{"id":16623,"date":"2015-04-09T02:32:59","date_gmt":"2015-04-09T01:32:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=16623"},"modified":"2015-04-09T02:51:12","modified_gmt":"2015-04-09T01:51:12","slug":"the-dracula-annual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2015\/04\/09\/the-dracula-annual\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dracula Annual"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"wolff1.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A comment by Modzilla in last month’s post about psychedelic comic book Saga de Xam<\/em><\/a> is responsible for this recent book purchase. Dracula<\/em> was a full-colour large-format comic book from notorious pulp imprint New English Library (later to be distributors for my colleagues at Savoy Books) that repackaged Spanish horror strips for a British audience. The comic ran for 12 issues in the early 1970s; the pages shown here are from the hardback annual that gathered all the issues into a single volume. I remember this being around in secondhand shops for years but I never paid it any attention at all so the artwork has been a revelation.<\/p>\n

NEL’s Dracula<\/em> isn’t much of a horror comic, despite its title; Dracula himself only appears in one story, and that’s a jokey throwaway piece. The two main episodic strips are Wolff<\/em>, a Conan clone searching for his lost wife in a world ravaged by witches, werewolves and other supernatural threats; and Agar-Agar<\/em>, a deliriously psychedelic picaresque concerning a hyper-sexual “sprite” (or a hippyish young woman with blue hair and magic powers) from the planet Xanadu. Everything in the book is redolent of the early 1970s when strains of psychedelia were still percolating through pop culture. Watered-down psychedelia used to bore me because I wanted the authentic stuff but forty years on this kind of work is much more attractive.<\/p>\n

\"wolff2.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Wolff<\/em> is the work of Esteban Maroto whose splash pages and inventive layouts give Barry Windsor-Smith’s Conan the Barbarian<\/em> (which was running at this time) some serious competition. Wolff is very much in the Conan mould\u2014he even shouts “Crom!” at crucial moments\u2014a pawn of supernatural forces he often fails to comprehend. The artwork in Smith’s Conan<\/em> was often praised for its details and decor but the Art Nouveau influence in Maroto’s work is much more overt. Maroto’s flame-haired witches are like Alphonse Mucha sirens\u2014one panel even borrows from Mucha’s Salammb\u00f4\u2014and he’s no slouch with the Frazetta-like demons either. The scripting is perfunctory but I don’t mind that when it turns up pages like these. There’s also a brief nod to Lovecraft when “R’Lyeh” is mentioned.<\/p>\n

\"wolff3.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"wolff4.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"wolff5.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"wolff6.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"wolff7.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"wolff8.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"viyi1.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Viyi<\/em> is a one-off piece by Esteban Maroto. A simple vampire tale but with lavish drawings.<\/p>\n

\"viyi2.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"leo1.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sir Leo<\/em> by Jos\u00e9 Be\u00e1 is yet another English occult detective. These stories are supposed to be set in the late 19th century but Sir Leo resembles Jerry Cornelius much of the time. There’s a more explicit homage to Lovecraft in this first tale when Sir Leo consults the Necronomicon<\/em>. The book advises him to use a silver bullet against the tentacled lake monster, a solution I can’t imagine Lovecraft approving.<\/p>\n

\"invasion.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Jos\u00e9 Be\u00e1 and Enric Si\u00f3 provided a number of one-off pieces of which this one (by Be\u00e1) is among the more psychedelic entries. Si\u00f3’s pieces are well-drawn but often bizarrely incoherent or simply plain bizarre. One of the strangest concerns a Second World War pilot whose plane begins to melt for no apparent reason. When he finally bails out, his parachute opens then transforms into a giant cephalopod which swallows him whole. The creature floats away into the clouds. The End.<\/p>\n

\"agar1.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Alberto Solsona’s Agar-Agar<\/em> is a delight throughout, with ravishing visuals and a witty, self-deprecating script. Agar-Agar meets a variety of characters from mythology and fairy tale on her travels; many of these wish her harm but she outwits them all. One story takes a dig at American comics with a conceited superhero, Superbat, who tries to keep Agar-Agar prisoner. He’s no match for the sprite’s magic powers.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"agar2.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The collected Dracula<\/em> may still be found relatively cheaply although copies are evidently more scarce than they used to be. For those who want to see more there’s the US edition<\/a> from Warren at the Internet Archive. This is only half the contents of the UK book\u2014volume 2 never appeared\u2014but it features several of the strips shown here. For more information about the original issues see Dracula of the newsagents<\/a> at Lew Stringer’s site.<\/p>\n

\"agar3.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"agar4.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"agar5.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 Saga de Xam revisited<\/a>
\n\u2022 Philippe Caza covers<\/a>
\n\u2022 Saga de Xam by Nicolas Devil<\/a>
\n\u2022 L\u2019Amour by Didier Moreau<\/a>
\n\u2022 Gilles Rimbault redux<\/a>
\n\u2022 Raymond Bertrand paintings<\/a>
\n\u2022 Raymond Bertrand\u2019s science fiction covers<\/a>
\n\u2022 Gilles Rimbault revisited<\/a>
\n\u2022 Druillet\u2019s vampires<\/a>
\n\u2022 The Art Nouveau dance goes on forever<\/a>
\n\u2022 The art of Ran Akiyoshi, 1922\u20131982<\/a>
\n\u2022 The art of Gilles Rimbault<\/a>
\n\u2022 The art of Jim Leon, 1938\u20132002<\/a>
\n\u2022 The art of Bertrand<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A comment by Modzilla in last month’s post about psychedelic comic book Saga de Xam is responsible for this recent book purchase. Dracula was a full-colour large-format comic book from notorious pulp imprint New English Library (later to be distributors for my colleagues at Savoy Books) that repackaged Spanish horror strips for a British audience. … Continue reading “The Dracula Annual”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[58,2,42,9,4,22,16,17],"tags":[7178,905,2551,7174,977,7177,7175,1544,1687,2611,7176,7173,4086,1083,7073],"class_list":["post-16623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-nouveau","category-art","category-books","category-comics","category-design","category-horror","category-occult","category-psychedelia","tag-alberto-solsona","tag-alphonse-mucha","tag-barry-windsor-smith","tag-conan","tag-dracula","tag-enric-sio","tag-esteban-maroto","tag-gilles-rimbault","tag-hp-lovecraft","tag-jerry-cornelius","tag-jose-bea","tag-new-english-library","tag-philippe-caza","tag-raymond-bertrand","tag-saga-de-xam"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-4k7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16623\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}