Tag Archives: Dracula

Paul Buhle on Comics: ‘Lugosi: The Rise & Fall of Hollywood’s Dracula’

LUGOSI!

Koren Shadmi, Lugosi: The Rise & Fall of Hollywood’s Dracula. Foreword by Jon R. Lansdale. Los Angeles: Life Drawn/Humanoids, 2021, 160pp. $29.95.

Guest Review by Paul Buhle

It is best to admit that we live in terrible times, while we struggle to keep things from getting markedly worse, as they surely will without the needed collective effort that a large number of Americans (among others) seem not actually to want. How does this gloomy reality affect the creation of comic art, one of the more interesting artistic developments of our time, all the more important for its popularity among young people?

Horror comics once occupied the center of social controversy, along with the supposed gay relationship of Batman and Robin and other such McCarthy Era nonsense. The Congressional hearings that broke the booming comic industry of the 1940s-50s, reducing its successors to smaller fields, hit paydirt in one real way: those horror comics were indeed bloody and grim. Harvey Kurtzman’s widow Adele insisted that she and Harvey never allowed the children to read them, not even the EC horror comics whose heavy sales made Mad possible.

Did the controversy around horror comics connect somehow with the huge cult of horror films going back to the Silent days, getting hugely bigger in the 1930s and turning upon themselves as parody in the 1940s? Without a doubt. Nothing was bigger, nothing in the future of horror films all the way into the twenty-first century, could be bigger than Dracula and Frankenstein, aka Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff.

We have no Karloff comic yet, and we can hope that it is more politically attuned than the volume at hand for Boris’ leading role in the early Screen Actors Union, his ardent antifascism and his insistence that children watching the classic Frankenstein (1931) knew the supposed monster was the real victim of the ignorant, vicious villagers. His literary lineage, of course, traced back to Mary Wollstonecraft and the big metaphor about the degradations of modern aka emerging capitalist society with the monster as metaphoric proletarian body, both product and victim.

Dracula comes from a different place, of course, but is historically wound around a surprisingly similar character. The careful tracing in this comic of Bela Lugosi’s Hungarian background, his meteoric rise to stardom, his floundering personal life, downfall and notorious final engagement with Ed Wood, is enlivening but misses a whole lot. Hungary had a red revolution in 1919 followed by a rightwing takeover that placed the nation in a similar spot, a natural alliance, with Mussolini taking power in Italy, followed by Hitler in Germany.

What could have been….

Lugosi was not exactly a union or community organizer. But the artistic giant of the large Hungarian-American Left, Hugo Gellert, would have been well known to Lugosi, politically and culturally. Lugosi, asked by revolutionary leader Bela Kun to be the leader of the national trade union movement before his departure, seems to have become a New Deal Democrat in the US, but played a key role in the Hungarian-American Counncil for Democracy, that is, working closely with Gellart and with that other  famed  antifascist Bela: Bela Bartok. As the rampage of Fascism threatened the world, from the middle 1930s onward, the “two Belas” could be counted upon for financial contributions and public appearances rallying the immigrant communities, in wartime to raise funds and support antifascism, in this case, Russian and Hungarian in particular.

Of all this, we see nothing in the comic.  Nor the ways in which the descending Cold War moods brought depression and a sense of panic among erstwhile antifacists. Hollywood, in Lugosi’s last years, was the home of the Blacklist. He escaped by not actually belonging to any Left organizations. Or perhaps because he was already too beaten to subpoena.

All that said, the personal drama of Lugosi’s life is well told here, and the drawing is impressive. Too much seems to be about the complicated romantic life, women won and lost, the over-extended ego that seemed to take over his creative power, with too little about the complications of his Hollywood career, let alone the unique artistry with which he approached his parts.

There goes a great star…

The Black Cat (1935), directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, using a title from Edgar A. Poe’s work but bearing no other resemblance, was a masterpiece of horror and a brilliantly-wrought critique of the destruction brought upon humanity by the First World War. The two old military adverseries (the other is Boris Karloff) meet, and are seen with some of the staggeringly expessionist cinematography to that point in film-making anywhere. The subtle politics of the film are entirely lost to the comic artist, but the importance for Lugosi is clear. He was already a star, but now he became a super-star.

All too soon, the moment passed. By the time Robert Lees and his sreenwriting partner Fred Rinaldo delivered the script of Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein to the studio in 1947 (sadly, Karloff had been replaced by Lon Chaney, Jr., and Lugosi is strictly camp), the cliches of monster films were already being turned inside out and played for laughs. Actually, with Bud and Lou offering up the best comedy around, Lugosi and Karloff were perfectly straight-faced and perfect.

But of course, this suggested a drift downward. Where to go from self-satire? Lugosi’s life was turning bad in every way. As depicted, he was addicted to drugs, unable to make a living or a personal appearance in Hollywood’s clubs and restaurants in the old way. He died too late, if earlier would have meant avoiding Ed Wood.

Paul Buhle

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Filed under Comics, Comics Reviews, Graphic Novel Reviews, Paul Buhle

Comics in 2020: BEEHIVE BOOKS

Page from the upcoming PETER PAN: excerpt from Brecht Evens’s Neverland.

We begin a whole new decade and I’m as excited as any of you! I feel that we have no time to lose to own this new emerging era. As for the world of comics and graphic novels, I direct your attention to a new leader in all things beautiful and unusual, the publisher, Beehive Books. Beehive Books has demonstrated a commitment to excellence that will only continue to grow into 2020 and beyond. Here are some compelling facts and enticing news from Beehive Books:

DRACULA: THE EVIDENCE

In 2019, our first titles landed in book stores, and the world began to take notice of the strange magic brewing in West Philadelphia. Thanks to the unsurpassed talents of Paul Kepple, Yuko Shimizu, Justin Duerr, Ronald Wimberly, Bill Sienkiewicz, Guillermo Del Toro, Michael Cunningham, Paul Pope, Omar Abdullah, Ramsey Campbell, Denis & Violet Kitchen, Gary Panter and many more, we ended the year with a lot more trophies, statues, plaques, clippings, plaudits and honors than we began it with.

ARTEMISIA

At Beehive we don’t believe in Instagrammish humble-bragging, so here’s some straight up old fashioned bragging about things we did this year

ILLUMINATED EDITIONS

We are, first and foremost, dreamers of the wild-eyed variety. But publishing, this exercise in the possible, requires a keen eye on the bottom line. We’re learning to be better business-people as we go.

Due to the intimacy of our thousand-odd readership, the projects that have sustained us financially and kept this ship afloat have been the ambitious and elaborate (read: expensive) ones — our entirely implausible experimental briefcase-housed ephermeral facsimile of Bram Stoker’s Dracula; great books of the past, gloriously illuminated by the greatest cartoonists and graphic artists of the day; giant, deluxe, painstakingly researched monographs on master artists like Harrison Cady and Herbert Crowley, whose brilliant work must be saved from slipping into the forgotten past.

LAAB MAGAZINE #4: This Was Your Life!

Next year we want to push even further in the direction of our more elaborate and ambitious projects. Bizarre formats, profuse box sets, paper sculptures, printed art objects, limited edition handmade artist books… Startling voices, forgotten treasures, otherworldly inventions. Books within books and wheels within wheels. Our ambition is to build paper worlds into which our readers can disappear. Refuge from the quick-and-dirty disposability of an increasingly digital and mass-manufactured world. And if you have your own ideas for any projects that push the boundaries of publishing, we always love to hear your thoughts and submissions! Drop us a line at info@beehivebooks.com, or encourage your friends to do so.

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Filed under Beehive Books, Comics, Comics News, graphic novels

Review: DOCTOR DRACULA and JOURNAL by Kalen Knowles

DOCTOR DRACULA and JOURNAL by Kalen Knowles

Kalen Knowles is a Seattle cartoonist who has created quite a fun selection of comics in solo efforts as well as anthologies that he has led. If you like more sophisticated horror, with a touch of whimsy, then check out his books right here.

From JOURNAL

Kalen Knowles, like many a cartoonist, is compelled to write and draw. Sometimes, a writer-artist simply needs to find a good reason to let loose and create. Mr. Knowles has found a fine vehicle in classic horror, namely H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos and Bram Stoker’s Dracula mythos. You can take either one or both and build new stories and worlds to your heart’s content. Knowles has done just that. His Journal series gives us a whimsical look at the journal entries of a young and misunderstood Cthulhu.

From DOCTOR DRACULA

Doctor Dracula provides us with various Dracula backstories. It has proven to be such a great jumping off point for creative exploration that Knowles has shared the spotlight with other cartoonists on a Doctor Dracula anthology. A closer look at other work by Knowles demonstrates an emerging talent making a lot of rad art. And I’d like to take a moment to talk about how an artist evolves.

The only way an artist grows is by creating. I think Knowles is on the right track as he draws from classic horror as well as other genres and sources: Sci-Fi, fantasy, RPG, mythology. It’s the responsibility of the artist to look out for themselves: be their harshest critic and biggest fan. When releasing a book, seek out clarity and make sure your name is front and center. Anthologies and social gatherings each have their essential place in an artist’s life but, in the end, it’s all about one particular artist and one particular art career. It’s about taking the work seriously. If an artist does that, the rest will follow. So, again, I believe Knowles is on the right track.

SNOWMAN by Kalen Knowles

You can find Kalen Knowles on Instagram and on Tumblr. And you can purchase his work here.

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Filed under Comics, Comix, Cthulhu, Destiny City Comics, Dracula, Horror, Seattle

DVD Blu-ray Review: DAN CURTIS’ DRACULA (1974)

Dan-Curtis-Jack-Palance-Dracula

The early 1970s made possible a very cool television movie starring legendary tough guy actor Jack Palance as Dracula. Imagine Clint Eastwood as Dracula. Close, but no cigar. Today, Liam Neeson could do it, but he probably won’t. The ’70s were a good time for vampires, along with zombies. It was a more innocent time. They had not even begun to claw the surface of today’s oversaturation. Dracula, as both a literary and horror figure, played well with audiences. And certain older actors were welcome too. There was something about Palance, his affinity for the dark side, that made him a natural for the role.

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Filed under Dark Shadows, Dracula, movies, MPI Home Video, Richard Matheson, Television, Vampires