“Beware… Dracula!”
Creative Staff:
Story: Steve Orlando
Art: Michael Dowling
Colors: Jim Campbell
Letterer: VC’s Cory Petit
What They Say:
BEWARE – THE LUNAR TOMB OF DRACULA! DRACULA returns! The moon is under attack, and SPIDER-MAN must team up with MOON KNIGHT 2099 to save it! Our celestial web-slinger is going to need some new armor to get through it all!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
I’ve long enjoyed the realm of 2099 even though I’ve not read much in forever. I still have incredibly fond memories when the first book came out in the 90s and I’ll try to sample when I can. This new five-issue series comes from writer Steve Orlando who has had a number of fun books for Marvel recently that keeps me interested while at times wishing for just a bit more depth. For this book, he’s teamed up with artist Michael Dowling which is my first experience with their work. It helps that while some of these are established characters they’re not hugely defined in the way that the mainline ones are so it’s able to establish itself as its own thing well enough. The layouts are solid, Jim Campbell’s color design works well, and I enjoyed some of the blending that goes on with different story moments, and the characters look good while capturing this particular kind of terror.
With the first issue being a standalone story about zombies, this one brings us some time with Dracula. The character has been in the Marvel books for ages and we get an interesting directional change for him here by the end. The premise has Miguel heading to the moon where Khonshu in its present form is and they’ve been overtaken by “something” that turns out to be Dracula. The crypt that Khonshu operates out if is actually Dracula’s beforehand and he used the place and taking down Khonshu as a way to draw someone up that he could manipulate in order to get back to Earth. There’s a lot of back and forth between the two characters because Dracula has a lengthy history with Spider-Man proper and Miguel is certainly aware of it and of Dracula himself.
There’s a lot to like with the physical aspects of the fight as it plays out but I wa more interested in what has been going on in the past. It looks like Dracula hasn’t been used in the 2099 continuity for the most part because Miguel talks of learning about his story in school and the way his people were attacked and brutalized during his reign, which saw him ending up buried on the moon to recover. What’s interesting is seeing what happened after that which Dracula doesn’t know and how the truth of what happened resulted in a very positive thing for his people that survived. A vampire world is something you want to see more of, the science behind helping the need for blood, and then a group that stayed on Earth as well. Lots of areas to explore and it’s good to give Dracula a choice and to decide what he wants his future to be.
In Summary:
This anthology-style series is definitely appealing to me having been away from the 2099 universe for awhile. It’s easy to just drop in and enjoy some standalone storytelling and get to see Miguel at this point in time and what he’s like. The first story was fun enough but I definitely enjoyed seeing how Dracula plays in this by looking at the past and how things unfolded and what his future would be like. Honestly, a story focusing on his arrival on a world of vampires with his history and the kind of society there and how they would play alongside each other would be a lot of fun to watch unfold. This is a busy and chaotic issue at times because of how much it has to get done in a small period of time but it works well enough, even if Khonshu gets the short end of the stick.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics
Release Date: January 10th, 2024
MSRP: $4.99
