Scene: Central Park, NYC, NY, mid-late '70s. Dracula is fighting the X-Men and putting the hurt on them! Desperate, Wolverine pops two of his claws into the shape of The True Cross in a last-ditch effort to ward off the King of Vampires. Dracula laughs, makes a comment to the effect that that old chestnut only works if the wielder really believes, and gives with the shellacking. The apex/nadir of Chris Claremont cheesy/great scripting? Regardless, Dracula's virtual ubiquity is one of the many things I love about thirty-year-old comic books. At one point he was even in the Defenders. I was going to make a snide comment about the Hulk being a charter member of the Defenders but then I remembered that he is also a charter member of the Avengers. The big-name Marvel super-hero teams are not as exclusive as they would like you to think. The JLA has similar secret woes (although not to the extent of letting Dracula in).
Too Many Draculas, or: Public Domain Supervillain Theatre
but i am getting off track
I don't know why I am doing all this cogitating about Dracula other than that I am watching GRAVE OF THE VAMPIRE (1973) starring Michael Pataki and Bill Smith, one of the few vampire movies to address the perils of teen pregnancy and the miserable existence of the American graduate student. I guess I want to know why vampires always have to wear capes even when it is the 1970s. It seems like an affectation.
apologies
I am just cheesed off about this particular vampire. First he is a Massachusetts Puritan but then turns up as a Depression-era rapist. Then in the Nixon era he becomes that worst of villains, a tenured college professor. Why the fuck would he wear a cape.
another thing
Marvel also tied SHANG-CHI: MASTER OF KUNG-FU into Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu novels 'cuz Fu was Shang's paw and all manner of supporting characters like Sir Denis Nayland Smith not only showed up but stuck around. But this has been retconned in post-'94 Shang-Chi appearances. It seems that copyright law was looser in the '70s, along with many other things.
not really retconned
apropos of sherlock holmes being your dad
The only time Sherlock Holmes was sexually attracted to a woman he referred to her exclusively as 'The Woman.' So I guess it all makes some sense in the magical land of permanent archetypes. It also goes to show why Holmes is the mold for all miserable nerd wish-fulfillment power-fantasy proxy-heroes from Conan the Barbarian on down.
Wasn't he a gay cokehead. I
Wasn't he a gay cokehead. I thought that's why he got kicked out of Scotland Yard. "Damn it, Holmes. You're the best detective we got but you failed your drug test and you bugger all the rookies. I should fire you. But damn it the press like your style. So I am promoting you to private detective."
yeah possibly
Thus 'the only time.' I don't even remember the name of the cop still on the force sympathetic to Holmes. Lestrade? That rôle is an inevitable and thankless one in all detective fiction -- having to play Green Lantern to Green Arrow. I always think of Wesley Addy as Pat Chambers in KISS ME DEADLY. Aldrich uses Addy in nearly every one of his movies and it's in the same rôle every time, he has to be the exasperated yet responsible friend, as to Palance in THE BIG KNIFE.
and gold-bug dude
Now you may have some inkling of what it is like to be me all the time, where your entire intellectual process occurs in a steel-wool fog within which any particular recollectable detail is more likely to be wildly inaccurate than to have any basis in reality. That said, what this thread is really about is HERCULES SMASH SUPERCOMPOOPER!
Joined: 2007-09-14
Location: