TRANS-SCRIBE: What If...? Dark: Tomb of Dracule #1

Wednesday, 15 November 2023

What If...? Dark: Tomb of Dracule #1 - Comic Review

The What If...? series has been one that's had some ups and downs over the years. Sometimes it delivers some really interesting alternate versions of well known stories, other times it seems to really go off the rails and can fail miserably. Either way, the stories tend to show that if things didn't happen the exact way that they did in the comics the first time round it would lead to terrible results, and some dark events. As such, making a darker series called What If...? Dark feels kind of superfluous as that's pretty much what it was before most of the time anyway.

This new one-shot puts Dracula and Blade into the spotlight (just in time to have missed Halloween by a couple of weeks), and brings back one of Blade's original creators, Marv Wolfman. Wolfman being on the Tomb of Dracula title again, even in this What If...? form isn't something to be lightly ignored, and his return is absolutely something of a selling point on this issue. If you're going to be going back and messing around with the established continuity of a series why not use the original writer to do so?

Unfortunately, it takes a long while into the issue for the change to even come into effect. The first half of the issue is more of a re-telling of the origins of Blade, and his history with the character of Dracula. We get to see his birth, and him working alongside other vampire hunters, and get an updated version of his first appearance look. It's a good primer for those coming to the book without a huge knowledge of the history these characters and series have, but the downside is that nothing of much interest happens for a while.

The big twist in this tale is that Dracula manages to bit Blade, turning him into a full vampire. This is an interesting enough concept to base the book on, and one that you could do a lot with. Unfortunately, as it comes so late into the book it means that we don't have a huge amount of time with it. Blade, once he becomes a vampire, attack and turns his lover, Saffron, an important character from the original series. Blade attacks her and turns her in one page, and then she's never seen again. She only gets one bubble of dialogue in the entire book. Similar happens for the important scene in which the now vampire Blade convinces his vampire hunting friends to trust him and work with him to take down Dracula. It's done in a page, with very little discussion as only one other person speaks, and they get sentence.

And this is the big problem with this issue, the interesting stuff gets no time to do anything. The character moments are glossed over, the stuff that fans of Tomb of Dracula would be interested in are barely there. Instead, half the book is new art for old stuff, and the other half is fighting with the occasional scene where Blade talks at the important people in his life and they do nothing. It really does feel like something of a letdown.

The art on the issue is done by David Cutler, with colours by Edgar Delgado, Antonio Fabella, and Dee Cunniffe, and for the most part it's pretty decent. The updates on the older designs and characters look good, and the new version of first appearance Blade is enjoyable to see. Some of the designs don't quite land for me, however, such as when Blade and Dracula transform into giant bats, in which their faces have very weird looks to them, and come off as a little bit goofy in places.

What If...? Dark: Tomb of Dracula feels like a bit of a missed opportunity, a book that could have been a great return from Wolfman to a series and character he helped to create, but in the end it kind of didn't do a whole lot. If the change to the story had come a lot earlier in the issue, or Wolfman had been given more time to explore it it could have been better. As is, it's a very light, surface level story that explores an idea in the broadest terms, but doesn't dive deep.