It's a little strange how in the dying days of the Hammer films studio they seemed to be expanding, rather than dying - what with the short-lived 1980 TV show Hammer House of Horror and the late 70s authorized magazine The House of Hammer from legendary UK comics editor Dez Skinn. The House of Hammer offered a number of black & white comic book stories in their pages, some of them original tales, others truncated adaptations of popular Hammer film titles. Many of the adaptations were drawn by John Bolton and that's the case with my subject today, Dracula: Prince of Darkness from The House of Hammer #6 (1977), based on the 1966 horror film and adapted by Bolton with writer Donne Avenell.
John Bolton is certainly an artist in the tradition of photorealism, but I find his adaptation of Dracula: Prince of Darkness to be a little too stiff. Still, there are beautiful shadows throughout this story and Dracula's eventual destruction as he falls into a frozen lake looks beautiful with Bolton's black & white storytelling. Several other Hammer Dracula pictures were adapted into these magazines and they're not terribly well-known; check 'em out if you can.
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