many years later. Since this is the same version of Dracula that appeared in Warren Comics, the Harris appearances of Dracula will be indexed below.
"The Coffin of Dracula" was not a good story in this author's opinion, but the Vampirella stories featuring Dracula were quite good, and the two solo series showcasing Warren's Dracula were both very interesting. They contrast terrifically with Marvel's very different version of Dracula.
I should note right here and now that this particular index will be more Wold Newton Universe [WNU] centric than the other indexes on this site, because Dracula is an important character in the WNU. This index will present a thorough overview of Warren's interpretations of Dracula, but since the Warren chronicles actually go a long way towards validating Chuck Loridan's soul-clone theory--a theory designed to explain the disparate versions of Dracula seen in movies, prose novels, comic books, TV series, and video games all occurring on a single coherent timeline--I will be using this index as a means to make a case in favor of Chuck's soul-clone theory as well as describing the place of Warren's Dracula in the greater WNU. I will also be making an effort to tie in the particular soul-clone from the Warren chronicles--a soul-clone I call Dracula-Mordante--with the version of Dracula seen in Konami's popular, long-running video game series 'Castlevania.'
Warren's two "Dracula" series, along with all of the Vampire Lord's appearances in the Vampirella stories, were obviously not, in my estimation, Dracula-Prime, i.e., the original Vlad Tepes Dracula and Lord of the Undead. Rather, this version of Dracula was, as per my theories backed up by much available evidence, one of Dracula-Prime's soul-clones. Of course, the Warrenverse is a sub-section of the WNU, and the crossovers between Warren's Dracula and Vampirella officially bring the former into the WNU. As described above, the soul-clone theory, developed by creative mythographer and monster expert extraordinaire Chuck Loridans, chief caretaker of the MONSTAAH site (check out my Links on the home page), is a means of bringing all the many different and seemingly conflicting versions of the Prince of Darkness that we see in the plethora of movies, prose books (both stand-alone and series novels), comic books, video games, etc., together under one coherent timeline. This idea is popular with some creative mythographers, monster fans, and theorists (such as myself), but disliked by others for various aesthetic reasons. Though I do indeed endorse the soul-clone view, I am hoping this will not deter those who dislike the theory from reading this Index, particularly die-hard Dracula or Warren Comics fans who are looking for info on the infamous Count in his many different incarnations across the spectrum of pop culture. I have attempted to write this index so that it will be accessible to all who are simply looking for info on how Warren Comics interpreted the character of Dracula, and has no real interest in any theories or who may harbor different theories.
Since creative mythographer Mike Ongsingco is one of the foremost experts on 'Castlevania,' his work has proven invaluable to my ability to establish the still somewhat murky connections between Dracula-Mordante and Dracula-Mathias (the soul-clone appearing in the 'CV' saga), connections made more complicated due to the time travel elements inherent in the back stories of both entities. Hence, much of what I present here along those lines, including the capsule timeline that I have tried to work out linking the two divergent soul-clones, are entirely speculatory, and future creative mythographers and other pop fiction theorists/parascholars may have other, equally valid ideas for linking the two, or even valid arguments towards not linking the two. As such, this particular Index is likely to be updated and amended more often than almost any other Warren series to be indexed on this site.
I also must thank Win Scott Eckert for his contributions here, particularly the extensive chronology on Dracula he has created for his own website, and I strongly appreciate the time he has taken to review and offer his advice on this Index despite (at this writing) his being very busy at work on his first published book, and he was kind enough to offer his input during the time shortly before the deadline.
Of course, as explained above, this Index owes much to the efforts of Prof. Chuck Loridans, and the work he has done towards establishing the soul-clone theory that effectively links the many disparate versions of Dracula from prose, cinema, illustrated fiction (a.k.a., "comic books"), and even video games into a single coherent timeline for the "consensus" WNU. Chuck has already detailed some cinematic evidence to back up his soul-clone theories [a soul-clone was actually seen being created onscreen in the Hammer film "The Seven Brothers vs. Dracula"], and the "Dracula" series from Warren offers the first written evidence to back up those theories of his.
Finally, I certainly need to thank my fellow creative mythographers Ivan Schablotski and Jay Lindsey for their important input on this Index, as well as the rest of the MONSTAAH crew and correspondent Dave Ruscula.
Suspected appearances of the Dracula-Mordante character completely outside the Warren and Harris chronicles, such as in THE GHOSTS OF DRACULA #1-5 (mini-series) from Eternity Comics and FRIGHT #1 from Atlas/Seaboard Comics will not be indexed at this time, as they are completely outside the purview of a website covering Warren Comics material (and, by necessity, certain Harris material) but they will be included on the Dracula-Mordante timeline following his indexed stories below, as they are rather important to his backstory, IMO.
It should again be noted that the story of Dracula-Mordante begins in a two-part story that appeared early in the run of CREEPY, which featured a different soul-clone, Dracula-Varney, and provided evidence that further validates Chuck Loridans's soul-clone theories outside of the 1974 Hammer film "The Seven Brothers vs. Dracula" (a.k.a., "The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires"). Since it also deals with characters from Bram Stoker's original novel, it provides strong evidence in favor of the soul-clone theory that is central to the Dracula chron of the "consensus" WNU, and in fact takes place very soon after those events, quickly following Mina Harker's appearances in the two MINA novels, and her divorce of Jonathan Harker and later becoming the distinguished leader of the 1898 version of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (not published by Warren, of course, but four decades later under Alan Moore's America's Best Comics line, though it took place in the WNU), it more than deserves to be synopsized here, especially since Warren published those stories.
Please note that making sense of the time travel aspects of Dracula-Mordante's backstory will be difficult, and will result in some conjecture on my part that other creative mythographers and/or chroniclers of Warren Comics' output in the future may disagree with (and their opinions will be as valid as my own, so my opinions on this matter are subject to change in the future depending upon what additional evidence may be uncovered). I will begin the Index with "The Coffin of Dracula" two-parter from CREEPY #8-9, then I will index Warren's adaptation of "Dracula's Guest" from EERIE #13, and from there move into indexing Dracula-Mordante's appearances in the Vampi strip in VAMPIRELLA #'s 16, 18-21, then on to his solo series in EERIE #46-48, from there to his solo series in VAMPIRELLA #39-41, concluding the Warren indexed stories with the Sherlock Holmes tale from THE ROOK #10, and moving into the Harris stories from VAMPIRELLA MONTHLY #1-4 and two of the tales from VAMPIRELLA/DRACULA: THE CENTENNIAL, all of which feature appearances of Dracula-Mordante.
Finally, I will index the single story from EERIE #50 featuring Satanna, the Devil's Daughter (not to be confused with Satana Hellstrom, who first appeared in Marvel's VAMPIRE TALES #2), as I believe it's one of only two stories published in a Warren comic to feature an appearance of Dracula-Prime, and it also presents an important addition to the original Vampire Lord's origin.
"The Coffin of Dracula" [Part 1]
Story: Archie Goodwin
Art: Reed Crandall
In the city of London in the 1890's (shortly after the events of Bram Stoker's DRACULA), a wealthy nobleman named Lord AdrianVarney [likely a relative of the vampire who carries that surname; see WNU Connections below] directs a gypsy named Koslak, whom he had hired, down a foggy London street away from the docks and towards an abandoned building left to him by his deceased uncle, albeit against Koslok's better judgment [I believe that Koslok is likely to be a member of one of the mystically oriented gypsy tribes known as the Kalderesh, noted for appearing in the first two Universal films featuring the Wolf Man (Larry Talbot), Warren's "Curse of the Werewolf" series, the TV series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," and the Stephen King novel THINNER; they were officially named in the "Buffy" series]. Varney intends to liven up his forthcoming costume party by selling the various items his uncle had left him, including the article that had aroused Koslok's concerns…a wooden coffin with the name "Dracula" inscribed on it. Opening the coffin, Varney saw nothing but dust inside, and on a whim, he laid inside the coffin to see if it would serve the purpose of playing a joke on his party guests, despite Koslok's panic-stricken protestations. Upon laying in the coffin, however, Varney was taken over by Dracula's spirit, and he quickly killed Koslok.
Meanwhile, as the party commences, Jonathan Harker and his wife Mina are in attendance [their young son Quincy was nowhere in sight, and never even mentioned], and it was revealed that Jonathan was solicitor of the estate for Varney's late uncle, and the young couple were invited to the party for that reason. Both of the Harkers dislike Varney, finding his personality unnerving. Meanwhile, one of the other guests reveals to the Harkers that a real gypsy fortune-teller was in attendance at the party, and both agreed to allow the old woman to read their fortune. Looking into her scrying globe, the woman divined the recent horrific events that the Harkers had experienced [see DRACULA by Bram Stoker], and the events of that novel were briefly recapped. The gypsy woman then revealed that she was Koslok's wife, and that she, her husband, and many other gypsies were hired to transport Dracula's casket from Transylvania to London. The Harkers were startled when Lord Varney finally appeared, and insisted that Mina dance with him. Using the powers of mesmerism he acquired from the spirit remnant of Dracula, Varney rendered Mina insensate and carried her away, while a gust of wind under his control blew open the doors leading to the terrace, blowing out the candles and distracting the other members of the party. Jonathan desperately attempted to stop the possessed Varney [now a de facto soul-clone of Dracula-Prime, but possibly possessing the essence of Dracula-Mordante, which would make him a soul-clone of a soul-clone] from absconding with the unconscious Mina, but getting upon his horse and carriage, Varney viciously clubbed Jonathan into submission with his cane [Varney had not at that time acquired Dracula's superhuman strength].
Desperate, Jonathan went to his old ally, Dr. John Seward, and they were met at the psychiatrist's asylum by Abraham Van Helsing, who by chance had traveled to London from Amsterdam to investigate reports of vampiric activity, including sightings of a spectral figure walking the seacoast beaches near Whitby. Seward noted that Dracula first arrived in England at Whitby, and that the vampire in that area may be a victim of the dreaded Count that they hadn't yet discovered. Though Jonathan insisted on looking only for Mina, Van Helsing convinced him that by destroying this other vampire, they would prevent Mina from being turned into one of the undead, as that other vampire's trail would likely lead them straight to Dracula-Varney and Mina.
The three men searched the seacoast at Whitby all night fruitlessly, and an irate Jonathan queried as to what this other vampire had to do with Adrian Varney, to which Van Helsing replied, "Count Dracula is king among undead…we kill his body, destroy his power, but not his spirit! That lives among soil and ashes in his coffin…waiting…waiting" [is it possible that Van Helsing suspected Dracula-Prime's ability to create soul-clones, but the doctor didn't completely understand the intricacies of the process at this time? See WNU Connections below]. Van Helsing then said, "Lord Varney's evil nature makes him easy host for this spirit…Dracula's desires become his own" [another hint that Van Helsing was aware of Dracula-Prime's ability to place his consciousness in the body of another man, and this also suggests that the more banal and evil a man was, the easier he was for Dracula-Prime's consciousness to subsume his original personality once Drac transferred his memories to him directly with the Star Stone ring, or indirectly via the enchanted coffin of Dracula-Mordante]. The three men finally located a cave, and Jonathan realized to his horror that Dracula-Varney was likely using it as a hide-out. Upon entering the cave, Van Helsing mentioned that Dracula-Varney did not yet possess the full power [or something close to it] of Dracula-Prime, but instead had to be bitten by an actual vampire for this to occur [see below for my speculations on this].
Upon arriving at the end of the cavern, the three intrepid vampire hunters discover the unidentified vampire that Van Helsing was seeking as it rose from a coffin.
[Note: Since both parts of "The Coffin of Dracula" were written and illustrated by the same creative team, both parts had precisely the same tone/style, and Part 2 occurred immediately after Part 1, I will analyze both parts as if they were a single story, which essentially they were, but simply too many pages to run in a single issue; hence, I will deconstruct both parts together in terms of Comments, WNU Connections, Classic Dialogue, Time Frame, etc., following the synopsis for Part 2 below.]
"The Coffin of Dracula" [Part 2]
Writer: Archie Goodwin
Art: Reed Crandall
Acting quickly, Van Helsing, Seward, and Jonathan Harker manage to drive the vampire back into the coffin, and stake the undead creature to death. Van Helsing informs them that now that this was done, Dracula-Varney will have to stay mortal, and he will not be able to utilize a version of Dracula-Prime's power. However, Varney then appeared from behind them, and they realized that the vampiric servant of Dracula that had been left behind to vamp the Count's new soul-clone/human host had already bitten Varney and completed the transformation prior to their arrival. Dracula-Varney then quickly fled the cave, and morphed into bat-form to flee the area. Realizing that Dracula-Varney would have to find a place to hide from the sun during the daylight, Jonathan recalled that part of Adrian Varney's inheritance from his late uncle included a castle that was located up coast.
Traveling to Castle Varney, the three men searched the huge estate fruitlessly all day long, finally locating the unconscious body of Mina. Though she had been drained of blood, Van Helsing quickly arranged for the woman to be given an emergency transfusion of his own blood to save her, much as he had done months earlier [see DRACULA]. As evening fell, the three men noticed more gypsies loading the coffin onto a funeral coach, but before the three men could fully react to that, Dracula-Varney appeared and attacked. Seward stopped this inferior soul-clone's charge by hitting him in the face with a cross, burning the flesh on his face. Fleeing the castle with inhuman speed, Dracula-Varney made it to the funeral coach that was holding the cursed coffin, and the errant count began departing the area. Jonathan managed to leap upon the back of the coach as the vampire fled, and though he was thrown off, he nevertheless managed to spook the horse to such an extent that the coach went off of a cliff surrounding the seacoast, and Dracula-Varney plunged over 50 feet down along with the wooden vehicle. Upon crashing into the rocks below, Dracula-Varney was impaled on a sharp piece of wood and perished. Seward then caught up to Jonathan and informed him that Mina was now conscious, and seemed to have recovered.
In the meantime, Dracula's cursed coffin floated to the bottom of the sea, awaiting discovery by the unwary.
Comments: This two-part story, sadly, was not one of Archie Goodwin's better efforts, despite the fact that he was one of Jim Warren's top scripters at the time. Though published in two parts, the story was written as if both parts were completed overnight, as it seemed to have been plotted in haste. The dialogue was acceptable, but the story ill-conceived, with the only memorable aspect being what was perhaps the first print evidence leading to the validation of Chuck Loridans's soul-clone theory, appearing a decade before Hammer provided further evidence for this theory on the silver screen in the 1974 film "The Seven Brothers vs. Dracula" (a.k.a., "The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires").
The characters outside of Dracula-Varney were fairly well-realized, though Mina Harker had nothing more than a victim role with only a small amount of dialogue, and she displayed none of the brave spunk we saw in regards to her character in Alan Moore's LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, or even in the two MINA novels by Marie Kiraly (the pen name of Elaine Bergstrom), which actually occurred before "The Coffin of Dracula." The next chronological appearance of Abraham Van Helsing, Jonathan Harker, and Mina Harker was in the two-part Vampi story arc in VAMPIRELLA #19-20 (which also gave us the final final fate of Lucy Westenra, which didn't end in DRACULA), and they all appeared there shortly following the events of "The Coffin of Dracula."
The additional traumatic experiences of Mina Harker with two Dracula soul-clones, Dracula-Varney (in CREEPY #8-9) and Dracula-Mordante (in VAMPIRELLA #19-20; see entries for those issues below), along with her much more positive (to say the least) encounter with Dracula's most unique soul-clone of them all in Frank Saberhagen's novel THE HOLMES/DRACULA TAPES, may have led her to later divorce Jonathan, though there must be more to the story than that, since by all accounts, Jonathan was an honorable and even heroic man when it came to the defense of his wife, and there was no doubt that he truly loved her. See the novels MINA: THE DRACULA STORY CONTINUES and BLOOD TO BLOOD: THE DRACULA STORY CONTINUES, which precede the Warren stories, along with the Warren appearances of Mina Harker to view the chain of events which led her to transcend the rather weak-willed woman of the 19th century she was in Bram Stoker's DRACULA and the Warren stories to become the strong-willed, independent minded, and inveterate leader and investigator she was by the time she appeared in THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN Vol. 1.
There was ample evidence in this story that Abraham Van Helsing was aware that his great nemesis, Vlad Dracula, was able to create soul-clones of himself, thus enabling the Vampire Lord to perpetuate his plots even when he was (temporarily) destroyed or otherwise indisposed. Nevertheless, Van Helsing seems to have been unaware of precisely how Dracula-Prime accomplished this extremely useful feat, and simply assumed that the coffin was the only way the Count achieved this, as the good doctor may not have had any knowledge of the Star Stone ring, nor did he have any knowledge of the soul-clone responsible for the coffin, i.e., the then insensate Dracula-Mordante (who was then an agent of the Lovecraftian entity called Chaos).
It would seem, therefore, that either Dracula-Prime used the Star Stone ring to infuse the coffin with its energies, thus enabling the Vampire Lord to indirectly create a soul-clone of anyone who lay within the coffin, or, more likely, Dracula-Mordante utilized the magicks of the Crimson Chronicles to enchant the coffin in this manner, for the purpose of creating interim soul-clone variants of himself when warranted. In either case, he was likely able to achieve this in part due to the natural mystical properties of the wood from Transylvania (it may have been previously infused with Chthonic energies, as was the case of the wood that was found in the nearby Balkan nation of Transia), and its sympathetic contact with Dracula-Prime's native soil.
Nevertheless, due to this indirect method of creating soul-clones, while the person would be infused with Dracula-Prime's personality, memories, and desires, all of which would mostly "overwrite" the man's original persona (depending upon that person's strength of will), the person in question remained fully mortal, and possessed only a bare minimum of Drac's power (including minor mesmerism and control over the weather). In order for the transformation to be made complete, another vampire (or possibly even a bat, according to one unlikely account) had to bite the mortal soul-clone and introduce the vampiric virogen enzyme into the bloodstream…this would result in a near-instantaneous metamorphosis into a full vampiric soul-clone, with much of Dracula-Prime's powers (and all of his supernatural weaknesses, also). If one were to assume that Dracula-Prime had anything to do with the creation of the coffin, it can be surmised that due to the inefficiency of this indirect method of creating soul-clones, the prime Vampire Lord appeared to have abandoned it altogether following the destruction of his original coffin shortly after it created the Dracula-Varney soul-clone and revived the Dracula-Mordante soul-clone after the latter was destroyed in VAMPIRELLA #16, and relied almost entirely upon the Star Stone to directly create soul-clones after this.
However, should it turn out that Dracula-Prime had nothing to do with the coffin, and it was entirely the creation of Dracula-Mordante utilizing the Crimson Chronicles to infuse the coffin and the already enchanted wood and soil with further Cthonic magicks, then it would appear that Dracula-Mordante himself would later abandon the coffin in the early 1970's.
It should be noted, however, that Reed Crandall's artwork was more than competent, and it elevated an otherwise lackluster story up a notch or two.
Both chapters of "The Coffin of Dracula" were reprinted in CREEPY #48 (CREEPY #27 only reprinted the second chapter).
WNU Connections: As noted above, here we see the first suggestion of a Dracula soul-clone in the print (albeit illustrated story format) medium, as advanced by Prof. Chuck Loridans over on MONSTAAH, to explain all the myriad versions of Dracula we have seen in print and on the silver screen (and elsewhere, such as video games like the Castlevania series). As noted above, it appears, as per my theories, that prior to simply using the Star Stone ring to directly create soul-clones, for a time either Dracula-Prime or Dracula-Mordante (see the following entries in this Index for much more on this particular soul-clone) infused his coffin, containing wood and soil from his native land, with its power, and if Dracula-Mordante was destroyed or in a catatonic state at the time, any human being of an immoral nature and possessing relatively weak willpower who laid in the coffin would become infused with Dracula's consciousness and memories. However, due to this very indirect manner of soul-clone creation, such soul-clones would remain largely mortal until they were bitten by another vampire. There are no known appearances of Dracula-Varney after this…beginning with the next appearances of Dracula in VAMPIRELLA, a new soul-clone, Dracula-Mordante, had appeared, owing his genesis, I have conjectured, to Dracula-Prime's Star Stone ring. Most other soul-clones, such as Dracula-Lejos and Dracula-Denrom (see the "Children of the Night" timeline on the MONSTAAH site), were created directly by the Star Stone ring, as described in detail by Chuck Loridans on the latter timeline.
Adrian Varney was likely related in some manner to the Lord Varney who was also a vampire, and who appeared in the mid-19th century penny dreadful novel VARNEY THE VAMPYRE; OR, THE FEAST OF BLOOD. I would opine that the similar name, and the fact that Adrian Varney just happened to be drawn to the coffin as an intended vessel for Dracula's consciousness, was too much to be a mere coincidence, and the death of his uncle leading to the inheritance of the coffin was likely part of a contingency plan of the Prince of Darkness should he meet his demise after returning to Transylvania from London (though I'm not certain at this time which version of Dracula planned this contingency). The familial connection between Adrian Varney and his vampiric forbear obviously had something to do with Dracula's choice, though I will let other Dracula historians and creative mythographers figure out the full connection.
Also seen in this story were members of the famous Kalderesh gypsy tribe [though not named as such; see above].
Classic Dialogue: When first looking upon the paraphernalia that his late uncle left to him in Part 1, Adrian Varney warm-heartedly says, "Junk…bric-a-brac…all waiting to be sold by my uncle's auction house! Thoughtful of the old boy to die…now it's all mine!" Nice of Mr. Varney to show such appreciation for his unc's generosity.
Time Frame: This story took place shortly after the events in Bram Stoker's DRACULA, likely no more than several months to two years afterwards. Author and creative mythographer Win Scott Eckert has placed the events of DRACULA in 1887, ten years before the publication of the novel (with Chuck Loridans following suit on his "Children of the Night" timeline). This story likely took place sometime following Mina Harker's appearances in the two MINA novels by Elaine Bergstrom, possibly in the year 1890.
"Dracula's Guest"
Story: E Nelson Bridwell [adapted into illustrated form from the short story by Bram Stoker]
Art: Frank Bolle
As the introductory text to this adaptation of Bram Stoker's story explains:
"This story was intended as the opening episode in Bram Stoker's novel, DRACULA, but was excised because of the length of the book. As readers of DRACULA will recall, it opens with the entry for May 3 in the journal of Jonathan Harker, a young English solicitor, on his way to transact business with a client in Transylvania-Count Dracula. But let us go back and read the entry for May 1…"
Before arriving in Transylvania for his scheduled business meeting with Count Dracula, Jonathan Harker began his trip over the border in Munich, and began traveling to Dracula's home village via a horse and carriage that he rented from the Maitre D'Hotel in the Quatre Saisons. Before leaving, the hotel manager, Herr Delbruck, ordered the cab driver, Johan, to make sure he returned before nightfall. Harker noticed anxious behavior from both Johan and the two horses pulling the carriage while en route, especially when they came near a certain road that cut through a "little, winding valley." He was also surprised to hear what sounded like a wolf howling from somewhere in the woods, even though he knew that no wolves were supposed to live in this part of Europe any more.
Johan wanted to avoid the road, saying that this evening was Walpurgis Nacht (German for "Witch's Night") and Harker, who wanted to see what type of scenery it had, asked his carriage driver to explain his fear and why he was constantly making the sign of the cross as they traveled this way. The driver replied that the village down the road where Harker now headed was "unholy," and that no one other than groups of gypsies had lived there for a very long time. The reason for this was because a few hundred years ago, several people started dying there, sounds were heard under the clay covering the graves, and when the lids were lifted, the corpses were seen perfectly preserved and with trails of blood down their mouths; "and so, in haste to save their lives (aye, and their very souls!) those who were left fled away to other places, where the living lived and the dead were dead and not-not something else."
Intrigued by what may lay down that road, Harker sent Johan home and decided to walk the rest of the way. As Harker observed the departing carriage, he saw a "tall and thin" man dressed in a flowing black cape suddenly appear before it on a hill top. The horses became extremely agitated at the sudden appearance of this strange man, and the terrified animals sped down the road to avoid that figure. After Harker turned his attention away from the fleeing carriage for a few seconds, he turned back to realize that the cloaked man had vanished.
As Harker continued to walk through the valley towards the Transylvanian village of Bistritz, he was caught in a sudden violent snowstorm, and was forced to seek shelter in a nearby mausoleum he happened upon, which held the body of a woman named Countess Dolingen of Gratz, Styria, who was listed as having been "sought and found dead, 1801." As Harker entered the tomb to escape the biting wind, snow, and hailstones outside, a sudden flash of lightening revealed that the body of a young woman was laying, apparently dead, down upon a bier. Fleeing from the tomb as if by a sudden psychic compulsion, Harker saw a bolt of lightening strike a metal spike stuck in the top of the marble mausoleum, destroying it and setting the body of the woman on fire…only to see the seeming corpse of the young woman rise up and scream in agony as her body was set ablaze by the lightening strike.
Then, as if seized by another such psychic impulse, Harker saw approaching him what appeared to be a moving "mass" of mist…he then fell unconscious, only to wake up and see, to his horror, a huge wolf sitting upon his chest and licking his throat. The wolf then began barking incessantly, as if deliberately trying to attract attention to the vicinity. This seemed to succeed, as a group of soldiers from Munich strode into the snow-covered wilderness bearing musket rifles. They shot at the wolf, but the animal ran into the woods unharmed, and Harker heard one of the soldiers mention that they saw, "a wolf-and yet not a wolf!" and another mention that it was "no use trying for him without the sacred bullet" (a silver bullet? That's my theory). Upon checking Harker's neck for possible injuries, since blood was found on the shattered marble of the mausoleum, they could see that no injury to the man was in evidence, and the wolf was apparently licking his throat to keep his blood warm until the soldiers found him. They then resolved to quickly leave the "cursed" area and return the young solicitor to his hotel in Munich.
When Harker was returned to the hotel, the grateful young man invited both the soldier who rode him there and Herr Delbruck to retire to his room with him and to have some drinks on him. There the soldier told Harker that he couldn't accept the thanks for saving his life because it was Delbruck who notified them as to his predicament. When Harker asked Delbruck how he knew what his dire situation was, the man stated that not only did Johan tell him what happened on the road when he returned, sans his carriage (the horses crashed it in their haste to flee the figure they encountered in the valley), but he was sent a telegram from Bistritz that read:
Be careful of my guest. Should he be missed, spare nothing to find him and insure his safety. He is English and therefore adventurous. There are often dangers from snows and wolves at night. I answer your zeal with my fortune. ---Dracula
As Jonathan Harker noted to himself via first person narrative in this May 1 journal entry of his, "The room seemed to whirl around me. From a distant country had come, in the very nick of time, a message that took me out of the jaws of the wolf."
From here, Harker's story leads into Bram Stoker's famous novel.
Comments: This story originally appeared in an illustrated story formatted paperback called CHRISTOPHER LEE'S TREASURY OF TERROR, published in 1966 by Pyramid Books. This collection was bought up by Warren, and all the stories within the paperback were reformatted and reprinted in various Warren mags.
Cousin Eerie hosted this tale, his head pasted over the original vignette image of Dracula on the title page.
This was a laudable adaptation of Bram Stoker's deleted-first-chapter-cum-self-contained-short-story into the illustrated story format, courtesy of E. Nelson Bridwell's faithful pen and Frank Bolle's fine artwork. It was a good early effort for Jim Warren's then-fledging anthology horror line, and it was reprinted a mere ten issues after it first appeared, possibly a result of Warren trying to cash in twice on the name value of its feature character, as the story appeared long before EERIE began running continuing features.
When Bram Stoker had to delete his originally intended opening chapter for reasons of space, he retained a typed copy of it, and soon after he died, his widow had it published posthumously as a self-contained short story entitled "Dracula's Guest" to help support herself by using her husband's name in a story involving a character that made him very famous. This yarn was among many literary tales from famous horror authors that were adapted into illustrated story format in the pages of EERIE and CREEPY during the '60's and early '70's…other authors who had their stories so adapted included Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, and Ambrose Bierce, as well as others.
It was quite clear from this story that Dracula went out of his way to save Jonathan Harker from dying in the snow storm he was caught in…because he needed him alive for his own sinister purposes, as described in detail in Stoker's novel.
WNU Connections: The events of Bram Stoker's short story "Dracula's Guest" obviously occur in the "consensus" WNU, since it leads right into Stoker's novel DRACULA.
This was one of only two stories in the Warren annals to feature Dracula-Prime, the other being the Satanna, Daughter of the Devil story from EERIE #50 (indexed below).
Time Frame: This story takes place two days prior to the events begun in the published version of Bram Stoker's DRACULA, thus featuring chronological appearances of Jonathan Harker and Dracula-Prime that slightly precede the events of the novel, and which constitute Harker's first journal entry regarding those events.
"…And Be A Bride of Chaos"
Story: Archie Goodwin
Art: Jose Gonzalez
At the international airport of the island republic of Cote De Soleil [just after the adventure in the Vampi story from VAMPIRELLA #15], Vampirella steps in front of an aircraft that is moving down the runway in preparation for take-off, halting its progress. Vampi was under the mistaken impression that her close friend and frequent ally, the aged professional prestidigitation showman Pendragon, was being kidnapped on that aircraft. However, the stage illusionist happily greeted her at the door of the aircraft, and told her that the note that had been left for her at the bistro where she and Adam Van Helsing had left him, was a practical joke by both Pendragon and the man who had hired them to put on a show at his European castle…a wealthy nobleman named Count Mordante. After Vampi asked where their host himself was, Pendragon said that he was in the rear compartment of the airplane resting…though he neglected to mention that the only thing in that compartment was a coffin.
Meanwhile, while recuperating from his recent gunshot wound in a nearby villa, Adam Van Helsing asked his father, Conrad Van Helsing, where his lover and ally was. Conrad responded that she left the island nation with Pendragon… "or so she claimed." When asking what he meant by that, and why his father was sharpening wooden stakes in front of him, Conrad replied that he was preparing to do battle. When Adam jumped to the defense of Vampi for saving his life with a recent blood transfusion, Conrad handed his irate son the letter left at the bistro for her by Count Mordante…the seal at the bottom of the letter had the coat of arms belonging to the Dracula family embossed on it. Since Adam was still too weak to travel, Conrad was forced to go and seek out Dracula himself [who, I conjecture, is a rogue soul-clone of Dracula-Prime; see WNU Connections below, and also note the rest of this synopsis for more obvious clues and conjectures by this author].
Hours later, Vampi and Pendragon arrive at Castle Mordante, where it was situated in a remote area of the Carnic Alps, separated from the surrounding woodlands by a black lake several miles long, which required visitors to travel to by boat. Little was Vampi aware, however, that the other guests at the opulent castle were wealthy people from across the globe who belonged to various branches of the mystical Cult of Chaos, who worshipped a powerful, dark, apparently god-like entity [an Elder God? See below], and they had today traveled to Castle Mordante for the purpose of witnessing the long awaited "marriage" of a certain woman to this being, the former of whom would spawn a child that would eventually enable Chaos to return to the Earth dimension, and once again claim this reality as his own.
Upon settling into their rooms, Vampi swore that she saw a coffin being dragged into the castle many flights below, but Pendragon merrily assured her that it was probably just a case of nervousness on her part, due to their upcoming performance. To assuage Vampi just before she left his room to rest up for the upcoming performance, after she had asked him just how much he knew about the mysterious Count Mordante, Pendragon reminded her that he would never lead her into danger…though the departing Vampi evidently never noticed the two prominent bite marks on the magician's neck.
The many wealthy people from across the world who comprised the Companions of Chaos, an apparent triumvirate of the various factions of the Cult of Chaos, particularly an ambitious woman named Lucretia, convened in a single room awaiting the arrival of the Cult's leader, as tonight was to be the night that he would officially choose a bride for Chaos. The aforementioned leader and owner of the castle soon arrived, and was addressed by the cult members as Count Dracula [Mordante was evidently his original name, before Dracula-Prime transformed him into a soul-clone, and before the Elder God (???) Chaos had co-opted the soul-clone for his own purposes, thus having a being possessing Dracula-Prime's own powers under his control to lead the mostly all-human Cult(s) of Chaos; see Comments and WNU Connections below]. Lucretia made it clear that she expected herself to be chosen by Dracula as the bride of Chaos, and she had kept herself free of all sexual activity in anticipation of remaining "pure" to bear the Elder God's child. To quote Lucretia: "And now we may choose! The one woman among us worthy to become bride to him whom we worship…the woman who shall have the honor of honors…who shall bear the Child of Chaos! Who shall loose the seed of the mad god upon the Earth that he and his may rule again!" Dracula told the anxious Lucretia that he was not ready to announce his choice just yet, but had first prepared a "small entertainment" for them. It turned out to be the performance that Pendragon and Vampirella were hired to conduct for Mordante's party [it should be noted that at this point, Lucretia mentioned a book they all utilized to master various magickal spells, which she called the Crimson Chronicles: "To we who have mastered the spells of the Crimson Chronicles, bible of Chaos, you present some barely competent trickster?"]. As Pendragon and Vampi conducted the performance, Dracula announced that Vampirella would be his choice to become the Bride of Chaos. As the soul-cloned Vampire Lord ordered the rest of the Cult to seal all doors and entrances, Vampi urged Pendragon to quickly flee the castle, only to find her friend in a trance-like state. Dracula informed her that Pendragon was now one of his unwilling converts due to a bite on the neck, and having served his purpose, he promptly reverted to his entranced zombie-like state. Vampi attacked Dracula, but the Count was stronger and a more experienced combatant, and he easily rendered her unconscious.
Lucretia vehemently protested Dracula's choice, noting, "I, who have garnered more souls than any [other] priestess…who have denied myself the love of any mortal that I might remain unspoiled for the mighty Chaos himself! If any is fit to be his bride, to bear his child…it is me!" But Dracula denied Lucretia's request, apparently turned off by her rampant ambition, and he revealed that he chose Vampi because she was superior to any human or vampire on the Earth, since she was of "the race that spawned Count Dracula." As Dracula carried the insensate Vampirella to the underground chamber of Chaos where the ritual to summon the dread Elder God would commence, he began to recite his origin [which, in my opinion, is a bogus origin, mostly the result of Chaos imprinting more false memories over that of the equally synthetically imposed memories of Dracula-Prime, thus resulting in a set of memories for Dracula-Mordante that were a combination of the faux memories of a life on the "planet" Draculon imposed by Chaos, the duplicate of Dracula-Prime's memories imposed by the latter, and a small dispersion of Count Mordante's original memories and noble personality that was constantly battling…always fruitlessly…against the imposition of two separate and powerful evil influences that had been imposed upon his psyche; see Comments and WNU Connections below]. The following is the "origin" account as Dracula-Mordante related it in this story:
Dracula claimed that ages ago, he was born on the distant planet [as later revealed, an alternate dimension] of Draculon (spelled "Drakulon" at this point in time), a world surrounding a binary star system, where a technologically advanced race of humanoid beings with fangs and bat-like wings thrived, and who fed upon blood that was readily available to all in great streams of the crimson substance that flowed across that world [the faux memories imposed by Chaos evidently made Dracula-Mordante perceive Draculon as if the vampiric race there did indeed possess advanced technology that resembled the sci-fi devices from pulp magazines in the 1930's and '40's; more on this in WNU Connections below]. However, the increasing heat of the twin suns was apparently slowly evaporating the streams of blood from the "surface" of Draculon. Though most Draculonians were relatively peaceful, the being now known as Dracula evidently followed an old tradition of "Draculonians" who were hunters, and received their nourishment not from the blood streams of that world, but by attacking and draining the blood from living Draculonians, in the ritualistic belief that they were acquiring the strength of those whom they killed. Held before a [simulated] legal tribunal for his crimes, the "future" Dracula defended his actions by saying, "I was raised to love the hunt, the kill, the excitement…better that than wallowing at some stream like a farmyard animal" [why were there farms on Draculon if their sole means of nourishment was blood that was readily available in the world's abundant streams, rather than culled from meat or crops? Obviously, this term was a "fill-in" conceptual point of reference by the human memories of Mordante, as something that a human who grew up on Earth could relate to, but something beings like the simulated "Draculonians" would likely have no personal conception of, let alone a linguistic term for]. For his crimes, the tribunal declared that the "future" Dracula be executed via a hi-tech looking disintegration chamber. But upon being reduced to his component atoms by this "technology," his body was saved from this disintegration process by an unknown force that dragged him into a nether-dimensional realm instead, as per this verbatim quote from the Lord of the Undead: "But so great was the force that struck me, my body was not disintegrated, but displaced…forced from one plane of existence into another. Forced by cosmic accident into a dimension where a mad god and his seven demon servants endure banishment…the Nether-Void" [again, could this be a member of the Cthulhu Mythos, who was also a direct ally of the forces of Chaos, and seven of his lesser "progeny"?]. As he drifted in the featureless Nether-Void, the "future" Dracula encountered Chaos himself, and explained, "…the mad god saw in me a servant, one to aid in his battle to regain the world he had lost…Earth…though lacking power to free himself, Chaos was able to pierce the dimensional barrier enough so I could come to Earth…and in his name, loose vampirism upon the world!"
Next in the tale, the "future" Dracula arrived on Earth at some point in ancient Egypt, and during his very lengthy time on this world [according to the faux memories placed in his psyche by Chaos], the power of the Elder God altered his body so that he lost his bat-like wings in humanoid form, but retained the "Draculonian" ability to shape-shift into a bat [Dracula-Mordante evidently lacked Dracula-Prime's ability to shape-shift into a wolf or into a gaseous, i.e., dispersed etheric state], and his bite now became "infectious," thus breeding a new race of vampires on Earth through the human victims he obtained his blood from. As a further alteration to his form, he (and the human vampires he created) could no longer tolerate the sunlight (something that is not a problem for Vampirella, or the "native Draculonians" of Dracula-Mordante's faux memories). By the 15th century, the Count claimed that he had taken on the human name of "Dracula" in honor of the world from which he was born [which probably seemed like a clever idea to the writers at the time; in actuality, however, the dimension of "Draculon" was evidently named for Dracula, not the reverse, and at this point in time, the imposed memories of Dracula-Prime remain more or less intact, with the "Draculon" memories superimposed upon his psyche so that he perceives these memories as events that occurred "prior" to those he had imposed upon him from the real Vlad Dracula].
Dracula went on to say that he reached the peak of his powers by the late 19th century, and he then reiterated the events recorded in the famous novel by Bram Stoker, where he "recalled" the imposed memories of Dracula-Prime, when he victimized Lucy Westenra and was defeated in battle by Prof. Abraham Van Helsing, Jonathan Harker, Dr. John Seward, Lord Goldalming, and Quincy Morris [see Bram Stoker's DRACULA].
The Vampire Lord then mentioned that despite the destruction of his body after that adventure, the power of Chaos kept his "spirit" alive, and his spirit took control of a young wastrel named Adrian Varney, who laid in the coffin as a joke [see the two-part story "The Coffin of Dracula" from CREEPY # 8 & 9]. After reminiscing over how Dracula-Varney's funeral stage coach fell from a cliff in London in the 1890's and impaled the errant soul-clone [the memories of the short-lived soul-clone Dracula-Varney had evidently been passed on to Dracula-Mordante], the Count mentioned that sea-going smugglers located the coffin, and as a lark, the amoral captain of that ship also laid within the coffin [it appears that the enchanted coffin of Dracula-Prime, its mystical wood empowered by either the Star Stone or the magicks of Chaos to create inferior soul-clones by this indirect means, could somehow "compel" dark-minded individuals into laying in the coffin, which they believed to be a flippant whim on their part; as Dracula-Mordante explained, "For any of an evil nature who lie in the coffin are susceptible to my will, become hosts to my spirit!"]. He then recounted that the possessed captain had himself bitten by a vampiress servant of Dracula-Prime, thus enabling him to become a new host body for Dracula [I believe these last memories are false, and I do not think that the enchanted coffin had anything to do with the genesis of Dracula-Mordante…this may be a personally interpreted faux memory that Dracula-Mordante imposed upon himself; see my article on Dracula-Mordante, and WNU Connections below].
As his origin tale drew to a close, Dracula stated, "So I have survived through to the present. So I obtained this host-body you, my companions in Chaos's cult, know as Count Mordante. So I never ceased to serve the greater glory of the mad god…!" [In actuality, I believe that Mordante is the real, original mortal surname of this particular soul-clone.]
His [apocryphal] origin tale finished, Dracula and his fellow cult members had the still unconscious Vampirella chained to a stone altar under a huge, demonic looking symbol hanging from above the stone structure that would be used to summon an aspect of Chaos to the Earth plane, and Dracula explained that it would be centuries before all astrological factors would be ideal for this ritual to be conducted again. Dracula decreed once more that Vampi would be the ideal Bride of Chaos, and once again Lucretia protested on the grounds that as the most devout female follower of Chaos in the world, this honor should go to her, and not an outsider from the cult. Dracula disagreed once again, saying that as the leader of the Cult of Chaos, he had made his final decision: "Vampirella shall be Bride of Chaos! She will bear the child who will return the ancient ways…who shall plunge Earth back to the days before the force of Order held sway!"
Meanwhile, with a combination of money and threats (i.e., a wooden stake held at the stomach), Conrad Van Helsing, who had just arrived in the Carnic Alps near Castle Mordante, convinced a nearby fearful villager to take him across the moor to the castle via row boat. As Dracula retired from the underground chamber while his minions prepared Vampi for the ritual, the Count was about to feast upon Pendragon until the sound of the boat approaching the castle caught his attention through the open window of the illusionist's room. Pleased that he would have the opportunity to deal with the descendant of his "old" foe Abraham Van Helsing [as per Dracula-Prime's retained memories], Dracula-Mordante transformed into bat-form and quickly killed the villager whom Conrad left behind, thus cutting off his transportation away from the castle moors. Using his highly developed psychic abilities, the blind vampire hunter snuck into Castle Mordante through a storm drain.
In the meantime, the lengthy ritual had begun, and the now conscious Vampirella cringed in terror as she saw the huge demonic symbol suspended over the stone altar become incandescent.
Upon entering the castle, Conrad's psychic abilities confirmed the presence of Dracula [i.e., a Dracula soul-clone] within the environs, but the edifice was so huge, he was unable to locate the Vampire Lord throughout the day, as dusk comes quickly in the alps. When night fell again, Conrad noticed that the rest of the Cult of Chaos were all sequestered in their rooms, and chanting words in a language he did not understand. Finally locating the coffin where Dracula lay at rest, Conrad quickly hammered a wooden stake into the vampire's heart. Though this would ordinarily prove fatal for the Lord of the Undead, to the aged vampire hunter's astonishment, Dracula rose from his coffin and pulled the stake out of his chest, with no sign of any discomfort, and no blood flowing out of the gaping hole. A sneering Dracula explained to his mortal enemy that in providing Chaos with the ideal bride, he was rewarded with a new increase in his powers…immunity to the stake, and he allowed Conrad to plunge the sharpened stick into his chest so that he could startle him in just this fashion. Dracula admitted to the inquiring Conrad that he planned this whole venture, realizing that Conrad would follow Vampi here: "As the girl followed Pendragon, so I knew you would follow her! In choosing Vampirella to be the great god's bride I served myself as well as Chaos! I attain my greatest power ever and extinguish the line of my most hated enemy!"
But before Dracula could slay Conrad, he himself was startled when Vampirella suddenly appeared and pounced upon him. As they grappled, an incredulous Dracula was informed that Lucretia freed Vampirella so that she could take her place on the stone altar as the Bride of Chaos, an honor that she believed no one else deserved more than herself. Throwing Vampi from him, Dracula decreed that Lucretia must be stopped, but the slinky adventuress told him that he would have to get through her first, a feat that Dracula informed her would be easy for one whose strength and experience were superior to her own.
Meanwhile, in the underground chamber, Lucretia lay on the altar in rapt anticipation of the appearance of the aspect of Chaos to claim her as his bride, something she had been hoping to come to pass for a very long time now. However, when the shadowy entity appeared to take her, it turned out that the determined woman's physical form, not being of vampiric origin, could not withstand absorbing the essence of Chaos, and she screamed in agony as her physical body quickly disintegrated into a husk of rotted flesh.
Just as Dracula and Vampi were about to battle, Chaos's gift to the Vampire Lord was withdrawn, and the gaping hole in his chest made by Conrad's stake began spewing a fountain of blood, as the wound now became fatal. With this swift realization that his machinations were thwarted, Dracula-Mordante then quickly disintegrated into a heap of crumbled bones on the castle floor. Conrad told Vampi that they must promptly leave the castle, as the fury of Chaos would now be taken out on the entire Cult as a result of their abject failure to provide him with a suitable bride.
Quickly retrieving Pendragon, who was now freed from Dracula's control with the latter's demise, Vampi grabbed her two allies and leapt from the window of the illusionist's room into the waters below. Almost immediately afterwards, the full rage of Chaos came down upon Castle Mordante, as the entire huge structure was destroyed, killing all of the Companions of Chaos in the process.
In this tale's epilogue, a straggly human corpse scavenger was found looking around the ruins of Castle Mordante, where he located the coffin. Opening it in order to pilfer whatever corpse may be laying within, he found the coffin empty…but leered to himself at the thought of showing "his contempt for death and the dead" by laying in the coffin as a jest.
Comments: This tale featured the first appearance of Dracula-Mordante, and the beginning of his long adversarial role with Vampirella. He appeared next in the Vampi story in issue #18, in a three-part story arc, and on one other occasion immediately after that, and their enmity would be revived two decades later, in "The Dracula War" story arc from Harris's VAMPIRELLA MONTHLY #1-4 (now collected in THE DRACULA WAR TPB), and the story "Vampirella vs. Dracula" that appeared in VAMPIRELLA/DRACULA: THE CENTENNIAL, both published by Harris Comics during the 1990's and indexed below. This tale was a good early scripting effort from Archie Goodwin, much better than his tepid "Coffin of Dracula" two-parter from CREEPY # 8-9, and the art work of Jose Gonzalez was quite fine.
It should be noted that the Nether-Realm appears next, outside of flashback, in the Vampi story "Slitherers of the Sand" in VAMPIRELLA #21.
In the 1990's it was revealed that Lucretia and Chaos did indeed "conceive" a child in this story despite the former's grim fate, and this child became the deadly Mistress Nyx, one of Vampi's most lethal foes, who first appeared in Harris's VENGEANCE OF VAMPIRELLA #23. She later teams with another of Vampi's enemies from the '90's, Haemorrhage, and also later gains access to the dimension of Draculon, where she unleashes hordes of vampires upon the Earth. Nyx even temporarily succeeds in destroying Vampi and Adam Van Helsing at one point. She was born in the ruins of Castle Mordante.
This story, though the first appearance of Dracula-Mordante in a Warren comic, was not the first appearance of the Cult of Chaos. One of the Cults first battled Vampi in VAMPIRELLA #8, the first Vampi story that is definitively considered to be "in continuity" (and the first scribed by Archie Goodwin). The Vampi stories penned by Forrest J. Ackerman in Warren's VAMPIRELLA #1 & 2 depict rather silly events that are mostly false memory implants. The appearance of Vampi in the Evily story in VAMPIRELLA #2 is also rather problematic, but I'll leave that one to future creative mythographers and Vampi experts to hash out.
WNU Connections: As noted above, this story introduced what I believe to be a new Dracula soul-clone, Dracula-Mordante. Chuck Loridans from the MONSTAAH crew first conceived of the idea of soul-clones created from Dracula-Prime's Star Stone ring to explain the myriad versions of Dracula seen in the print, comic book, silver screen, small screen, and video game mediums, and to unify most of them under a single cohesive timeline (see his "Children of the Night" timeline on the MONSTAAH home page for a detailed description of the creation of these soul-clones, as well as for the origin of Dracula's Star Stone ring). As I speculated in my entries for "The Coffin of Dracula" two-part story, I believe that either Dracula-Prime used the mystical wood and soil of his Transylvanian homeland to hold an enchantment from the Star Stone, or Dracula-Mordante himself utilized the power of Chaos by invoking the various spells in the demonic tome known as the Crimson Chronicles that would enable the vessel to compel certain men of an evil disposition to lay in that coffin upon opening it if Dracula was then involuntarily "indisposed," with their psyche believing that this compulsion was all in jest. Upon laying within the coffin, the memories and consciousness of Dracula were transmitted into the psyche of the man in question, dominating their original persona in the process. However, due to the indirect means of creating a soul-clone by the coffin (as opposed to the direct means of vamping the person and then finishing the creation with the Star Stone ring), this new soul-clone would initially lack most of Dracula's powers outside of minor mesmerism and rudimentary weather control. In order to gain the bulk of Dracula's vampiric power, he would need to be bitten by another vampire. Since this ersatz soul-clone possessed Dracula's consciousness 'super-imposed' over his own, he would be able to command any vampiric minion of Dracula-Prime to do so. Within moments after the vampiric enzymes entered his bloodstream, he would then gain a large portion of Dracula-Prime's powers, and basically become a full-fledged soul-clone, though he would be inferior inasmuch as he would not possess the Star Stone ring and its requisite attributes. Following the late 19th century, it appears that the coffin ended up in the possession of Dracula-Mordante, assuming it was ever in the possession of Dracula-Prime, and if it was ever possessed by the latter, he may have abandoned it due to its inefficient means of creating soul-clones in comparison to the Star Stone ring. Nevertheless, no real evidence was presented in the Warren chronicles (or the later Harris chronicles) to suggest that Dracula-Prime ever had possession of the coffin, but it's still possible that he once did.
I do not believe that the coffin had anything to do with the creation of Dracula-Mordante, despite his stated memories that it did (which I believe to be apocryphal), even though he does seem to have knowledge of the soul-clones created through the coffin, including Dracula-Varney (memories of the soul-clones created via the coffin may have been automatically "passed on" to all of the soul-clones created more directly by the Star Stone ring), and it's also quite possible that either Dracula-Prime or Dracula-Mordante intended the coffin merely for the purpose of expediency, and he may never have intended any of the soul-clones created in that manner to be a long-term affair. This may also have had something to do with the fact that Dracula-Mordante seems to have gained possession of the coffin himself at some point in the 20th century, possibly with the assistance of Chaos, assuming that Mordante didn't actually possess it from the onset.
As it was revealed in all of his subsequent appearances, Dracula-Mordante was depicted as having a noble persona that was constantly at odds with his "evil" vampiric nature. This strongly implies that he could not have fallen victim to the coffin's mystical lure in the first place. Also, he retained his original Count Mordante appearance when he was revived after this tale (i.e., a middle-aged gentleman with gray hair at the temples), and Dracula-Varney continued to resemble Adrian Varney upon becoming an ersatz soul-clone via the coffin's enchantment. This is yet more evidence that Dracula-Mordante was directly transformed into a full-fledged soul-clone by the power of the Star Stone. I believe that Dracula-Prime coveted Mordante as a soul-clone due to the latter's wealth and position in his remote region of Europe, and hoped that he could form a vampiric power base over there through this soul-clone. However, Mordante was a noble man, and the soul-clone process was most successful on those individuals who were evil or amoral in character before being transformed. Though Mordante was a noble man, he was not particularly strong-willed, so although remnants of his original personality "leaked" into the super-imposed memories and personality of Dracula-Prime, he was not fully able to resist his vampiric bloodlust or the ambitions of Dracula-Prime that were now a part of his psyche. The later time travel aspects of Mordante's back story complicate matters greatly, as does his divergent connection to Dracula-Mathias from the 'Castlevania' video game series, and I do not purport to have all of the answers at this writing, but I conjecture that Dracula-Prime transformed Count Mordante into a soul-clone sometime in the mid-19th century. This may be how he later acquired the memories of Dracula-Varney, when they were "passed on" to him as were all of the interim soul-clones created by the coffin. Hence, I do not think that the corpse scavenger who discovered the coffin in the epilogue of this story became Dracula-Mordante, as implied here and suggested in a later story, but rather he may have become an interim soul-clone that simply revived Dracula-Mordante by transferring his essence into him, thus killing the human and resurrecting Drac-Mordante. The constant conflict between Dracula-Mordante's noble side and his super-imposed Dracula-Prime persona, along with his strong desire for romantic and sexual companionship, were very unlike that of Dracula-Prime, and I contend that this is further evidence that the Warren and Harris stories featuring Dracula (barring the Satanna story from EERIE #50) do not depict Dracula-Prime, but rather a heretofore undiscovered soul-clone (I will go into more detail about this in my article on the character, and my timeline elsewhere in this Index).
At some point shortly after Mordante's transformation into a soul-clone, he came to the attention of the "mad god" Chaos, who, I speculate, may have been an Elder God, a.k.a., one of the Cthulhu Mythos, who had wedded himself to the actual universal force of Chaos, thus perceiving himself as being synonymous with that force. Like most other members of the Lovecraftian dark entities of often tremendous powers, Chaos wished to find his way back into the Earth dimension to re-establish control over that reality, but the "closest" he could ever get on his own was the interdimensional void simply referred to as the "Nether-Realm" by Dracula-Mordante. As such, this Elder God was an avowed nemesis of the rival universal force of Order, and any agent thereof (such as the Conjuress, who debuted soon after this as a major part of Dracula-Mordante's life).
However, the 'Castlevania' video game series offers strong implications that Chaos was not trapped in that nether-void, but this was simply as "close" as he could get to the Earth dimension, and this entity, like many other Elder Gods, could access the Dreamlands (described in detail in THE DARK TOWER series of novels by Stephen King, but depicted in many other places, and where I think Uncle Creepy and Cousin Eerie originate, as well as the WNU versions of Cain and Abel, the House of Mystery and the House of Secrets, and the Tower of Shadows; see my article on Horror Hosts for much more detailed info on this). The construct of Castlevania, much like the trans-dimensional constructs such as the House of Mystery, could manifest in different locales in different time periods, depending upon various factors connected to that time and place, but the purpose of Dracula-Mordante's later control of the Castlevania construct, under the auspices of the forces of Chaos, was one of conquest, not to teach abject morality lessons to various human beings and other sentient entities, as was the House of Mystery and the House of Secrets, with Cain and Abel as respective curators, or Castle Creepy, the trans-dimensional home of Uncle Creepy, nor was it a repository for human nightmares, as was the Tower of Shadows, sometimes inhabited by the strange grave-robbing criminal known as Digger.
During his appearances in the Harris Comics Vampi tales in the 1990's, Dracula-Mordante first gained control over the other-dimensional realm of Draculon, which had actually been named after the Dracula legend, not the other way around, as implied by Mordante's origin tale in this story (see my synopsis above). From Draculon, he acquired enough power to later access the Dreamlands, where Chaos gave him control over the Castlevania construct as a manifestation of the forces of Chaos itself. I believe that Dracula-Mordante didn't take control of Castlevania until sometime later in the 21st century, which he first used to acquire various allies and minions from many dimensions across time and space, and then manifested it sometime in the 11th century, prior to the human birth of Vlad Dracula, where he hoped to begin the "Dracula" legend himself. This was where he ended up creating a divergent counterpart of himself, who was distinguished as Dracula-Mathias based upon the research of fellow creative mythographer and "CV" expert Mike Ongsingco. Dracula-Mordante and Dracula-Mathias, despite being divergent counterparts of each other, nevertheless frequented the same timeline, though they were different from each other in many ways, as Mordante represented this soul-clone "prior" to gaining control of the Castlevania construct, regardless of what time period he happened to be active in at any given time, and Mathias represented the divergent version of this soul-clone "after" taking possession of the construct of Chaos, even though his history officially begins (when the divergence actually occurs) in the early 11th century. I understand that this is complicated, and I try to make my conjectures as simple as I can, but it may not be possible in this case due to the complexities of time travel that both Mordante and Mathias were subjected to (see my capsule Mordante/Mathias timeline towards the end of this Index, before the entry for EERIE #50).
The plan to start the "Dracula" legend two centuries before the birth of the real Vlad Tepes Dracula was thwarted, however, due to the intervention of the Belmont family, whose lineage became the most prominent hereditary family of vampire-hunters in the WNU outside of, perhaps, the Van Helsings. But this is getting way ahead of an already complicated back story, and for much detailed info on the 'Castlevania' story, you have only to peruse Mike Ongsingco's timeline on the MONSTAAH site, which contains all relevant historical details of the lengthy storyline included in the course of that classic video game series.
Upon being recruited by Chaos sometime in the mid-20th century as one of his agents (assuming this didn't occur in the 19th century at some point, which I doubt), I believe that Dracula-Mordante was fully freed from Dracula-Prime's control, and Chaos super-imposed further false memories into his psyche, thus creating a set of memories that were a strange hybrid of a life in the dimension of Draculon that never occurred along with the implanted memories and personality traits of Dracula-Prime (which Chaos evidently could not fully remove, nor fully "overwrite"). These memory implants depicted Draculon not as another dimension inhabited by vampires, but rather as another planet revolving around a binary star system in the WNU many light years from Earth, inhabited by a race of fully biological, winged, and fanged blood-drinking humanoids, and possessing technological marvels that appeared to be culled from pulp magazines of the 1930's and '40's, which Dracula-Mordante may have read. The statement in his origin tale that Dracula was once a hunter and killer of other "Draculonians" is contradicted by later stories where Dracula-Mordante is depicted as having a noble mien that constantly conflicts with his vampiric compulsion to kill for blood, and this suggests that his pre-Dracula days were not spent as a person who ever took a life. It was during the mid-20th century that Dracula-Mordante appears to have become the global leader of the Cult of Chaos, comprised of mostly human mystics, and they also possessed a tome called the Crimson Chronicles, which may have been a somewhat re-written textual version of the Necronomicon. Dracula-Prime was never known to have any connection to such a group, nor would he ever follow any entity other than himself, no matter how powerful that entity may have been. In fact, Dracula-Prime has defied and challenged the likes of Mephisto and even Death hirself, and would never allow himself to be a pawn of any other being's machinations.
It appears that the purpose of this Cult of Chaos was to secure a human "mate" for an aspect of Chaos who would birth a child in the early '70's, during a time period when many demonic entities in the WNU were very active, including Pazuzu (see THE EXORCIST and the film series based upon the novel, particularly the first two films), and many others were taking human minions (e.g., Mephisto, who merged the demon Zarathos with the human stunt cyclist with the stage name Johnny Blaze; see the GHOST RIDER series, begun in MARVEL SPOTLIGHT Vol. 1 #15, from Marvel Comics), or attempting to birth a human/demonic child that would be an adult by the Millennium, during a time where the legendary "Anti-Christ" was fated to take over the world, thus providing tremendous power over the Earth to the sire of this demonically-powered human. Other examples of such children were Andrew Woodhouse (see ROSEMARY'S BABY and the two films based upon the novel), Damian Thorne (see THE OMEN and the film series based upon the book), Daimon Hellstrom (see the Marvel Comic SON OF SATAN, a series which, like GHOST RIDER before it, began in MARVEL SPOTLIGHT Vol. 1, specifically #12), the arch-demon Trigon birthed a female child for this purpose who grew up to became the strange goth teen named Raven (a fictionalized version of her was presented by DC Comics in their TEEN TITANS title of the early 1980's from a WNU context), the girl Satana Hellstrom, twin sister of Daimon Hellstrom (who first appeared in her own story in VAMPIRE TALES #2), the demon-spawned girl Catherine Verney from TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER (poorly adapted into a 1976 Hammer film), and the child born in the story "Anti-Christmas" from CREEPY #68 (reprinted in COMIX INTERNATIONAL #2).
It appears that Chaos was likewise using Dracula-Mordante and the Cult of Chaos to birth his own potential "anti-Christ," something that many demonic entities and their human minions/cults were competing to create for the coming Millennium where the "Anti-Christ" was prophesized to enable his non-human father to take control over the Earth. Eventually, however, Chaos simply attempted to use Dracula-Mordante himself, in his divergent aspect of Dracula-Mathias, while time-traveling in the Castlevania construct to just before the Millennium, as his personal "anti-Christ" to compete with whatever other contenders for that dark title may have been extant at the time (to my knowledge, Damian Thorne was slain well before the coming of the Millennium in the WNU, Daimon Hellstrom had long rejected and heroically opposed his own demonic sire's evil, Andrew Woodhouse meekly wanted no part of his demonic heritage or purpose, Satana Hellstrom never had any interest in following in her demonic father's footsteps, Raven's physical body was destroyed by her former teammates in the "Teen Titans" branch of the Legion of the Strange in the 1980's, and Catherine Verney's soul was "purified" by the heroic actions of the excommunicated priest Father Michael Rayner when she turned 18; whatever became of the demonic child birthed in "Anti-Christmas" from CREEPY #68 has yet to be determined, but he evidently never fulfilled the role of the "Anti-Christ").
Finally, I believe that Dracula-Mordante was also the version of Dracula who sired the dhampir Adam Lucard in the one-shot FRIGHT comic that was published by Atlas/Seaboard Comics in 1976. I would conjecture that Drac-Mordante's appearance in the flashback sequence in FRIGHT #1 chronologically takes place in the late 1950's, and Adam Lucard may have represented an early attempt by this now rogue soul-clone to secure a "son" of Chaos, a plan that was since apparently abandoned.
Some of the connections between Warren's Dracula-Mordante and Konami's Dracula-Mathias are evident in this story, thus underscoring my conjecture that they may be divergent counterparts of the same soul-clone interacting with the same timeline (i.e., the "consensus" WNU). I have since consulted with Mike Ongsingco on these possibilities, particularly regarding the similarities between the entity Chaos that Dracula was serving in both the Warren and "CV" series, the similarity in name between the Crimson Stone from "CV" and the Crimson Chronicles in the Warren/Harris series, and a human cult serving Dracula in both series. Other connections appear later, but I will deal with them in each entry as they come up.
This is what Mike O had to say regarding Chaos in a public message correspondence with me after reading the first draft of this Index:
The god Chaos is very intriguing! Why? I mention in my Castlevania chron that in the year 2035 (CV: Aria of Sorrow), a high school teen named Soma Cruz was sucked into the Demon Castle, which in turn was trapped in a solar eclipse. This was so because during the secret but massive 1999 Demon Castle War, Japanese priests were able to seal Castlevania within an eclipse, ending its regeneration cycle. But they sealed it only after the Count was defeated by the then 19-year old Julius Belmont.Near the end of "Aria of Sorrow," Soma Cruz discovers that he is actually Dracula- Mathias' reincarnation. He is slowly falling to the Count's chaotic spirit, and if that spirit wins, Soma will fully become Dracula- Mathias. Soma was able to save his own soul and destroy Castlevania by accessing a gateway to a Chaotic Realm that only he, as Dracula reincarnate, could open.
At the end of that Chaotic Realm, his final battle was with the giant entity Chaos itself! Soma could actually have been fighting the god [mentioned in the Warren/Harris chronicles]...and won!
Regarding the Cult of Chaos that appeared in this story, Mike had this to say:
I strongly believe the Cult of Chaos, if they're long lived, played a role in the Castlevania saga at one point! In 1792, a cult led by the dark priest Shaft resurrected Dracula-Mathias by sacrificing a woman over his coffin. This could actually have been the Cult of Chaos, and this would make sense since Dracula-Mathias is connected to Chaos himself. Then in 1797, Shaft was responsible for temporarily turning Richter Belmont to evil and bringing about the Count's resurrection. Alucard killed him here.
As for the Crimson Chronicles, it not only bears a resemblance in purpose to the infamous Necronomicon, a cornerstone of the WNU's foundation, but also to the mysterious Crimson Stone utilized by minions of Chaos, and which was an important cornerstone to the 'Castlevania' saga. Along with it was the Ebony Stone, utilized by minions of Death, and which suggest an alliance between Death itself and Chaos, as well as with all of the latter's minions (which would explain why avatars of Death were allies of Dracula-Mathias, but why Death and hir human minions were adversaries of Dracula-Prime, as depicted in a story arc from Marvel's four-color TOMB OF DRACULA series).
This is a quote from Mike Ongsingco's 'Castlevania' timeline explaining the origin of these two powerful mystic stones: "The Crimson Stone and the Ebony Stone are accidentally created during efforts to create the Philosopher's Stone. The Crimson Stone turns the souls of vampires into power for its master (but will turn the owner into a vampire himself). The Ebony Stone contains the vile spirit of the Grim Reaper and gives the power of eternal darkness, of Chaos, to the owner. This stone, however, chooses its master. When combined, these two stones will give their owner eternal life."
Is it possible that there is a direct connection between the Crimson Stone and the Crimson Chronicles? I think the available evidence, though incomplete, certainly points in that direction.
Time Frame: I believe this story took place early in the year this mag was published, 1972.
"Dracula Still Lives"
Story: T. Casey Brennan
Art: Jose Gonzalez
A dreary and melancholy Dr. Conrad Van Helsing finally returns to his home at the Van Helsing family mansion following his adventure in the island nation of Cote De Soleil [see the Vampi stories in VAMPIRELLA #'s 15, 17] , with one overriding thought on his mind…hatred for Vampirella. Conrad's psychic sixth sense informed him that Vampi had given into her vampiric bloodlust and bitten his son, Adam, who had trusted her with his life [see the Vampi story in VAMPIRELLA #17]. Believing that his son was now a vampire himself, the distraught Conrad enters the manse with a wooden stake and mallet in hand, ready to end what he believes to be his son's vampiric existence. Upon entering his son's bedroom, where Adam was lying asleep, Conrad's enhanced hearing detects the young man's breathing and heartbeat, and the beleaguered vampire hunter quickly moves to end what he believes to be his son's undead torment. However, Vampirella quickly appears behind the aged adventurer and physically prevents him from driving the stake into Adam's chest.
Meanwhile, at the ruins of Castle Mordante in the Carnic Alps [this time referred to as "the Transylvanian Alps"], Dracula-Mordante rises among the animate once more [upon re-capping the events in the Vampi story "…And Be A Bride of Chaos" from VAMPIRELLA #16, he states that it was the corpse-scavenging derelict's body he now inhabits, mystically transformed by the power of Chaos into a duplicate of Mordante's original form; as I noted in the synopsis and WNU Connections section of my entry for VAMPIRELLA #16, I believe this to be inaccurate…rather, I think the derelict was indeed temporarily taken over as a new interim, albeit fully mortal, soul-clone of Dracula, and he revived Dracula-Mordante by transferring his own life force into the dusty and skeletal remains of the latter, which caused the derelict's body to disintegrate…Dracula-Mordante also states that the possessed derelict telepathically summoned vampire bats to bite him so as to fully transform him into a vampiric state, an assertion that seems rather ridiculous…I believe that this, along with the fact that Dracula-Mordante is seen rising to his feet in the rubble of Castle Mordante when he first appears in this story, provides evidence in favor of my above speculation; see Comments below].
Now rising fully intact amidst what was left of Castle Mordante, Dracula vows vengeance upon Vampirella for thwarting his plans to provide a bride for Chaos, and destroying the human Cult of Chaos that he led. Locating the copy of the Crimson Chronicles that survived the destruction of the castle [obviously due to the tome's mystical resilience], the Vampire Lord resolves to call upon certain spells of Chaos to assist him in exacting revenge upon Vampi.
Just as he was about to proceed, however, he was suddenly interrupted by the appearance of the powerful sorceress that he allegedly had a long and close history with…the Conjuress [she refers to herself repeatedly as a goddess somehow indigenous to the dimension of Draculon, but I believe all the evidence points to her being a powerful human mystic long ago recruited as a benevolent agent of the forces of Order, who has formed a close personal relationship with Dracula-Mordante in order to try and bring about the triumphant ascendance of the noble persona of Count Mordante, which is trapped beneath the evil persona of Dracula-Prime and the further evil implanted into his soul by Chaos; see Comments below].
Immediately upon the Conjuress's appearance, Dracula begins feeling a painful agony that she explains is the guilt of his inherently noble personality coming forth and trying to deal with all of the evil and death he has wrought upon so many innocents over the "centuries" as a result of becoming Dracula and an agent of Chaos [if the Conjuress is aware that Mordante is actually a soul-clone, she feels no need to reveal this to him, as she seems to believe that his status as an agent of Chaos is her overriding concern, and his being subject to a previous possession by the consciousness of Dracula-Prime appears, at best, a secondary concern to her that is not relevant to the apotheosis she hopes to initiate in the once benevolent and caring Count]. As Dracula-Mordante explains to the Conjuress [providing further evidence that this once-noble personage is not Dracula-Prime]: "How strange! After so many centuries of evil, I look into your face just once and…all that I was returns to me! My sense of justice, the once noble ideals…my perception of beauty…can you understand the anguish I feel then? Knowing these things are lost to me forever? Realizing the horror of what I have done-now, when it is too late? Oh, Conjuress, why did you not come sooner?" [Since Vlad Dracula was never a benevolent individual with a sense of justice or nobility, despite his obvious courage and unmatched determination against the Turks and many other adversaries, he seemed to have no aesthetic appreciation for the beauty of a woman, and because he very rarely, if ever, suffered any guilt over the evil he wrought to humankind due to his feelings of superiority to all others, I again contend that this provides further evidence that the Dracula of the Warren and Harris chronicles is not Dracula-Prime].
In response to Dracula's above query, the Conjuress replied that the universe is vast, and she "traveled to its outermost edge," which prevented her from catching up with him sooner [this is, in my opinion, doublespeak on her part to cover the fact that she was likely away on other, unrelated missions for Order, in many different locales across the multiverse].
Attempting to bring Mordante's original noble personality permanently to the fore, something her very presence alone appears to do temporarily, the Conjuress tells the Vampire Lord that she will assist him on his long, difficult road to absolution for his past evil, if he is willing to allow her to help him help himself down this path. As Dracula, obviously very smitten with the beautiful "goddess," tells her verbatim: "Yes, I accept whatever ordeals I must face, for your sake, and yours alone! For with you at my side, hell itself would become paradise, and its sulfhurous [sic] flames lapping at my flesh would be as the sunshine on a summer's morning! I am ready! Let the journey begin!" [Hmmm…since when would Dracula-Prime ever wax the poetic like this?]. The Conjuress then informs Dracula that he must take the Path of Atonement for the sake of his own soul, not for her, but she still decrees that his heart is "ready" for the long journey, and she bids that the time to start down that path is now.
Using her great sorcerous power, the Conjuress transports both herself and Dracula to the other-dimensional pocket universe known as the Realm of Atonement, where Dracula's journey to absolution will begin.
Simultaneously, at the Van Helsing mansion, the now awakened Adam Van Helsing informs his father that not only is he okay, but still fully human, not a vampire, and that he arrived here just after battling the forces of Chaos alongside Vampirella in the Florida Everglades [see the story "Beware, Dreamers" in VAMPIRELLA #17; it would appear that the Florida Everglades of the WNU, like that of the Marvel Universe (MU), is a dimensional nexus to other realities where much mystical forces can be brought to bear from a powerful multiversal focal point, but for unknown reasons, Vampi and Adam didn't encounter the WNU counterpart of the Man-Thing (who actually made a cameo appearance in the story "Let's Hear It For Homo Sapiens" in EERIE #92, thus providing further evidence that the famous muck monster does indeed have a counterpart in the WNU)]. Conrad was extremely distressed over what he almost did, and also perplexed, as he noted that his sixth sense informed him that Adam had been bitten and turned into a vampire by Vampi, and his formidable psychic faculties had never been wrong before. The guilt-ridden Conrad then stated that the mere fact that his enhanced hearing detected a heartbeat and breathing in his son should have made it clear to him that he hadn't been vamped, as true supernatural vampires do not have a heartbeat, nor do they breathe, in their catatonic trance-like state during the daylight hours. Adam tried to assuage his father by telling him that it was simply a mistake due to his anxiety, but the remorseful Conrad exclaimed that this mistake almost caused him to murder his own son, and he opined that if his once all-reliable sixth sense was beginning to fail him now, perhaps he had become too old to battle the undead any longer. However, standing beside them wracked with guilt herself, Vampi informed Conrad that she had to tell him something…to which Adam hastily pulled her aside in another room before she could say a single word. Speaking to her lover and ally in private, Vampi reminded him that his father's sixth sense had not failed him, for when the two of them were trapped within the dream-like world in the EverGlades as they battled the forces of Chaos [again, see "Beware, Dreamers" in VAMPIRELLA #17], she did indeed give into her bloodlust and bite Adam, resulting in his suffering the illusion of being inflicted with vampirism, but since it only occurred in that dream-like realm, the "damage" was undone upon their return. Adam protested, saying that she dare not tell his father what occurred, because his animosity and mistrust of Vampi would then be renewed, and he would again endeavor to keep the two of them apart.
Little were they aware that in the next room, Conrad's enhanced hearing, which Adam failed to take into account, picked up the entire conversation. He noted to himself that despite the fact that the damage was somehow undone, Vampi nevertheless did indeed attack and bite Adam, and the aged vampire killer concluded that despite her "good intentions," she remained every bit as dangerous as he initially believed.
Suddenly, Conrad's contemplations were interrupted by a sharp psychic "pain" resonating deep within his psyche. As Vampi and Adam ran into the room upon hearing Conrad scream, the aged vampire hunter told them that his sixth sense had made it known to him that Dracula-Mordante had just been resurrected. When Vampi pointed out that he had just been killed months ago, Conrad replied that his sixth sense was never wrong (which Adam correctly deduced to be a comment alluding that Conrad was now aware that Vampi did indeed attack the young man for his blood in the dream-realm). When Vampi asked how they should proceed against Dracula, Conrad procured an occult item that he had in his possession, the Mirror of Merlin. Resembling a human-sized antique mirror, it could be used as a highly efficient scrying tool, so that in the hands of a psychic or mystic, even those who lacked those powers or abilities themselves could view the actions of individuals of concern to them no matter where they were located, including into other dimensions [the existence of such an occult item must be a very uncomforting thought to those who know of it whenever they happen to be in the shower or using the toilet]. Removing the large cloth covering the mirror, the three adventurers saw an image of Dracula and the Conjuress standing within the Realm of Atonement (but did not understand exactly where they were, or what they were doing there, of course). Conrad's sixth sense discerned that Dracula was now in an other-dimensional realm, so they couldn't reach him by simple travel, but the Mirror of Merlin could also be used as a teleportation device [where does Conrad get his hands on all of these fantastic mystical items?]. Conrad then stated that Vampi must enter the mirror and be transported to that other dimension to finish off the Vampire Lord once and for all. Adam insisted he go instead, or at least go with her, but Vampi exclaimed, "No! I'm sorry, Adam! We don't know what that other world beyond the mirror is like! Someone lacking superhuman powers might be only a hindrance!" Ultimately persuaded by his lover's logic (albeit barely), Adam agreed to temporarily stay behind, as Vampi, determined not to let her paramour take a risk that she believes should be incurred by her alone, entered the mirror to access the Realm of Atonement. Adam expresses concern when the mirror's image then clouds over, and Conrad points out that the mirror is ancient, and its use as a teleportation device seriously drains its mystical energies for the time being.
Meanwhile, in the Realm of Atonement, the Conjuress presents the very modest looking Altar of Repentance to Dracula [it looks like a simple wooden altar that any amateur carpenter can build in a day, with steps leading up to it on two sides, and it's surrounded by four tall candelabra with three lit candles in each to provide lighting; the entire Realm of Atonement appears to be uninhabited, and resembles the interior of a large stone cavern]. The sorceress of Order then bids Dracula to make the choice of laying on the altar, after which he will then enter a trance-like state where he will be forced to re-live, and experience the emotions of, the many people whom he has victimized throughout the "centuries" [in other words, he will have to re-experience not only the deaths of those people whom he actually killed himself, but also the numerous people killed by Dracula-Prime throughout the centuries, via the memory implants of the latter that he possesses; pretty harsh, and frankly, it wasn't very kind of the Conjuress to continue to ignore the fact that Mordante was not the "real" Vlad Dracula, and hence shouldn't have been held culpable for the latter's atrocities, but I digress]. Determined to expunge the evil from his soul, Dracula-Mordante lays upon the Altar of Repentance, and the Conjuress uses her magick to transport herself away, telling Dracula that he must do this alone, but she will continue to watch him from afar [harsh, indeed!]. After laying on the altar and entering the trance state, Dracula screams in horror as he begins to re-experience the many lives he has taken [and the many lives taken by Dracula-Prime, of course!] from the perspective of the victims, as he takes the first very difficult step to extricate the evil of Dracula-Prime and Chaos from his mind and soul.
Soon after this, Vampirella arrives, and finds Dracula laying upon the altar in a vulnerable trance-like state, deliriously speaking to himself periodically as the images flash through his psyche. As Vampi approached him, Dracula, barely conscious and in extreme delirium, mistakes her for the Conjuress having returned. As Dracula continues to "talk in his sleep," Vampi sees no harm in listening to what she considers to be his dying words before she would move in and kill him.
In his delirious verbalizing, Dracula-Mordante begins to recount more of his life long ago on the "planet" Draculon [obviously more bogus memory implants by Chaos, something that Vampirella, an avowed nemesis of Chaos, was herself alleged to have been subjected to regarding her previous "life" on Draculon during her various series by Harris Comics in the 1990's-2000's; see Comments and WNU Connections below…in fact, it should be duly noted here that the particular "memories" of Draculon recounted below are not only even sillier than the ones recounted in the Vampi story in VAMPIRELLA #16, but they also contradict them at some points…these new "recollections" are seemingly designed to be more in concert with Dracula-Mordante's establishment in this story as a noble being struggling against the evil in his soul, something not previously intended by Goodwin when he scribed the first appearance of Dracula-Mordante, and are further evidence that Dracula-Mordante, like Vampi herself, was subjected to conflicting sets of memory implants by the forces of Chaos].
As his delirious narration begins, Dracula "recalls" how many millennia ago on the world of Draculon, he peacefully drank from the streams of blood that flowed on his homeworld, just as all "Draculonians" did, and he was a devout student at one of that world's great universities, apparently studying stellar phenomena. One day, while studying charts on Draculon and its twin suns that he had apparently made himself, the "future" Dracula realized that the two stars were exponentially drying up the life-sustaining rivers of blood on Draculon, and if this continued, all life there would be forfeit [in this bogus flashback sequence, he actually exclaimed to himself, "Great Galaxies!" (I kid you not!) Now you know that these memory implants were clearly designed to emphasize the then human cultural idiosyncrasies about what advanced humanoids on an alien planet would be like, with the assumption that all would have a cultural fixation on outer space that would carry-over into their linguistic colloquialisms; despite the alleged advanced science of Draculon, the table he is sitting at clearly resembles an old-fashioned slab of Earth design, and he even has a small and simple container with writing utensils in it! No equivalent of a computer monitor at all! This clearly implies that these memory implants were "built" from Count Mordante's own memories of items of an Earthly design that he was familiar with, and the entire series of conflicting "Draculon" scenarios implanted within his psyche reflected his own understanding and personal conceits regarding what an advanced technological civilization would look like, which was highly anachro- and terracentric]. Taking his findings to the High Council of Draculon [*groan*], the "future" Dracula pleaded with the council that they needed to conserve their natural resources, or all life on their world was doomed, but the council members predictably scoffed at the young man's concerns [I detect echoes of 1970's ecological concerns implicit in a somewhat veiled manner here, as well as allusions to a certain scientist named Jor-El from another advanced humanoid-inhabited world called Krypton].
Resolving to do something about the problem himself, the young man decided to turn to the "old ways" for a resolution to Draculon's plight…magick [which he generically referred to as "witchcraft," a common error made by many in the Western cultures of Earth, which is equivalent to someone referring to all styles of the martial arts as "karate" or "kung fu"]. Drawing the mystical symbol of the pentagram on the ground, and surrounding himself with five lit candles at each point of the star to represent the five elements of antiquity [yet another sign that these were not true memories of an alien civilization, but rather memory implants culled from Mordante's own knowledge of terran systems of magickal practice], he made an effort to call upon a legendary benevolent goddess of an alleged Draculonian faith system known as the Conjuress, whom he did indeed succeed in summoning to physical manifestation in his presence [and are we to believe that a young man who studied science can gain such incredible results from his apparent first effort at a magickal conjuring, considering how difficult and demanding it is to master the techniques of magick, even in a reality with "relaxed" magickal laws such as the WNU? More evidence still that these memory implants are false, and were psychically constructed by Chaos out of Mordante's own subconscious conceptual conceits]. Upon making his request to the Conjuress, she finds his stated wish to be honorable, and she agrees to help him. Upon studying his stellar maps, she concludes that with the "proper application of magic[k]," he can indeed save Draculon. She then points out that such magickal efforts will take years, and since she has other missions to undertake [at "the outermost edge of the universe," of course], she says that she will teach him the magick, and he will utilize it to save his homeworld himself. After an apparently hasty lesson in magick [again, more evidence that these memories are bogus], the Conjuress bids the young man adieu, and leaves for parts unknown. She was evidently unaware that the young man was predictably in love with her, and he was emotionally devastated that she, as a "goddess," would not be inclined to return that love to him [this appears to have been borne out of the natural effect that the Conjuress always appears to have had on Dracula-Mordante simply by being in his presence, in concert with the deep passion for love and affection that his original human persona always seems to have possessed].
As the delirium induced narration continued, the "future" Dracula revealed that he was unable to conduct the ritual that the Conjuress taught him properly, because his emotional distress and extreme bitterness over the unrequited love he felt for the "goddess" interfered with his emotional status. As a result, instead of the spell being conducted correctly, the heart-broken young man instead inadvertently attracted the attention of the "mad god" Chaos, who manipulated his extreme emotional vulnerability by telling him that not only did the Conjuress feel nothing for him, but his fellow Draculonians also scorned him, and as such, his devotion to them was "pathetic." "Let all of Drakulon die-for…if you serve me, you shall live on!" was the final pronouncement of Chaos [according to this set of memory implants].
Then, due to his deep level of despair, Dracula gave in to Chaos and began killing fellow "Draculonians" in the name of the "mad god." This explanation was then combined with the origin tale he spoke of before, where he was executed for those murders, and was then "renewed" by Chaos and sent to Earth [here, he is obviously conflating the two separate sets of memory implants concerning his previous "life" on Draculon, possibly due to his subconscious trying to make as much sense of these conflicting memory implants as it can].
He then mentions aloud how he desperately wants to mend his evil ways to win the respect of the Conjuress, and Vampi realizes that Dracula obviously mistakes her for the woman that she and the Van Helsings saw standing beside the Vampire Lord in the Mirror of Merlin. Despite her sympathy with the story she just heard, Vampi is determined to go through with her goal of killing Dracula once and for all, and she elects to take advantage of his vulnerability by draining his blood from his body when he was lying there barely conscious and helpless [since when can one vampire feed upon another vampire in that manner, despite what the author here would lead us to believe? Vampiric blood is saturated with ichor, which will likely make it unsuitable for vampiric consumption; my conjecture on this matter is that perhaps Vampi intended to sink her fangs into his jugular vein not to consume his blood, but just to kill him by causing him to bleed out].
Meanwhile, at the Van Helsing manse, Adam was becoming very anxious for Vampi's return, and he resolved to follow her through the mirror if she did not return within several minutes. Conrad then complained of feeling faint, and asked his son to fetch him a glass of water from the kitchen. As Adam left the room to do so, Conrad picked up a candelabra on his mantle, and wanted to shatter the mirror to trap Vampi in the other-dimensional realm forever, as he believed that if she reverted to type again, his son and every human on Earth could be her victims. However, just as he was holding the candelabra above the mirror, ready to shatter it, he discovered that he couldn't bring himself to do it, not after getting to know Vampirella personally. At that moment, Adam returned to the room, and seeing his father holding the candelabra over the mirror, yet not realizing that Conrad had just changed his mind, the young man rushed forth to stop his father. As a result, the two men stumbled into the mirror, and it fell and shattered, thus barring Vampi's return to the Earth dimension after all.
Just as she was about to kill Dracula, Vampi was suddenly hit with a psychic wave that made her realize that the mirror was destroyed, and she now knew that she was trapped in that other-dimensional realm. Despite her extreme disconcertment, she was still determined to at least carry out her mission to kill Dracula, and as she was about to rip his jugular with her fangs, Dracula, still thinking the Conjuress was there, reached out and gently took her hand. With that surprisingly tender move on Dracula's part, Vampi realized that she could not bring herself to kill him, musing to herself, "He is evil incarnate, but is he truly more evil than I? I too feel the bloodlust which courses through his veins! I too have betrayed my own soul for he sake of that bloodlust-how can I ever forget what I did to Adam, even though it was undone?!…perhaps Dracula deserves to die…but I am unworthy to kill him!"
Just as Vampi turned away from the still insensate Vampire Lord, to find whatever destiny awaited her amidst the caverns of the dimension she was stranded in, the Conjuress suddenly appeared before her. The sorceress explained to her that the she-vampire had also passed a test, and was now free to go. Vampi then retorted that though she was aware that this reality was a dimension where sentient beings came to atone for their sins, her arrival there was a complete coincidence, with the intent to kill Dracula. The Conjuress then informed Vampi that in the full schema of the universe, nothing happens entirely by random chance, and that she was fated to have arrived in this reality when she did, and all along, she was being tested by the hands of Fate. As for the test she passed, the Conjuress explicated, "You have learned well, Vampirella! You have learned to subdue the Drakulonian instinct to solve every problem by killing! You have learned a quality of mercy-even to your enemies-that you did not know before!" Though Vampi admitted that she was close to killing Dracula, the Conjuress said that she would have stopped the she-vampire had she not stopped herself, and for killing a defenseless man, she would have been left stranded in this nether-dimension as punishment. Reminding her to remember the lessons she learned this day, the Conjuress used her sorcery to send Vampirella back to the Earth dimension, who thanked the kindly sorceress immediately beforehand.
Materializing in front of Adam, Vampi embraced her lover, both extremely happy to see the other, though she did confess that she could not bring herself to kill Dracula. After relating the tale to Conrad, he said he couldn't fault Vampi for her actions, because he nearly caused her death himself. Vampi was forgiving, reminding the aged vampire hunter that she realizes that he was only trying to protect Adam, and that she was determined to prove to him, someday, that he could trust her despite her vampiric nature (though she silently noted that she needed to fully convince herself of that, also). Pendragon then entered the room, lamenting that it seems he napped through something interesting, and then expressed regret over the shattered Mirror of Merlin, saying it was a shame and bad luck that such a nice antique mirror was broken, to which Adam flippantly replied, "Pendragon-you don't know the half of it!"
Meanwhile, back in the Realm of Atonement, Dracula awakened from the first phase of his penance, and found the Conjuress standing before him, and she told him that he was now ready to begin the second step to his atonement. Dracula mused that he learned a great deal while in the trance state, and the Conjuress silently noted to herself that she also learned much…including the fact that Dracula loved her "not as a goddess, but as a woman," and cursed herself for her blindness. Now free from the stupor of the trance, Dracula then recalled that Vampirella was there, rather than the Conjuress, and he stated that he could have destroyed her then. The Conjuress cautioned him, reminding the Vampire Lord that his hatred for his opponent was causing him to revert to his old ways,
the very thing he was now working to eliminate from his soul. Dracula responded by saying that after so many "centuries" of evil, he felt there was no way he could be reborn or salvage his soul to return to his former noble ways. The Conjuress reminded him that he only committed those acts under the spell of Chaos [she still neglected to mention his previous possession by the consciousness of Dracula-Prime], but he interrupted her with the following angry declaration: "Chaos?! What does Chaos matter? It was my hand which carried out those foul deeds! The name of Chaos is known to no one! My name brings horror the hearts of all who hear it! How can I ever become what I was again--even for your sake? I am the very personification of evil-I am Dracula!"
The Conjuress simply looked down with
an expression of distress on her visage, as Dracula-Mordante seemed determined to believe that he could never become anything more than a conduit of pure evil.
Comments: This story was a major turning point for the Warren/Harris version of Dracula, as not only did new author T. Casey Brennan tweak the already ridiculous "Draculon" origin for the Vampire Lord to make it more silly than before (and Archie Goodwin made it plenty silly to begin with!), but he also decided to take the character of Dracula in an entirely new direction. Specifically, he introduced not only the Conjuress, the sorceress "goddess" who became an important component in the life of Warren/Harris's Dracula, but also the concept of Dracula having been a noble man prior to his transformation into the Lord of the Vampires, rather than an unequivocally evil man from the start (as was the case with Dracula-Prime and numerous other interpretations of the Count). In fact, this origin story violates the major precepts of most other depictions of Dracula in popular fiction outside of the even stronger twist on this theme by Frank Saberhagen's series of Dracula novels, also published during the 1970's, which purported that Dracula was actually a benevolent and noble man, and that reports of his evil were incorrect.
As was revealed in the various Vampirella series published by Harris during the 1990's, Draculon is not another planet inhabited by a technologically advanced, blood-drinking race of bat-winged humanoid beings. Rather, it's an otherdimensional realm inhabited by vampires, the progeny of Lilith, the mother of at least several vampire strains on the Earth of the WNU, who evidently co-opted one of the various nether-realms frequently referred to as "Hell's" to create her otherdimensional haven for vampires. According to one 1990's account, Vampirella was evidently a unique vampiric being created in Draculon to oppose Lilith's progeny who run rampant on the Earth dimension, though this may eventually turn out to be yet another fully or partially faux memory implant, as Vampi's past is convoluted and still shrouded in mystery, a past rivaled only by Wolverine in this regard. Nevertheless, the true status of Draculon as a nether-realm inhabited by vampires who feed off its naturally flowing rivers of blood is very likely to be accurate.
Though the Elder God Chaos and his many other agents continued to plague Vampirella throughout the rest of her career to date, Dracula ceased being one of those agents with this story, and was his own man--or vampire--from this point onwards.
As fellow creative mythographer Crazy Ivan Schablotski has suggested, it's likely that many of Dracula-Mordante's ever-changing memory implants of his origin on the "planet" Draculon were altered by his own personal psychoses, as most befit any immediate circumstance in his life (e.g., his perceived Draculonian origin prior to the Conjuress coming back into his life and afterwards are filled with two entirely different conceits).
Ivan also had this to say in regards to a possible WNU friendly connection for the mysterious but palpable effect the Conjuress appeared to have over Dracula-Mordante: "I also wanna point out that her ability to make Dracula feel guilt may be connected to her human sorceress background. Perhaps she was trained by the Kaldersh gypsies in restoring a vampire's soul. This spell, seen in practice on episodes of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' and 'Angel,' would have placed Mordante's own soul in front of the Drac-Prime overlay. As he is not an Aurelius vampire, there's no reason to believe he had no soul anymore, but I'm certain the spell would have a big effect on any vampire that has a life force other than its own (in this case, Dracula-Prime's) in charge."
Later still, as per my conjectures, Dracula-Mordante was to gain access to the Dreamlands through Draculon, and in the early to mid-21st century he started down the path that would enable him to gain control of the trans-dimensional Castlevania construct as a result of receiving more power from Chaos, as well as from the Crimson King and an avatar of Death hirself, and due to time travel ventures to the 11th century, he eventually had his essence merged with the formidable alchemist/warrior known as Mathias Crongvist, to become the mega-powerful Dracula soul-clone known as Dracula-Mathias. The extraordinary story of Dracula-Mathias was depicted in the 'Castlevania' video game series [see WNU Connections in the previous entry, and the Dracula-Mordante timeline down below].
The particular story arc appearing in this issue of VAMPIRELLA would carry into the next two issues of her mag, and was concluded in a semi-stand alone Vampi story in issue #21, before Drac moved onto his own series in EERIE and another solo series a few years later in VAMPIRELLA.
I also believe that the flashback sequence stating that Dracula-Mordante was revived by taking direct possession of the derelict who lay in his cursed coffin was apocryphal, and the idea that common vampire bats [do they even exist anywhere in Europe? They are indigenous to South America!] could bite the still mortal interim soul-clone and vamp him was really inane [real vampire bats never bite human victims on the neck, but almost always on their toes, and in very rare occasions, on their chest area].
WNU Connections: Many of the WNU connections from this story were described in my various observations in brackets that appear throughout the above synopsis. With this story, it's more clear than ever that this version of Dracula was not Dracula-Prime, but a soul-clone, whom I think should rightfully be called 'Dracula-Mordante,' as I believe the latter suffix was the real surname of the man who was transformed into a soul-clone by Dracula-Prime. Count Mordante appears to have been a very noble man, dedicated to principles of justice, before he was deemed a useful soul-clone due to his wealth and influence, and this caused him to constantly question his vampiric tendencies and the Xerox copy of Dracula-Prime's consciousness, personality, and ambitions that were super-imposed over his own, though he appears to have lacked the requisite unusually strong willpower that enabled some soul-clones to quickly become their "own" vampire, such as Prince Mamuwalde, a.k.a., "Blacula" (from the eponymously named 'blaxploitation' film released during the same time period, and its one sequel, "Scream, Blacula, Scream"). It seems that Dracula-Mordante's emotional conflicts and vulnerability made him the perfect Dracula soul-clone for the Elder God Chaos to co-opt as an agent. The conflicting sets of "Draculon" memory implants, which Dracula-Mordante appears to have conflated, via various attempts by his subconscious to make sense of all of the contradictory sensory data, appears to be similar to what occurred to Vampirella herself, though this wasn't made clear until her Harris Comics days in the 1990's, though there were many clues throughout her Warren days. As noted in the synopsis above, many of the clues that this was the case with Dracula was the contradictory and obviously conflated sense of events in his flashback narrations regarding the Draculon memory implants, the sheer absurdity of those memories, and the many anachronistic and terracentric details within those stories.
Specific details about the "mad god" Chaos are a bit difficult to pin down, but certain theories can indeed be formulated based upon the available evidence seen in both the Vampi stories and in the 'Castlevania' video game series, where the presence of Chaos was quite prominent.
Strictly speaking, I believe that the entity appearing in these stories wasn't actually a true avatar of the universal force of Chaos (as was Lord Chaos of the MU), but rather a Lovecraftian entity who aligned himself in some unknown (and possibly unfathomable) manner with that universal force, and his "motives" were to thus foment chaos across the multiverse, including on Earth. Like many Lovecraftian entities, he not only took on less powerful entities as underlings, but also human sycophants and worshippers who worked to enable him to manifest on the Earth plane at various intervals, or to insure that his influence and machinations were carried out there, in exchange for various supernatural empowerments and gifts to those loyal human servants for successfully carrying out his will on Earth. Like many of the fabled members of the Cthulhu Mythos, Chaos appeared to have a strong desire (if any human emotional terminology is truly apropos) to re-take the Earth, and Chaos appeared to have a particularly strong motivation to do so at the astrological equinox of the Millennium (whose time would reach its apex between the years 1999-2001).
The Cthulhu Mythos, who were chronicled in many short stories and novellas penned by author H.P. Lovecraft, including stories such as "The Call of Cthulhu," "The Shadows Over Innsmouth," "The Dunwich Horror," "At The Mountains of Madness," "The Colour Out of Space," and the one novel THE STATEMENT OF RANDOLPH CARTER, not only serves as a major part of the foundation of the WNU, but also serves as the basis of much of the occult undertakings of a dark nature on the Earth of that universe.
It was revealed in various "CV" games that Dracula-Mathias apparently recruited some of the lowest tier progeny of various chthonic entities, including what appeared to be minor "seedlings" of Cthulhu, against his various human adversaries, which he could have acquired in the Dreamlands, and with the assistance of Chaos. The latter entity, like many of the dark entities of the Cthulhu Mythos, were often worshipped as gods by human cults who were seduced by the dark power to be found in the various occult grimoires penned by various human agents of these beings, such as the various volumes of the infamous Necronomicon to less familiar tomes such as the Crimson Chronicles and the Darkhold (both of which are likely minor but still potent sub-volumes of the Necronomicon holding different names alluding to other beings who had an influence on producing those particular volumes, such as the Crimson King in the case of the Crimson Chronicles).
The powers of Chaos, like that of many of the more prominent members of his Lovecraftian brethren, appear to be vast but largely undefined, though the mystical power of these asexual and utterly inhuman beings appear to be greatest in otherdimensional realms such as the Dreamlands. His ability to penetrate into the Earth dimension was limited by numerous dimensional barriers that could only be opened, and then only with great difficulty and preparation, at certain locales on the Earth where dimensional barriers separating the planet from otherdimensional realms was naturally flimsy (i.e., "window areas" in paranormal investigator parlance) and when certain complex astrological factors were in perfect alignment. Most often, Chaos and his underlings would take refuge in an interdimensional void-like 'Nether-Realm' that was as dimensionally close to the Earth as they could ordinarily get, though they evidently had little difficulty accessing realms of transcendent/abstract reality such as the Dreamlands, which appear to be a sort of "natural habitat" for such entities.
Chaos only appeared in very shadowy, and possibly semi-humanoid "assumed" form (which may have been nothing more than artistic license on the part of the illustrator chronicling the story), in the Warren stories. It wasn't until the 2003 video game "Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow" that we finally saw a "head up" confrontation between Chaos and a human adversary, the warrior Soma Cruz, who managed to enter the "Chaotic Realm," which Chaos was then controlling and inhabiting, and it may have been the same interdimensional reality as the 'Nether-Realm' seen in VAMPIRELLA #21, or a similar interspatial pocket reality.
In the year 2035, the young warrior Soma Cruz, who had the essence of Dracula-Mathias involuntarily transferred into his body at birth, thus causing him to face the serious danger of the uber-powerful soul-clone fully taking over his psyche at a certain point in his life, engaged in a lengthy and difficult mission to offset this eventuality, and at the climax of this mission, he actually faced and battled Chaos himself in the latter's dimensional base of operations. This was the first time that Chaos actually fully "appeared" in any medium, and his form was utterly non-human and grotesque. It may have been his actual form (inasmuch as a human mind could truly comprehend it), or one of the many nightmarish guises such entities are known to take when confronting humans. At the end of this battle, Soma Cruz used powerful occult weapons at his side to defeat Chaos once and for all, thus insuring that the consciousness of Dracula-Mathias would not take control of his body and was "cleansed" of all of its evil, and the joint soul of Count Mordante and Mathis Crongvist were now fully free from the power and influence of Chaos at long last. As noted above, these events were chronicled in the "Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow" video game.
Time Frame: This story appears to have taken place about two months after the story in VAMPIRELLA #16, and beginning with the Vampi story in the next issue, Dracula-Mordante's chron becomes less linear and a bit problematic, as the Conjuress begins sending him on his journeys backwards in time. That will begin his journey towards eventually diverging a very unique and powerful counterpart on the same timeline, Dracula-Mathias, and will lead into the events of the 'Castlevania' video game series.