TOMB OF DRACULA #18-21 and WEREWOLF BY NIGHT #15 (1974)

Marv Wolfman ends his run on Werewolf By Night by taking it to his big horror book, Tomb of Dracula.

Werewolf and his girlfriend Topaz go to Transylvania, believing the roots of the werewolf curse can be found there. While wandering the streets at night, Dracula decides Topaz looks tasty…

…But she’s a sorceress, so he can’t eat her.  And then werewolf jumps to her defense, and they fight briefly before Drac runs away, intimidated by Topaz.

Russell and Topaz continue to seek answers about the werewolf curse, and the trail leads to Castle Dracula, where they learn that Russell’s dad actually killed Dracula with a stake–and it seems that’s the killing that was undone in issue #1 of Tomb–but a werewolf was protecting Drac’s coffin and bit Daddy Russell.

Dracula realizes they’re in his house.

PAGE OF FIGHTING

Rematch.

There’s a bunch of stalemate fights, but the important thing is that Jack Russell finds a second Book of Darkhold.  But Dracula takes it from him, and flees into the mountains with Rachel Van Helsing as prisoner.  Along the way, he dumps the second Darkhold book in the snow, hoping nobody will find it and therefore learn the secret to killing vampires.

Many years later, that secret will be identified by Dr. Strange as the Montesi Formula.

The Werewolf crossover story is pretty much done by now, but we still have Drac in the mountains with Van Helsing.  Frank Drake rescues her, shoots wooden bullets at Drac, forcing him to flee into a cave where he meets Dr. Sun for the first time.

DR SUN BRAIN

Actually, we all are seeing Sun for the first time–in previous appearances he was always off panel.  He’s a brain floating in some kind of glass tank.

MOUNTAIN EXPLODES

This part of the saga ends with Sun’s base exploding, and it seems both Sun and Dracula have been killed.

Blade and Harker have a subplot, where Blade realizes that his being half-vampire makes him immune to the vampire “disease” that puts other vamps under Dracula’s control, and Blade decides to hunt down the vampire that killed his mother.

The WWBN tie in is really just Tomb #18 and part of 19, but the story all flows together, leading to the “death” of Dracula.

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