In his regular comics column in SFX magazine (latest issue at right), Warren Ellis devoted his entire space to the upcoming The Complete Dracula from Dynamite Entertainment.
Ellis' column reads:
Today I got hold of the first part of Leah Moore and John Reppion's
Complete Dracula comic, released from Dynamite Comics in April. And
it's very good.
It's notable in the first instance for resorting Bram Stoker's original
structure. The original's first chapter, entitled, "Dracula's Guest",
was excised from the book by Stoker's publisher, and only saw its first
printing a couple of years after Stoker died. This is signal to Leah
and John's intent - this is in fact the complete Dracula.
The second thing of note is that it's a direct adaptation. The novel,
as I would hope many of you know, is told (as Leah and John noted in a
recent interview) as "a big heap of diaries and letters". So their task
was to, essentially, dramatise the documents, rather than extract from
them the story and tell it in a standard manner. The depths of research
in this thing, down to typewriter models and fonts, is quite stunning.
But even more impressive is how Leah and John produce and incredibly
visual script, absolutely alive with motion and atmosphere and terrific
images. The excellent artwork of Colton Worley, which at times evokes
early photography as put through the hauntological equivalent of
crackle in a burial album, is more than up to capturing the script. I
am in places reminded of Jon J Muth's magnificent comics adaption of
Fritz Lang's M.
They're going to do the entire novel in five 32-page issues. Throw away
your DVDs and videotapes now: this is the only adaptation of Dracula
you'll ever need.
To follow Warren's Twitter feed, go to http://twitter.com/warrenellis.Reprinted with permission of SFX.
