Today I'm looking at another issue of Marvel Comics' Tomb of Dracula series. This time it's Tomb of Dracula #30 (1975): "Memories on a Mourning's Night" by Marv Wolfman, Gene Colan & Tom Palmer. Similar to issue #15, this story features Dracula reminiscing about his past as a series of short vignettes bring to light his past misdeeds.
This time out, Dracula's memories are linked by a common theme of romance and loss; Dracula had just lost Sheila Whittier, a woman he'd been romancing (she ultimately jumped out a window to avoid him). First, Dracula recalls a noblewoman who claimed to love him and directed Dracula to murder her husband, but then had an army of men kill Dracula in return; when Dracula revived, he turned her into a vampire to serve him. Second, Dracula encounters a blind girl whose father has just murdered the girl's mother; Dracula kills the father and tells the blind girl he obtained revenge for her, but is shocked when the child isn't pleased. Finally, Dracula recalls his days in China when a certain fellow named Blade tricked Dracula into an ambush where Blade and his allies destroyed him.
"Memories on a Mourning's Night" is particularly significant within the series because it's the first look into Blade's past, but much like issue #15 it enhances Dracula's legend by demonstrating some of the battles he'd had in the past were as exceptional as anything he'd been involved in during contemporary times. Although Marvel's black & white magazine Dracula Lives ran alongside the colour comic and regularly told stories of Dracula's past, they never approached the grandeur of Wolfman & Colan's Dracula.
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