To close the lid on my look at Marvel Comics' Tomb of Dracula I'm moving to the black & white Tomb of Dracula magazine which succeeded the comic book series. Specifically, I'm interested in looking at Tomb of Dracula #2 (1979): "The Dimensional Man" by the usual Tomb of Dracula scribe Marv Wolfman but joined there by the legendary Steve Ditko!
Dracula is virtually a guest star in this story as instead the point-of-view character who carries most of the action is the Dimensional Man, a member of a cult who worship the demon Asmodeus. The Dimensional Man was exposed to demonic energies during a ceremony and became a succubus, feeding on other people's life energies - in that sense, not unlike Dracula. Now against the cult who raised him, the Dimensional Man tries to save his sister from being sacrificed to Asmodeus. Fortunately, the Dimensional Man has help - in the form of Dracula, who had befriended the sister.
Steve Ditko is not Gene Colan; while Colan was a master of the shadows with moody artwork well suited to black & white, Ditko was and is a very bright artist, one whose weird imagery is accentuated by colour. Despite this, Ditko did a fine job adapting himself to the style of a Dracula comic. The Dimensional Man feels like the kind of character Ditko was more comfortable writing about, right down to the hat & coat visual found on other Ditko heroes (The Question, Mr. A). This story stands on its own, not tying into the rest of Marvel's Dracula comics even with Wolfman as the scripter. However, I think it's the best story from the brief 6-issue magazine run simply because Ditko committed himself so readily to this format; if you enjoyed Ditko's other black & white horror magazine work (Creepy, Eerie) you'll want to check this out. As to the Dimensional Man, he's actually turned up a little outside of this story; check out his profile at the Marvel Appendix.
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