| Count Dracula | |
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Real Name |
Count Dracula |
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First Appearance |
Dracula (1897) |
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Original Publisher |
Archibald Constable and Company (UK) |
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Created by |
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Origin[]
From Chamber of Chills #22
Count Dracula is a centuries-old vampire, sorcerer, and Transylvanian nobleman. He claims to be a Székely descended from Attila the Hun and inhabits his decaying castle in the Carpathian Mountains near the Borgo Pass. Unlike the vampires of Eastern European folklore which are portrayed as repulsive, corpse-like creatures, Dracula exudes aristocratic charm to mask true evil. As a youth, Dracula studied the black arts at the academy of Scholomance in the Carpathian Mountains, overlooking the town of Sibiu, and became proficient in alchemy and sorcery. He later joined the military. He transformed into a vampire by using black magic and lived for several centuries in his castle with the Weird Sisters.
In the 19th century, he began to enact his plan for world domination, beginning with England. He summons Jonathan Harker to provide legal support for a real estate transaction overseen by Harker's employer. The Count keeps Harker alive and unaware of his true intentions. Dracula then leaves his castle and boards a Russian ship, the Demeter. During the voyage, he feasts on the ship's crew members. Dracula leaves the ship in the form of a wolf. Soon the Count goes after Harker's fiancée, Mina Murray, and her friend, Lucy Westenra. Also, there is a notable link between Dracula and Renfield, a resident of the asylum who is compelled to consume creatures in ascending order of size to absorb their "life force". He acts as a sort of Dracula detector, sensing the count's proximity.
The Count as illustrated in the first edition of the novel, crawling down a wall like a bat.
Dracula begins to visit Lucy on a nightly basis to drain her blood and simultaneously transform her into a vampire. Lucy's companions notice something is wrong and call upon the Dutch doctor Abraham Van Helsing who soon deduces her condition is supernatural in origin. Despite an attempt to use garlic to keep Dracula at bay, he entices Lucy out of her chamber and drains her completely of her blood which kills her. Van Helsing leads a group of men to enter Lucy's crypt and kill her reanimated corpse and then go to Dracula's residence at Carfax Abbey, destroy his boxes of earth, and deprive him of his ability to regenerate his powers. Count Dracula leaves England and returns to Transylvania, but he bites Mina before leaving.
Eventually, Lord Godalming, Van Helsing, Dr. Seward, Jonathan Harker, Mina, and Quincey Morris track the Count back to Transylvania and destroy him by cutting his throat with Jonathan Harker's kukri knife and piercing his heart with Quincey Morris's Bowie knife while his coffin was in transit. However, this is an omission of one of the proper rituals to destroy a vampire such as with a stake to the heart, decapitation, or dismemberment followed by cremation. The lack of proper disposal has suggested that Dracula may rise again.
Powers and Weaknesses[]
Dracula's powers include super strength, wall-crawling, hypnosis, mind control, control over nocturnal animals (such as wolves and rats), weather manipulation, shape-shifting, changing his size, transmitting his vampire curse to others, and limited invulnerability. His featured forms of shapeshifting in the novel include that of a bat, rat, wolf, vapor, and fog. He also can only be definitively killed by decapitation followed by impalement through the heart or shooting him with a sacred bullet. He also requires no other sustenance but fresh blood, which has the effect of rejuvenating him. Without it, he physically ages at an accelerated rate. Sunlight also weakens Dracula, but unlike other vampires does not destroy him. He also possesses an aversion to garlic and sacred objects such as a cross. Dracula cannot cross running water or enter a house uninvited.
Public Domain Appearances[]
All published appearances of Dracula from before Janurary 1, 1930 are public domain in the US.
Some notable appearances are listed below:
Dracula as portrayed by John Carradine in Billy the Kid Versus Dracula (1966) and Christopher Lee in The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973).
Public Domain Literary Appearances[]
- Dracula (1897)
- Powers of Darkness - Swedish Version (1899)
- Powers of Darkness - Icelandic Version (1901)
- Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories (1914)
Public Domain Theatrical Appearances[]
- Dracula, or The Undead (1897)
- Bram Stoker's Dracula originally appeared as a stage play on May 18, 1897 (which only two people attended). The (much-more famous) novel was released eight days later.
- Dracula - Original Production (1924)
- Dracula - Broadway Version (1927)- In 1927 John L. Balderston revised the play for American audiences and the names of female characters were swapped. What was Lucy character is now named Mina Weston and she is also already dead at the beginning of the play. The Mina character is now named Lucy Seward, Dr Seward's daughter, who falls under Dracula's power but is saved from death at the end of the play.
Public Domain Film Appearances[]
- Dracula's Death (1921): An insane asylum inmate who insists he is the immortal Dracula abducts a poor seamstress named Mary Land to his castle and forces her to attend a wedding ceremony. At the end of the ceremony, Mary uses a cross to repel Dracula and escapes the castle. Eventually Mary wakes up back at the asylum, unsure if her ordeal was real or merely a dream. The inmates gather in the asylum's garden, where one of them produces a loaded revolver. Seeking a chance to prove his immortality, Dracula asks the man to shoot him. The bullet hits Dracula's heart, killing him.
- Billy the Kid Versus Dracula (1966): Count Dracula travels to the Old West, where he takes a shine to Billy the Kid's fiancée and tries to turn her into a vampire.
- The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973): While investigating a satanic cult for Scotland Yard, Van Helsing discovers a plan by Dracula to commit global genocide by creating a virulent strain of the bubonic plague.
Public Domain Comic Book Appearances[]
- Eerie #12: An adaptation of the original novel's story.
- Kid Eternity #4: Dracula is one of the fictional characters summoned by Kid Eternity.
- Chamber of Chills #22 (2)
- Forbidden Worlds #116, 119
- Herbie #14, 20
Front cover to the first edition of the novel. At the time, yellow was the color of bruising and decay.
Notes[]
- In 1899, the Swedish version Mörkrets makter ("Power of Darkness"), serialized in the newspaper Dagen, is an anonymous and radical adaptation of Dracula. Credited to "Bram Stoker and A—e", the Swedish version transforms the vampire into Draculitz, leader of a Darwinian cult that seeks to dominate the world by eliminating the "weak". The plot adds scenes of occult rituals, a seductive vampire (Josephine) and a flawed detective, while reducing supernatural elements (Draculitz does not transform into animals). The text satirizes nascent fascism and anti-Semitism, with allusions to real crimes, such as the Thames Murders.
- In 1901, the Icelandic version Based on the Swedish edition, Makt myrkranna (also "Powers of Darkness") was serialized in the newspaper Fjallkonan and later published as a book by Valdimar Ásmundsson. Shorter and with significant cuts (such as the removal of the epistolary format), the Icelandic version maintains the political tone, but adds references to the Norse sagas. Despite an initial negative reception, it became a cultural classic in Iceland, even influencing Nobel laureate Halldór Laxness.
- When Nosferatu, the unauthorized film adaptation of Dracula, was made in 1922, Count Dracula was replaced by Count Orlok, nosferatu is another word for vampire and even appears in Stoker's novel, is indeed another word for vampire, famously used in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897).
- The films The Satanic Rites of Dracula & Billy the Kid Versus Dracula are in the public domain in the United States because it was published in the United States between 1929 and 1977, inclusive, without a copyright notice.
- Alucard (the anadrome of "Dracula") is sometimes it a pseudonym used by Dracula. It is also commonly a name used by vampire or dhampir relatives of Dracula such as a son or more distant descendant. However sometimes the character using the name was not directly related to Dracula and instead used as something of a shout-out to arguably the most famous vampire of all time.