By: Victor Gischler (writer), Ryan Stegman (pencils), Mike Babinski & Rick Magyar (inks), Frank Martin & Antonio Fabela (colors), Clayton Cowles (letters), Jake Thomas (assistant editor) & Mark Paniccia (editor)
The Story: The Fear Itself version of the Hulk is running loose in Dracula’s countryside. Will the vampires be able to stop him?
What’s Good: If you’ve been following Gischler’s vampire-related stories over the last year or so, you know that he’s been building a bit of a vampire mythology. Instead of just having Dracula and a bunch of nameless vampire underlings, he’s created a web of political intrigue having to do with Dracula’s extended family and all these different breeds and sects of vampires. Dracula is King of the Mountain, but he has to control and direct all of these forces and they’ve all got different skills and political goals. This miniseries also introduced what is basically a vampire superhero team called the Forgiven. The Forgiven have the customary blend of power sets and are a neat concept as they don’t have an allegiance to any of the vampire sects, so they should be free to leave vampire-land and have adventures with the rest of the Marvel Universe. Hopefully we’ll be seeing Gischler or other creators telling more Forgiven stories in the near future.
In fact, the Forgiven is probably what puts this miniseries over the top. Most of the Fear Itself tie-ins where just complete crap because the stories just ran in a circle. Hulk vs. Dracula actually brought us something new and that is what we’re hoping for when we read superhero comics. The only other mini that did anything “new” was The Deep, which kicked off the formation of the new Defenders team. If you didn’t catch this miniseries in single issues, maybe you’ll get lucky and The Deep and Hulk v. Dracula will get paired up in a trade paperback without making you read some of the really bad miniseries.
Of course, you can have all the interesting concepts and nicely written sentences in the world, but if you don’t have an artist who can translate those to the page, the comic will struggle. So, Gischler was fortunate to be paired with a real rising star in Ryan Stegman. Stegman’s art lives in that sweet spot between cartoony and realism that is so effective. Lots of comic fans like realism, but by mixing in a little bit of cartooning, Stegman allows much more emotion and energy into the work. He’s also really coming along as a storyteller and getting better and better with each issue he does (and keep an eye out for his new Scarlet Spider series with Chris Yost that was announced at the New York Comic Con….that’ll be incredible!). Kudos also to the inkers. Stegman tweeted a few penciled pages from this miniseries as he drew them a few months ago and those pencils were just bristling with energy. Sometimes that energy is lost during inking, but Babinski and Magyar managed to maintain the strength of the pencils. Bravo!
What’s Not Quite As Good: I can’t really fault this miniseries for this, but I had a slight hope that we might see something ground-shaking happen with the Hulk. Given that this series happened between the end of Greg Pak’s run on Incredible Hulk(s) and before the new Jason Aaron/Marc Silvestri Hulk #1, I figured there was a chance this miniseries might somehow change Hulk’s status quo in kinda the same way that Fear Itself: The Deep relaunched the Defenders. But it didn’t. Oh well…
Again, that isn’t really a fault of the comic. Just a hope of a fan.
Conclusion: A rare event tie-in miniseries that was really good and had a purpose. The basic story of the vampires fighting the Hulk was very fun and the creators also introduced us to a new vampire super team: the Forgiven. How cool is that? Hopefully this isn’t the last we’ve seen of them! Wonderful art by Stegman too.
Grade: B+
– Dean Stell
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