Writers: Christopher Golden, Tim Lebbon / Penciller: Peter Berting / Colour Artist: Chris O'Halloran / Letterer: Clem Robins / Designer: Skyler Weissenfluh / Digital Art Technician: Ann Gray / Editor: Kath O'Brien / Collects: Mortal Terror #1 - #4 / HC / Dark Horse Comics
Date 6th February 2025 (Released: 30th October 2024)
Review by Paul Dunne
The Pitch: A vampire-flipped Dracula in which mortality means life... and life means death. Vampires Jonathan Harker, Lucy Westenra, and Mina Murray live in underground London, trying to keep the undead city safe from the rumoured mortals above who seek to give them life, only to kill them. But when the authorities refuse to believe mortals, let alone the mysterious Count Dracula, are anything more than myth, they are on their own to keep their city eternally dead. New York Times best-selling writers Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon team up with award-winning horror and fantasy artist Peter Bergting for this revamped twist on Dracula!
It's gotta be tough coming up with new takes on Dracula. Sure, there are thousands of Vampire stories, comics, movies... But Dracula is the one, the gold standard, story that anyone with an interest in writing vampire fiction is almost obliged to take a swing at. And with that many batters, it's hard to distinguish yourself on the field. What new can be brought to the legend? Well, in an excellent 'hold my fine wine' moment, Golden, Lebbon and Berting have decided just to turn the whole damn game upside down. This is Dracula: Rebooted. This is Dracula... Enemy of the Vampires!
Say what?
Mortal Terror is not just a figurative title. Here, the Vampires have won. The cast we recognise from Bram Stoker's Victoriana epistolary epic are now corrupted, having become Vampires or been born bloodsuckers. They, including Stoker’s hero Jonathan Harker, occupy high positions in the Vampire society. The humans, known as Mortals are rumoured to be feral, living in the broken streets of London Above, whilst in the London Below, a teeming underground Metropolis, the Vampires live out their days. But the truth is the Mortals are waging war against the Vampires, bombing them, ambushing them and taking orders from their leader, the man seducing Jonathan Harker's lover, Mina. A mysterious, enigmatic man...
Known as Dracula.
As concepts go, it's pretty tight. And so simple. Just make humans the myths that Vampires are and put the Vampires in the place of the humans. Golden, Lebbon and Bergting also get the benefit of decades of other fiction and media about Dracula, so the sexual elements present in Francis Ford Coppola's version of the story (and inherent in the Vampire myth) are given neat plays here. Also present is the tactical expertise the Warlord Vlad Tsepes would have displayed, with both Dracula and The Vampires displaying military skill. What has changed in the desire? A forever life is not what drives the characters to seek change. Instead, it is the chance to live, feel their hearts beat, breathe... And ultimately die. The reversals are exquisitely done. Whereas Stoker's Dracula had brides, this version has a kind of sisterhood of advisors, who've all been victims of the vampire curse in one way or another, and some of whom will have names that may be familiar to those of you who know Vampire fiction. The biggest reversal, aside from the title character himself, in the story's setting: The London Below, an underground city that mirrors the desolate Victorian one above it and houses the vampires. They are not a plague here, but the cultural victors. There’s a rich, pulsing vein of tragedy pulsing through this. You feel the loss of humanity, the void it creates. Vampires represent a perversion of nature. We’re human because we eventually die. We complete a cycle, so many turns around the sun. Vampires hide from the sun. The cycle becomes an endless line. Death doesn’t find them but instead marches to their tune.
Golden and Lebbon’s writing is skilled and efficient, giving you all the back story you need within the text, rather than endless pages of written lore and history. The characters feel like the logical extensions of their counterpoint in Stoker's original and their actions make sense in this new world. Bergting's art is at once familiar and new. The shadow of Mignola looms over this and Bergting embraces it, creating a detailed, fine world, gloomy darkness and a blazing land that was once England. If he isn't already doing it, he should be the guy taking over on Mignola's Witchfinder. O'Halloran's muted palette sells the underground city the Vampires dwell in completely, giving us a kind of sepia city of deadly night. Robins as ever, proves he's one of the best Letterers around when it comes to the Gothic trappings of these titles. Mortal Terror Offers you an alternate history of things that never were. Fiction layered upon fiction. Vampire revisionism. Go on, take a bite!
Mortal Terror is available at your local comic shop now!
