THE READING RHEUM: "CARMILLA" (1872)

 

 The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction cannot so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than with fact. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges; hence the conclusion of such a narration is apt to be less finished than an architectural finial.--Herman Melville, BILLY BUDD.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS 

After not having read Sheridan Le Fanu's CARMILLA in many years, I gave it a shot again last year, and found the novella underwhelming. Its status as "the first major lesbian vampire story" seemed dubious, though there's no doubt that exploitative film adaptations pursued that angle. In the story proper, though, the relationship between the vampiress and her victim Laura is strictly one-way. Laura doesn't even know what to make of Carmilla's weird claims of some shared destiny between the two of them. The closest the young woman comes to acknowledging some erotic fixation on Carmilla's part is that she briefly thinks about book-romances (possibly Byron's DON JUAN?) in which a "boyish lover" pretends to be female to gain access to a beloved. Yet Laura quickly dismisses that possibility, rationalizing that Carmilla's constant "languor" is "quite incompatible with a masculine system." Laura can hardly be a consenting partner in a lesbian affair if she can't even conceive of the possibility of girl-on-girl love. At most CARMILLA might rank as the first vampire story about lesbian rape.

However, on a more recent re-reading. I found myself interpreting the novella along lines similar to Melville's cited quote about "unfinished narration." In marked contrast to the more melodramatic vampire-novels, ranging from the 1847 VARNEY THE VAMPIRE to the 1897 DRACULA, CARMILLA feels very like a 20th-century modernist work, in love with ambiguity and "ragged edges."

One great ambiguity in the novella is that Carmilla seems to be a member of some strange network that has insinuated itself into human circles. This stands in contrast to both Varney and Dracula, who operate alone except for a few minions. But one never knows the nature of the vampire network. Numerous clues lead the reader to the discovery that Carmilla, languorous guest of Laura and her unnamed father, is Mircalla Karnstein, who has existed as an unholy bloodsucker since her death a hundred years earlier. But what about the other unnamed associates? One, the "Comtesse" who claims to be the mother of Carmilla in her various incarnations, may be a vampire herself, and may also be one of the vanished Karnsteins, whose castle stands in ruins at the start of the novella. Whoever the Comtesse is, she has resources enough to arrange the carriage that brings Carmilla to the estate where Laura lives. But who is the "hideous black man" in a turban whom Laura's governess sees inside the carriage? Similarly, when General Spielsdorf narrates the story as to how he lost his precious ward to the girlish-looking vampire-- at that time, using the name "Millarca"-- he mentions a "deathly pale" carriage driver working for the Comtesse. The later example of DRACULA invites the idea of human servants to a clutch of vampires. Yet Le Fanu proffers none of the copious explanations seen in Stoker.

How does Carmilla operate as an undead spirit? She first appears in Laura's bedroom when the latter is a girl of six. Little Laura sees the full-grown Carmilla, and feels something pierce her breast, though no wound eventuates. Then apparently Carmilla makes some chimerical decision not to trouble Laura again until the latter turns sixteen. Near the novella's conclusion, Baron Vordenburg-- Le Fanu's anticipation of Doctor Van Helsing-- claims that though vampires usually exsanguinate their victims right away, sometimes they make continued visits to a victim, as with "the gradual approaches of an artful courtship." All of the victims who are quickly slain by the vampiress are described as female. So was Le Fanu implying, very covertly, that Carmilla was a lesbian who only liked female prey? That would be a logical conclusion. But Le Fanu's characters never comment on the apparent preference, and Carmilla herself doesn't make even a passing comment on the male of the species. To be sure, Laura, living in a pre-lapsarian isolation from society, makes no comments on masculine charms either, aside from displaying a basic knowledge as to how men usually differ from women. But though Laura escapes either losing her life or becoming an undead herself, the novella certainly does not end with any ringing endorsement of the Daughters of Lesbos, and one never knows what Le Fanu thinks about the subject.

There are a lot of other "ragged edges" in CARMILLA, but I'll wind up with the matter of Carmilla's powers, contrasting Le Fanu's approach to Stoker's. DRACULA's opening chapters make the vampire's powers seem endless, but roughly halfway through the book, Van Helsing codifies all of the things vampires can and cannot do. The explications in the last couple of chapters of CARMILLA leave most questions unanswered. Why, when preying on Laura and on Spielsdorf's ward, does Carmilla manifests as a "sooty black thing," and yet as herself as well? Why does Laura manifest a wound from Carmilla's attentions when she's sixteen, but not when she's six? Carmilla is seen in her grave at the Karnstein ruins at the novel's end, but how did she get there? When Laura and her father leave their home, the father makes an excuse to Carmilla that they plan to go an errand. and he invites Carmilla to join them later for a picnic "in the ruined castle." The reader doesn't know how much the father knows at that point-- only that he's held some unreported conversations with the local doctor-- but one would think that any mention of the Karnstein ruins would keep Carmilla away from there. Instead, she makes a flagrant appearance there, before the eyes of Laura, her father and Spielsdorf. She easily thwarts Spielsdorf when he attacks her with an axe, but then, instead of attacking the three people capable of killing her, she simply vanishes. Does she take refuge in her grave because she thinks they can't find her there? Or-- is it possible that she practices bilocation? Perhaps the Carmilla at Laura's home is a magical double of the body that's confined to the grave, and only the spirit can leave, not the actual body-- which might one reason the non-physical form morphs into a shadow-creature.

So my verdict is that as a lesbian novel, CARMILLA is no great shakes. But as a horror story devoted to the utter unknowability of the twilight domain beyond the world of the living, it outstrips most if not all other vampire novels.

\\\ 

NEAR MYTHS: "DAWN OF THE DARK" (2014)

"Dawn of the Dark" is the final volume of the "harem adventure" manga ROSARIO + VAMPIRE, wrapping up, in rather rushed fashion, multiple storylines and character arcs established during the serial's ten-year run. I say "harem adventure" because even though author Akihisa Ikeda starts out the story with a typical "harem comedy" setup-- which is mirrored by the two seasons of the goofy anime adaptation--  the story is soon dominated by the mythos of adventure. Vampire Moka Akashiya and mortal-turned-monster Tsukune Aono, the main romantic duo of the series, are joined by several other adolescent yokai (Japanese for "monsters") to thwart a plot to cause a major conflict between the human race and the race of monsters, who have been concealing their existence from humans for centuries.

Since I've chosen to rate the concluding arc of ROSARIO as a near-myth, I'm not going to devote a lot of time to detailing the fine points of said arc. Suffice to say that Ikeda never totally exploits the mythic power of his original conception. At the series' opening, the reader meets Moka, a thoroughly winsome girl vamp when mortal Tsukune accidentally gets enrolled in a "school for monsters." Moka, though she projects an aura of sweet innocence, actually has a "Miss  Hyde" side, which is restrained by the "rosario" (a cross-pendant hung around her neck). Tsukune is the only one who can remove this talisman from Moka, and whenever he does, it's the equivalent of unleashing the demon within the innocent girl. Tsukune, in addition to being chased around the school by four other hot monster-babes, is frequently confused by his relation to "the two Mokas": the "outer" one that wears the rosario and is usually cute and rather shy, and the "inner" one without the cross-pendant, who's a powerful badass who often regards the weak Tsukune with contempt. Even when one plotline obliges Moka to infuse Tsukune with her own blood, making him into an "instant monster," the male character is still nowhere the equal of "inner-Moka" in terms of power.

Since the series starts out wiith, and is named for, the mystic seal that inhibits Moka's formidable powers, the concluding story-arc also involves the necessity for binding a far more dangerous demon. This is Alucard, who appears as a crossover between Godzilla and one of the Aliens--

--though, to be sure, he was originally a more human-like monster, when he was known as (big surprise) the 15th-century lord Dracula. Ikeda eventually pits Tsukune and his fighting harem-girls against a monster-organization called "Fairy Tale," who are responsible for a plot to unleash this titanic monster on humankind. Alucard, though technically not related to Moka, serves as a kind of "evil father-figure," particularly because his first wife, the vampire Akasha, binds him into a deep sleep by infusing him with her energies.

Akasha is then rescued from her bondage to Alucard for a time, apparently so that she can sire Moka by another vampire, one Issa. However, because Alucard remains a threat to Moka, Akasha designs the rosario-charm as a means of protecting Moka from the Big Bad-- though to be sure, the nature of the charm is re-interpreted in the finale a few times as the protagonists learn new information.

The most interesting psychological myth of the series is that Akasha doesn't just make the rosario, but also imposes a clone of herself over the natural personality of Moka when she's still a child. Thus, "angry Moka" is closer to the real nature of the heroine, while "sweet Moka's" personality is modeled on that of Akasha-- though, to be sure, Akasha always comes off as being no less of a badass than "angry Moka."

Does this mean that, throughout the early arcs of the series, young Tsukune is actually falling in love with Akasha, not with "inner Moka?" Ikeda tries to provide his readers with reasons as to why this is not the case: that the Akasha-persona is essentially a clone, a nearly blank slate, and that once Akasha completely departs the series for good, the two Moka-personas become interfused, and she's more like a combination of her Jekyll aspect and her Hyde aspect. I suppose Ikeda's basic idea here is that of a mother shielding her daughter from the depredations of an evil father-figure, but the symbolic discourse never really gells.

Still, though "Dawn" and its preceding arcs are decent reads, I never felt that Ikeda had a good handle on the symbolic aspects of his vampire mythology, or any of the other monsters, whether they were derived from the stories of Japan (the "snow maiden" Mizore) or Europe (the "succubus" Kurumu). They're all very amusing, but never intrinsically fascinating, in contrast, say, to the much more rigorous vamp-mythos of DANCE IN THE VAMPIRE BUND.

MYTHCOMICS: NOSFERATU (1989)

Phillippe Druillet's NOSFERATU, given that it's a hymn to irony and solipsism, is in some ways the Frenchiest of French comics. In this it diverges from the works that popularized the word "Nosferatu" for modern audiences-- both Bram Stoker's DRACULA and F.W. Murnau's arty knockoff-adaptation NOSFERATU-- for both of these are melodramas in which an evil undead preys upon the living, only to be defeated and destroyed by the righteous actions of good people.

Druillet's narrative takes place in an unexplained post-apocalyptic world, implicitly Earth, though the word "Nosferatu"-- applied to the main character by persons unknown-- is one of the few touchstones with Earth's real-world history. This Nosferatu was apparently an ordinary human at some time, but the catastrophe mutated him into a science-fiction vampire, with the ability to fly and to feed off the living (although Druillet shows him eating flesh as often as drinking blood). From what the reader sees in the story, all other humans have also been mutated into weird non-human creatures.

For several pages, Nosferatu-- who has only a nodding resemblance to the vampire in Murnau's film-- wanders his wreck-of-a-world, looking for prey. He makes brief reference to how he and others escaped the brunt of the catastrophe by hiding underground, but the reader never sees any of Nosferatu's companions. At first he's also hunting for a female companion named Imma, making plans to carry food back to her, since she's immobilized by gangrene. But since he seems to forget her rather quickly, it's possible that she's either dead from the start of the narrative, or that she exists only in his imagination. Indeed, no explicitly female humanoids are seen in the story.

Nosferatu does find a little prey among a tribe of mutants he calls "the Cripples." These characters look like hairy dwarves, but the only thing "crippled" about them is that some of them have spikes in place of hands, while the others have just one spike and one human-looking hand. The Cripples are as eager to devour Nosferatu as he is to prey on them, but he manages to chomp off one dwarf's human-looking hand, which sustains him for the next few pages.

Nosferatu continues to roam the world, moaning about his solitary status as "the last vampire." He muses that "the important thing in life" for an individual  is to conform to the image that one's society has of said individual, but that even this doleful conformity is beyond Nosferatu, because "I'm both individual and society." He then stumbles across what he mistakes for a living female, but which turns out to be a metal dummy used for some advertising display. Despite this, he carried the dummy around with him for a while, talking to it, naming it "Lilit" (after Lilith, the reputed first wife of Adam), and wondering, "What were you selling, Lilit? Toothpaste? Shoes? Food?" He conceives the notion that, given his status as the sole intelligent life on the planet, he ought to become a poet, so he spontaneously spouts assorted free-verse from the works of Baudelaire (whose translators are duly credited in the comic). He comes across another tribe of mutated humanoids, but they show no intelligence, and one of them displays its lack of social skills by biting off the dummy's head, ending Nosferatu's amour fou.

Deprived of even this pitiable companionship, Nosferatu remarks that he's "tired of life." He "aspires to purity, with no hunger, no thirst, no breathing." However, after a little more soliloquizing, he does stumble across something that tests his alleged desire for fellowship. He falls in with a tribe of carrion-eaters that he conceives to be his kindred, and though most of them look more like werewolves than vampires, at least some of them can speak. However, the werewolves have their own problems, like a big serpent-creature that perpetually preys on them. (In an odd choice of real-world references, the creature is named for the San Andreas Fault, apparently just because the beast comes out of the ground.) Nosferatu devises a weapon to kill the beast. However, the stratagem fails and Nosferatu runs away from the conflict, so that he becomes an object of scorn to the werewolves.

Disgusted with his lot, Nosferatu decides to build a space-ark and depart the corrupt world for the stars,. He does so within the sight of the werewolves, which has the effect of making them his audience, even if they're cast in the role of "Noah's scoffers." During the construction of the ark, Nosferatu's single-mindedness has a salutary effect on his biology: he mutates further, becoming a being who derives nourishment from the air. However, when he finds he can't power his ship, all of the werewolves laugh at him. This puts the nail in the coffin, so to speak, of the last vampire's desire for society. He transforms into a mutant with mental powers, destroys both the werewolves and his own ship, and then flies off to the stars under his own power, though he continues to make ironic remarks to the readers like "Closing credits. Fade to black"-- which I suppose serve the same purpose as Baudelaire's famous address to his "hypocrite lecteurs."

NOSFERATU shares with other Druillet works its creator's imaginative prolificity, but this one-shot work is much better organized (and hence hyperconcrescent!) than most other Druillet works I've encountered. And, unlike a lot of French comedic works, it's actually funny. I think it was Durgnat who said that watching French comedy films was like watching a bear trained to dance: the pleasure of the spectacle is not that the bear dances well, it's that he can do it at all.

WEAKLINGS WITH WEAPONS PT. 2

One of the most famous tropes of the superhero idiom is that of "strength concealed by weakness," or, alternately, "strength evolving from weakness." -- DJINN WITH SUMMONER, PT. 1.

The two  DJINN essays focused largely on characters who make use of "genie-like" entities to do their fighting for them. In some cases, like that of Ahmad from the 1924 THIEF OF BAGDAD and the eponymous star of Disney's ALADDIN, the main character demonstrates high dynamicity, at least for an ordinary human with no special powers. This dynamicity does not depend primarily on having a great weapon, like the aforementioned Richard Mayhew, but on a mastery of otherwise ordinary weapons.

There are a handful of exceptions. One is Michael Moorcock's sword-and-sorcery hero Elric. Born an albino, Elric is only able to fight normal human opponents thanks to sorcery. As  the panels from CONAN #13 show, Elric can only match Conan's formidable strength by the use of his sword Stormbringer, which gives him  both physical power and fighting-skill.

Despite his dependence on his sword, Elric is still a megadynamic hero in a way that, say, Hubert Hawkins of THE COURT JESTER is not. Elric may not be able to fight without his sword,  but he must exert his own will to battle his enemies. Hubert's talents are thrust upon him by an outside manipulator, and so he remains at base a weakling even with a weapon. Stormbringer qualifies as a method of *interiorization,* which I defined as a situation in which "the hero's true, powerful self is concealed within him, and must be summoned from within." Magic potions are far more often used than magical weapons, ranging from the lotion that makes the classical Jason temporarily invulnerable to Popeye's spinach and Hourman's Miraclo pills.

Charms are even dicier than weapons. I've stated on other occasions that I consider Bram Stoker's DRACULA to be a combative novel, which implies that the starring vampire is opposed by other megadynamic forces, the vampire-hunters organized by Van Helsing-- or more specifically, the more physically prepossessing members of the coterie, mainly Jonathan Harker and Quincy Morris. Van Helsing, though not an active figure in the battles with Dracula, is the only member of the group who understands the undead's true nature, and so he's able to marshal such weapons as crosses and holy water against the Count. However, the power of these charms-- implicitly stemming from the power of Stoker's Catholic deity-- are not powers inherent in Van Helsing or any of his aides. The charms cannot be used without human hands guiding them, but the charms' power is not tied to the *will* of Dracula's antagonists. The megadynamicity of Stoker's vampire-hunters inheres not in their weapons, but in the personal fighting-skills of Harker and Morris in particular.

Thus, when the Van Helsing of the 1931 DRACULA wields a cross against his opponent, Dracula must yield, but he yields to the power of God, not to the power of Van Helsing.

Nevertheless, a vampire-hunter's *amplitude* may get boosted quite a bit by his daring or unconventional use of charms or similar devices, just as I demonstrated in WEAKLINGS Pt. 1 with respect to the Jack Burton character. In the 1958 HORROR OF DRACULA, As played by Peter Cushing, Van Helsing becomes a younger, more active man, who first stuns the Count by running along a table in spectacular swashbuckler-style in order to escape the vampire and expose him to the sun.

Moments later, Cushing uses a mundane object to make a cross. I'm fairly certain that Stoker never shows anyone stymie Dracula with a near approximation of a cross; I've always believed that the original Count was affected only by genuine religious icons. So Van Helsing is perhaps inventing an "allergy theory;" that vampries aren't affected by Christian supernatural forces but by their (the vampires') own allergic reaction to anything that even looks like a cross. Thus, even though Van Helsing neither receives power from a cross, nor channels any of his own through it, he does gain megadynamic status from his inventive handling of an otherwise mundane weapon.

Throughout the various works of supernatural horror, there are many other situations where a potential victim repels a monster with the help of supernatural forces that they summon through some charm or other medium, and once again, one can only determine megadynamicity on a case by case basis. For instance, at the conclusion of the 1932 MUMMY, the evil sorcerer Imhotep is foiled when a bolt of fire from the statue of Isis burns up the Scroll of Thoth and returns the mummy to the dust of his origins.

Isis, or whatever force is left of the once-popular deity,only intervenes in answer to the call of her former priestess Anck-es-en-Amon, currently occupying the body of a modern woman, whom Imhotep plans to kill. But there's no implication that either the priestess or her modern descendant have any power of their own; they only call up greater power that is not intimately associated with them, summoners who have no real contact with their djinns.

However, on occasion charms may be used as channels for inner power, rather than for external force. The obscure 1981 film JAWS OF SATAN looks, from this VHS art, much like the first image of Van Helsing seen above: a priest wielding the power of God through the instrument of the cross.

However, the script is more ambivalent about where the main character, Father Tom Farrow, gets his ability to fight demons. In this review I wrote:

Farrow certainly doesn't believe he's worthy of a visit from the Dark Lord himself, but in time, he finds out that he shares a special heritage. Back in the days when St. Patrick allegedly cast all serpents out of Ireland, one of Patrick's followers-- not the saint himself-- attracted the ire of the local druids. They cursed him and all his progeny to be slain by snakes, which were to be commanded by Satan himself in the form of a cobra-- or something like that.  

Though it's a ridiculous premise, I have to give the filmmakers props for the audacity of invoking ancient Irish curses to explain a bunch of hostile snakes. In the end, Farrow gets his Catholic moxie together, confronts the King Cobra with his cross, and exorcises it in a flash of flame. It's a poverty-row version of the EXORCIST exorcism, but I found that it does imply a greater conflict of supernatural forces, so that this cheapjack horror-film does become a combative drama. It helps that Farrow also isn't just any old priest, but someone with a special destiny and ancestors to avenge.

That "special destiny" is suggested in the climactic scene, where in my view Farrow seems to be pulling power out of himself, rather than down from heaven, in order to set his Satanic opponent on fire. So, like the Peter Cushing Van Helsing, Father Tom joins the company of the megadynamic elite for the way he combines his own strength with the charms of his faith.

MYTHCOMICS: HELLSING (1997-2008)

Ye shall only have enemies to be hated, but not enemies to be despised. Ye must be proud of your enemies; then, the successes of your enemies are also your successes.-- Nietzsche,  "War and Warriors," THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA.

Since the rise of the distinct genre of horror-fiction in the 19th century, the vampire subgenre has often centered its horrific thrills upon the victim's loss of identity. The vampire breaks down the normal borders of his victim's whole being. The attack may be physical, as in drinking someone's blood, or it may be on a psychological/metaphysical level, forcing the victim to drink vampiric blood, so that he or she loses even the identity of a victim, becoming instead another being poised on the borders of the living and the dead. Bram Stoker's DRACULA provides the "ur-text" of vampire mythology for later authors, and the majority of authors have followed Stoker's example, focusing upon vampirism as a series of metaphysical and/or psychological assaults upon the victim's individual will. Vampire-tropes are less often used for large-scale sociological myths, except when they're merged with other metaphenomenal tropes, like the apocalyptic war between good and evil.

War threatens the human sense of identity in a much less personal manner. When wars are staged on the apocalyptic scale, it doesn't matter whether they take place in naturalistic or metaphenomenal domains, for all such "world wars" draw countless persons from numerous realms, forcing them to subsume their individual desires in order to defeat a common enemy. DRACULA presents the reader with a covert, small-scale conflict between the Transylvanian Count and a band of English citizens (and one American) led by the Dutch doctor Abraham Van Helsing. But what if a "world war" took place between the living and the undead, with two of the undead pledged to defend the living against a mad warmonger?

Kohta Hirano's ten-volume manga epic HELLSING takes its name from Stoker's vampire-hunter Van Helsing, though it's hard to imagine that the author wasn't aware of the accidental pun in the name, implying that "hell" could "sing." The story takes place in what seems to be an alternate world, in which Protestants and Catholics still mount armed campaigns against one another. The Protestants of England are represented by the organization Hellsing, masterminded by Lady Integra Hellsing, descendant of the original Dutch doctor. However, the group Hellsing's purpose is not to skirmish with Catholics but to guard against eruptions of the supernatural. Only two historical events are repeatedly stressed in HELLSING: the Van Helsing group's original defeat of Dracula in the late 1800s, and the defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War. How much time has passed, and how many other differences there may be in the world's post-WWII makeup, are not things Hirano bothers with, as one of his primary purposes is to render to his readers a big, noisy shonen fantasy full of blazing guns and bloody fangs. It's also a loving tribute to other pop-cultural myths other than than Bram Stoker's, for it includes references to APOCALYPSE NOW, DUNE and THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES. Even Hirano's generic name for the monsters in his world-- including not only vampires but zombies and a few werewolves-- betrays its pop-culture roots, since the name of the monsters, "Midians," is most likely borrowed from the monster-filled city of Midian in Clive Barker's 1988 novella CABAL.

And yet, Hirano weaves a tapestry that is as deep as it is wide: one that evokes not only the vampire-myth's concerns with personal identity, but also the philosophical concepts of Friedrich Nietzsche as they apply to the chaos of war and the nature of the human will.

Even before the threat to England proper begins, Integra is forced to fight for control of Hellsing following the death of her father. Her corrupt uncle plots to slay Integra and almost succeeds, except that Integra stumbles upon a hidden secret of her distant Dutch ancestor: the dessicated corpse of Count Dracula, held in a room in Hellsing headquarters. In time-honored cinematic tradition, Integra sheds blood upon the corpse and it comes back to life, slaying her attackers. But unlike most versions of the master vampire, this one becomes the servant of the female descendant of his own slayer, and becomes her primary weapon in the ensuing conflict. He even signifies his subjugation by taking the reverse-name "Alucard," even though Integra is fully aware of his true identity. However, as if to prove that old habits die hard, especially among the undead, Alucard uses his power to enlist his own servant: another Englishwoman, the naive but feisty police officer Victoria Seras. Throughout the hellacious battle that comes, Victoria serves as something akin to the callow new recruit in war-films, and it's through her eyes that the reader sees the horrors of bloody battle.

Stoker's fictional Dracula was the bane of England in the 1800s, but Nazi Germany became a real-life threat over thirty years later. In the midst of sectarian quarrels between the Protestants and the Catholics, a recrudescent quasi-Nazi movement arises. I say "quasi-Nazi" because the movement has no preoccupation either with the tenets of Nazi belief or with Hitler's desire to bring all of Europe under his aegis. Rather, a mysterious leader, known only as The Major, marshals massive forces against England, forces including both mortal men and "Midians," since only the latter have the power to battle Alucard. The Major's only purpose is to unleash "the dogs of war" at every opportunity, apparently agreeing with Nietzsche ( though the philosopher is never directly quoted)-- regarding the salutary effects of war:

Ye say it is the good cause which halloweth even war? I say unto you: it is the good war which halloweth every cause.

I won't go into great detail about the military maneuvers of this "Second Blitz" or about the many side-stories respecting supporting-characters. However, I should mention Iscariot, the Catholic assassination wing, in which Hirano seems to have conflated the stories of the arch-traitor Judas and those of the Hebrew Zealots, the anti-Roman terrorists from the era of Jesus of Nazareth. Iscariot's foremost killer is Irish-Catholic Anthony Anderson, an inhumanly strong human being who would rather fight the master vampire than the Major. To religious fanatic Anderson, the vampire is the epitome of blasphemy. (Anderson's scenes, though brutal, always convey a bit of humor, since the assassin speaks in a thick brogue that makes Barry Fitzgerald sound like Noel Coward.)

Alucard shares sentiments of both the Major and Anderson. In life, Alucard fought in the wars between his people and the Ottoman Turks, and saw so much slaughter that he came to conceive of human fighting as a form of "prayer" to an uncaring God. At some point he even thinks that hecatombs of wasted lives will attract God's attention, thinking that "Jerusalem will descend" as a result. Yet Alucard, unlike Stoker's Dracula, is disgusted with his prolonged existence, and fantasizes about being destroyed by someone like Anderson. Further, whereas Stoker's Count never remembered any of his victims, Alucard is a composite being, who has no true shape (or identity) of his own, and who is made up of all the previous souls he's devoured. In fact, in the climax the Major even finds a way to use Alucard's formless nature against him.

The climax illustrates Hirano's skillful opposition between the human will and the will-lessness of monsters like Alucard. The Major reflects to Integra that he knows it would feel "wonderful" to become a vampire, to exist through "combination with the existence of others, the fusion of lives, the unification of minds." Yet he believes that fragile humanity is more glorious, due to the individual's sense of identity. "What's mine ist mine. Each hair, each drop of blood. I am me," says the Major, putting forth a Nietzschean take on Aristotle's law of identity. Even after it's revealed that the villain is a cyborg-- accounting for his youthful looks many years after WWII-- he insists, prior to his destruction, that "so long as I haf my own vill... I'll still be human!"

Admittedly, because HELLSING is a big noisy shonen manga, it's not concerned with philosophical subtleties. But among the ranks of hyperviolent fantasy-adventures that also have philosophical undercurrents, HELLSING is one of the best of its kind.

TRANSITIVE MONSTERS PT. 2

In TRANSITIVE MONSTERS , I concluded my discussion of combative modes in two horror film-serials with this paragraph:

On a related note, I have not yet finished re-screening all of the Hammer DRACULA films. However, even if I never get around to SCARS OF DRACULA, I tend to believe that the combative mode in the key films of the series-- notably HORROR OF DRACULA and BRIDES OF DRACULA-- that all films within the series will be subsumed by the combative mode, even those that I've judged to be individually subcombative, like TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA.

In recent months, I've concluded a re-screening of all of the Hammer DRACULA films, and have reviewed all of them on my film-blog except for the last, sometimes known as THE SEVEN BROTHERS MEET DRACULA. The last film is an anomalous one in that the narrative emphasis is not on the vampire lord, but on "the seven brothers," a group of kung-fu fighters who become allied to Van Helsing in his quest to destroy the vampire count. Thus, what I write about the series concerns only the eight films preceding SEVEN BROTHERS-- HORROR OF DRACULA, BRIDES OF DRACULA (which doesn't actually have Dracula in it, though Van Helsing's character carries over from the first film), DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS, DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE, TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA, SCARS OF DRACULA, DRACULA 1972 A.D., and THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA.

Of these eight films, the first, second, seventh and eighth are combative, while the other four are not. As I said, BRIDES does not involve Dracula, but it features a bracing climax in which Peter Cushing's Van Helsing defeats the centric monster, one Baron Meinster. This was also the only film of these eight that did not include actor Christopher Lee as Van Helsing's opponent. It's arguable that Van Helsing's destruction of Meinster-- trapping the vampire in the shadow of a cross, created by windmill-blades-- is the most strikingly original of the four combative films.

Now that I've made these observations re: the combative mode in the series, I hypothesize that the Hammer producers found it hard to conceive of any mortals opposing their forceful fiend unless the opponent was (1) Van Helsing himself, (2) forces allied to Van Helsing (the "seven brothers"), or (3) a strong Van Helsing analogue. Such an analogue appears in 1963's KISS OF THE VAMPIRE, in which a Professor Zimmer unleashes a magical curse-- in the form of a flock of bats-- upon a clutch of evil vampires.

As I mentioned in the review, this climax was one that Peter Cushing didn't want to perform for BRIDES OF DRACULA, so that the curse-work was recycled into another movie. KISS OF THE VAMPIRE was not in the Dracula/Van Helsing series, yet strangely, it's the only Hammer film outside the series that had a combative conclusion, in contrast to four other non-series entries: THE VAMPIRE LOVERS, VAMPIRE CIRCUS, LUST FOR A VAMPIRE, and TWINS OF EVIL.

As my reading of the Dracula series stands, it's evenly divided between combative and sub-combative, which would make it difficult to judge the series as a whole according to my original standard, the 51 percent rule. Of course, the first part of TRANSITIVE MONSTERS was written after I formulated a more exacting formulation for judging the combative mode and related matters, the active share/passive share theory.  By this formulation, the actual number of combative stories within a mythos is not the final determinant, which gives me an "out" for any series that's evenly divided between combative and subcombative entries.

Generally speaking, given a 50-50 situation, t have tended to favor the combative over the subcombative. The "King Kong" series of Merian C. Cooper comprises just two interrelated films, the 1933 KING KONG and its same-year sequel SON OF KONG, but the first film's combative characteristics have proven more culturally significant than the sequel's subcombative theme of self-sacrifice.

However, in contrast to my prediction in Part One, I've determined that the eight-film in the Dracula-focused series-- even though it includes one vampire who is a "Dracula wannabe"-- is dominantly subcombative.

To show this, I'll contrast the Dracula series to that of Freddy Krueger. I expounded upon the latter series in Part One, showing that although the first two films in the series were subcombative, the next four all stressed the idea that average teenagers could become aware of Freddy's dream-based depredations and could, with some mental training, turn themselves into "dream warriors." Though Freddy Krueger is always the star of the show, ordinary humans can "ramp up" their abilities to fight him on his own terms.

There's no such "ramping up" in any of the Hammer Draculas that don't include Van Helsing; the implication is always that ordinary humans can only muddle through and win by last-minute flashes of inspiration.

In DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS the vampire is only defeated when one of his enemies shoots holes in the ice Dracula just happens to be standing on.

In DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE, the vampire's male opponent Paul manages to push Dracula off the edge of a cliff, but the only reason this stops the vampire is because he just happens to get impaled on a cross that another character tossed off the cliff earlier.

In TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA, the only reason Dracula's opponents survive is because they just happen to be in a church during his attack and have access to a cross.

And in SCARS OF DRACULA, the count is defeated not by his human opponents, but by the heavens themselves, when lightning strikes the metal rod Dracula happens to be holding.

The attitude of the Hammer producers toward the potential of any character save Van Helsing contrasts strongly with that of Bram Stoker, where ordinary men like Jonathan Harker and Quincy Morris do "ramp up" to slay a monster far more powerful than they are.

I'm not trying to claim that dumb luck never plays a role in the victories of more megadynamic characters. But when a series shows no interest in giving its villain/monster a range of worthy opponents, then it suggests that they are more interested in evoking the expression of "fear" than of "courage," to draw upon the opposed affects mentioned in this essay.

And if the series is more invested in fear than in courage, this, more than its pure percentage of combative episodes, aligns it with the subcombative mode.

ADDENDA 3-3-2018: I've completed a review of THE SEVEN BROTHERS MEET DRACULA, a.k.a. THE LEGEND OF THE SEVEN GOLDEN VAMPIRES. I stated above that I didn't consider this to be part of the normative "Dracula series" because the 1974 film placed its narrative emphasis upon the "seven brothers" rather than Dracula. I've amended this opinion on the movie's focal presences to one in which Peter Cushing's Van Helsing and David Chiang's "Hsi Ching" are the principal heroes, given that Ching's six brothers and one sister are subordinate, merely functional characters. Further, I now realize that there's an even better reason to exile LEGEND from the Dracula canon: because the film's continuity doesn't jibe with that of the normative series. Thus, though I realize that a lot of film-serials have at best modest continuity-- the Godzilla serials, for example-- this kung-fu/horror melange is better understood as an entity separate from the rest of the Hammer Draculas. Yet, even if I did deem LEGEND as part of the Hammer "Drac Pack," it's presence would not undermine my argument that the series as a whole is dominantly subcombative.

MYTHCOMICS: "WHERE LURKS THE CHIMERA" (TOMB OF DRACULA #26-28, 1974-5)

The 1971 modification of the Comics Code sprang from both economic and cultural forces. As I pointed out in this essay, in the late 1960s American comics-publishers needed new outlets beyond the standard juvenile audience. The original Comics Code came about because the genres of crime and horror brought the industry unwanted publicity. Crime never made a major comeback, but horror never entirely left, surviving throughout the Silver Age in relatively restrained “mystery” tales. But the Warren line of black-and-white magazines, beginning with CREEPY in 1964, consistently demonstrated a market for more visceral horror. Thus it was only a matter of time until other publishers sought to capture that market in four-color comics. It would be interesting to know what cultural indicators convinced the industry leaders that the game was worth the candle, but in any case, the early 1970s saw a marked increase in horror-titles from “the Big Two." With a few exceptions DC Comics focused largely on anthologies, while Marvel usually chose to feature particular characters related to the theme of terror.

Marvel’s most long-lasting success in this department was TOMB OF DRACULA, launched in 1972. In some respects thiis version of the vampiric count had a lot in common with Marvel’s world-beating villains, in that Dracula preened and postured almost as much as Doctor Doom. But Marvel’s count was crafted so as to take advantage of certain constant themes in vampire mythology—in particular, that of religion.

“Where Lurks the Chimera” is the title of the first of three stories running from TOMB #26-28. Though the title displays a cookie-cutter portentousness typical of Marvel story-titles, this time it’s actually relevant to the theme of the story.

In Greek myth, a chimera is a fearsome monster, notable for being a tripartite beast, with a goat’s head, a lion’s body, and a serpent’s tail. In the Marv Wolfman/Gene Colan story, the chimera is a magical statue created long before the nation of Greece existed. Wolfman possibly chose to name his fictional statue after the Greek creature to address a major plot-point: that in the past the statue has been broken up into its three constituent pieces, and that only recently have the pieces been recovered and brought together. The statue is rumored to confer immense powers upon its owner. This is reason enough for a certain world-beating vampire to chase after it.

Though vampire stories appear around the world, the tradition of the fictional vampire is rooted in Christian belief and folklore Most of the TOMB stories prior to this one did not stray far from these origins, but Wolfman expanded the compass of the central character’s adventures. This time Dracula contends not only with a rival villain who also wants the Chimera—later revealed to be an evildoer named Doctor Sun—but also with a young Jewish man who seeks to protect the statue from falling into evil hands.

Though many comics-professionals of the period were Jewish, including Marv Wolfman, Jews were not given much literal representation in comics until the 1970s. The statue of the Chimera, though, is first seen in the hands of two yarmulke-wearing Jews living in London: young yeshiva-student David Eschol and his father Joshua. Joshua is the image of the saintly old learned Jew, confident in his unwavering faith and his ability to remain uncorrupted by the availability of the Chimera’s power. He might be deemed a descendant of the “Rabbi Lowe” character of the classic "Golem" narrative. 

David is much more uncertain about handling a “creature of nightmare,” and as things turn out, he’s proven right. Joshua’s acquisition of the Chimera’s three sections prompts Doctor Sun to send a gang of thugs to the old man’s shop. The thugs kill Joshua, club David unconscious, and abscond with the Chimera—or rather, two parts of the Chimera, for David manages to keep hold of the tail-piece.

Dracula arrives at the Eschols’ shop too late to claim his prize, but he does see that David still possesses the one segment. While Dracula himself goes to look for the other two segments, he sends one of his human agents—a previously introduced young woman, Shiela Whittier-- to contact David and to keep tabs on him. Shiela, in contrast to most of Dracula’s pawns, is actually in love with the vampire. The count is at least slightly moved by her loyalty, though, given his aristocratic ego, he believes that he’s owed such fealty from all those who serve him.

I’m omitting various irrelevant subplots, as well as Dracula’s peril when he tracks down Doctor Sun and is almost slain in a death-trap. But once the vampire recovers, he tracks down David and Shiela. As if seeking to assuage his ego—he was almost killed by Sun, after all—Dracula confronts David and demands the tail-piece. He then demonstrates his ability, even with the incomplete segment, to conjure forth a giant fire-lion in the sky, which spits fire down on London, and then sends a shower of rain to put out the fire.

Wolfman’s script is a little vague as to why David so quickly yields the segment to Dracula, even though the vampire does not use his hypnotic power on the young man. Why does David do so?

Early in issue #26, one of Wolfman’s captions reads: in part, “for all these years David Eschol has never once strayed form the path outlined by his forefathers. But before the night is done, the path of his youth shall venture down many new roads—all but one of which shall lead to hell.”  If his father is the face of the unwavering Believer, David is cast in the role of the Doubting Thomas. As David comes to a realization that Dracula incarnates the evil his father foreswore, David defends himself, using a Star of David to hold off Dracula after the fashion of the more popular cross.

Yet Dracula’s evil is seductive. He plays upon David’s religiosity by claiming that the Jewish god, if he created the world, is therefore also the creator of all evils. David weakly refutes the charge with the “free choice” argument. Dracula fires back with the “great man” argument:

“Man does not have his choice in things. He follows the will of his betters—and he is destroyed if he does not.”

Despite never having met David Eschol before, the count intuits that the young man is gnawed by doubts, and promises to give David a sense of ”order,” much as his own father did, albeit in a thoroughly demonic mirror-image. David does not exactly give in, but he lowers his guard, giving Dracula the chance to attack. However, David wounds the vampire with the Star of David—at which point the henchmen of Doctor Sun arrive, capturing all three; David, Sheila and the vampire.

If the story;s second part is largely about David’s temptation, the third places its emphasis upon lovelorn Shiela—though the last part of the “Chimera” tale suffers from incredibly poor plotting by Wolfman. The story opens with Doctor Sun—still not as yet named or seen on-panel—gloating over his captives and boasting about the fact that he now possesses all three parts of the Chimera, giving him access to “the power of the cosmic eternal.”

Yet, the only thing Sun does with this power is to torment his captives with horrific visions. Dracula is surrounded by all of his regular enemies—Blade, Rachel Van Helsing, and so on—who try to destroy him. David sees his own father speaking the same heretical words Dracula spoke earlier, such as, “There is no God! There is no supreme being! I lied!” Only Shiela is actually shown a vision that reflects an unwelcome truth: a vision in which Dracula seems ready to make love to her, and yet turns into a skull-headed avatar of Death in the end.

Since Dracula is the star of the comic, he alone manages to break free of the false visions. He overcomes Sun’s henchmen, though the master villain escapes. Dracula reclaims the Chimera-statue, but his blasé trust in Shiela’s unconditional love causes him to drop his guard. Shiela snatches the statue from him and shatters it. Dracula is of course enraged, but even David reviles Shiela for her actions, saying that, “you had no right”—showing that he has to some extent internalized his father’s mission of being the custodian of arcane objects. Only Shiela is practical enough to realize that that the Chimera could bring only death to the good and the evil alike.  She and David leave together, and Dracula is too overcome with indecision to stop them. To be sure, though, both young people meet unhappy fates in the next issue, in keeping with the tone of a horror comic.

On a minor note, Wolfman’s history for the creation of the Chimera hearkens back to the pre-historical eras of Robert E. Howard, whose works Marvel had the license to adapt during this period. The statue’s maker is given the name “C’thunda,” and since a lot of Marvel writers back then made ample use of Lovecraftian references, this name might be a shout-out to Lovecraft’s demon-god Cthulhu. On the other hand, “C’thunda” also sounds a lot like the Greek word “chthonic.” This signifies things pertaining to the earth and the underworld, and, coincidentally enough, a Marvel writer later used this word to make up their own earth-deity, “Chthon.” It doesn’t seem entirely appropriate to the creator of the Chimera, an airborne beast, unless one sees the creation of its demonic power to be nothing but another road leading to the domain of Hell. Regarded in this light, the answer to the question "where lurks the Chimera" would seem to be "in the depths of the human soul."

MYTHCOMICS: BLOOD OF THE INNOCENT (1985-86)

“There are six things which Jehovah hateth; Yea, seven which are an abomination unto him: Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, And hands that shed innocent blood; A heart that deviseth wicked purposes, Feet that are swift in running to mischief, A false witness that uttereth lies, And he that soweth discord among brethren” (Prov. 6:16-19).

Upon the 1985 release of BLOOD OF THE INNOCENT, publisher WarpGraphics touted the four-issue series as America's first weekly comic book. But in retrospect BLOOD is far more interesting as a crossover of two literary/cuiltural myths born out of the matrix of Victorian society.  Both myths had their origins in the acts of real historical persons. Jack the Ripper, the Victorian serial killer, has never been identified, and even in Victorian times assumed the character of an "urban legend." Bram Stoker's Count Dracula was fiction based on both the vampire folklore of Transylvania and the historical records of Romanian tyrant Vlad Tepes. To be sure, the narrative of BLOOD makes very few references to the story of Vlad, though like most Dracula-tales there are indirect references to the Count's aristocratic heritage, and in one issue co-author Rickey Shanklin contributes a history of the tyrant's historical reign.

BLOOD-- presumably named with the above Proverb in mind-- doesn't feature any sort of epic battle between the vampire and the serial killer, as the cover of #1 depicts. The Ripper, being limited to the sphere of realistic historical studies, has no power capable of opposing a supernatural creature. However, it's the Ripper's narrative that determines the scope of the story, since it must take place in the one year, 1888, during which the killer's "canonical" murders took place. Writers Rickey Shanklin and Mark Wheatley collaborated with penciller Marc Hempel (Wheatley also inked) in bringing the vampire-lord to London in the same year, ostensibly to investigate England as a future stomping-ground, in line with his future visit in the 1897 novel.

Naturally, the authors' version of both the vampire and the killer tend to follow specific cultural models. In this iteration, Jack the Ripper is the syphilitic Duke of Clarence, usually called "Eddy," the oldest grandson of still-reigning Queen Victoria, and he begins killing prostitutes because he picked up a social disease from a lady of the Whitechapel slums. And this Dracula is not at all like Stoker's ruthless predator: during his sojourn he only exsanguinates one victim, a female who may or may not be a lady of the evening. The Shanklin-Wheatley vampire also is made basically sympathetic because he falls in love with a potential victim, and thus seems closest in tone to the 1979 cinema-Dracula played by Frank Langella. 

The authors repeatedly stress the parallel of Dracula and the Ripper due to their role as sexually oriented predators, but arguably one sees more differences than similarities. Both men are aristocrats, but the Count has dignity and compassion, while Eddy Duke of Clarence seems to be little more than the incarnation of a Victorian contempt for women, particularly those who have been forced into "the life" by economic oppression.

Dracula, who accidentally encounters Eddy after the latter's first hooker-murder, is put in a position where he might kill the Ripper before his bloody rampage. The vampire chooses not to do so because he smells that the Duke's blood is "diseased," and thus he makes "allowances" for the maniac's bad manners. This lordly indifference becomes more pronounced later in the story; the vampire is seen watching from a distance as Eddy kills another prostitute. By that time, though, Dracula has met a London woman and fallen in love with her, so that he has sex with her but does not vampirize her. However, it never occurs to him that since she too is a prostitute, she might fall victim to the Ripper-- which indeed she does, as she happens to be Mary Jane Kelly, one of the canonical five Ripper-victims.

Shanklin and Wheatley interpolate a number of secondary plot-lines into the story, usually involving other persons suspected of being the Ripper, such as Dr. William Gull, physician to Queen Victoria, and Montague Druitt, who in this iteration is a teacher who has expertise in vampire mythology and actually witnesses one of Dracula's transformations, thus leading Druitt to the incorrect conclusion that Dracula is the Ripper. But none of the side-stories are of much consequence.

Perhaps the greatest difference between the two legends is that when the Ripper kills, he "murders to dissect," leaving nothing but dead meat. Dracula is obviously a killer as well, but he can bring some of his victims back to a semblance of life. Indeed, Mary Jane fantasizes about being Dracula's Transylvanian countess, even as Eddy sees her as nothing but "the queen of whores." The Ripper is an arch-realist; he sees nothing but evil in women, and thus reflects much of the Judeo-Christian ethic of his time. Dracula, however, is not just a shape-changer: in this version the vampire who can't see himself in a mirror automatically "mirrors" the fears or desires of whoever beholds him. When the vampire first comes to England, two sailors see him according to their own prejudices. One sailor thinks the Count looks like a dashingly royal figure, while the other fellow thinks Dracula looks old and corrupt. Oddly, the second sailor characterizes aristocrats as "royalty what comes o' a sister's love of her brother! " I've no idea what the authors meant by this reference, since sibling incest is not a big part of Dracula-mythology-- though it's arguable that since Dracula is centuries older than his victims, there might well be a "daughter-father" vibe about his alliance with Mary Jane Kelly.  

Dominantly BLOOD is all about the clash of sociological narratives: that of the aristocratic seducer versus the corrupt lordling. Shanklin and Wheatley don't provide a lot of vampire mythology here, but there's some metaphysical content in their idea of Dracula's image changing to reflect the beliefs of onlookers.

CHILD MINA TO THE DARK DANCE CAME

In recent years I’ve been rather depressed with most of the commercial manga-serials offered in the United States. Even a lot of moderately entertaining works seem to lack any real drive to excellence. But my manga-depression comes to an end with DANCE IN THE VAMPIRE BUND.

[Spoiler warnings: plot points revealed herein.]

In an earlier essay I reviewed Kim Newman’s alternate-world take on the DRACULA mythos, in which Dracula became consort to the Queen of England and turned Old Blighty into a haven for his vampire spawn. I wasn’t enthused with the Newman work, but Nozomu Tamaki wreaks wonders with the same basic idea. Here it’s a man-made island that becomes a haven for a kingdom of bloodsuckers: quite naturally for a manga-series, the island has been built off the coast of Japan. The heroes of DANCE are Mina Tepes, queen of the vampires, who facilitates the worldwide emigration of her people to the island, and Akira, her werewolf bodyguard. DANCE also sports a large cast of allies and villains, most of whom are incredible hot-bods. But Mina and Akira are the focal heroes, and their complicated relationship is the core of the series as they defend their makeshift kingdom (the “bund” of the title) against assorted threats—meddling human beings, assassins, conspiracies, and, most formidably, three vampire overlords, the last survivors of “the 100 vampire clans.” Grotesque horror and frenetic action dominate the storylines, though Tamaki makes considerable time for comic byplay and the Japanese “cult of cuteness.”

The notion of warring clans is but one narrative trope that DANCE adapts from medieval Japanese history in order to construct a vampire society attempting to find its “place in the sun,” so to speak. Another is the Japanese culture’s love for the evanescent, for Tamaki establishes that his vampires, unlike Newman’s, are not a long-term threat to human society. Despite the vampires’ potential for immortality, Mina explains, they usually burn themselves out by the violence of their own desires, and cannot possibly grow beyond a limited number. In this speech Mina references the silent film NOSFERATU, even as her own name references the book DRACULA and the legend of Vlad the Impaler.

Medievalism also informs one aspect of the relationship between Mina and Akira. He is not simply a paid bodyguard, for his werewolf clan has sworn fealty to the queen of vampires and thus he plays loyal samurai to her “daimyo.” But there is also a personal bond between Mina and Akira, who became friendly as children, a bond which leads to a germinating romantic relationship, forbidden because Mina is destined to marry and bear children by one of the remaining vampire clan-lords.

In this summation I’ve focused upon what DANCE owes to medieval models from Japanese culture. However, I’ve held back one aspect of the Mina-Akira relationship that stems principally from modern Japanese culture. That aspect stems from the phenomenon called “lolicon,” concerning the apparent sexualization of an underage girl. For though werewolf Akira has aged into a young man, vampire Mina has remained a child who looks to be about ten, with even fewer secondary sexual characteristics than Nabokov’s original nymphet Lolita.

In the first book, the reader isn’t told the reason for this arrested aging, and none of the characters question that she has not aged. I initially wondered if Tamaki were depicting a situation like that of Anne Rice’s INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE, where anyone who becomes a bloodsucker stays frozen at the same age he/she was turned. In INTERVIEW this results in a perpetual female child-vamp who yearns for a maturity she can never have. But in DANCE it’s eventually revealed that not only can Tamaki’s vampires age and give birth, Mina asserts, “Vampires are creatures whose very form is ruled by their minds.” Later it’s revealed that Mina has chosen to suppress her own aging to prevent the clan-lords from forcing her into marriage, though at best this remains a delaying-action. Further, for brief times she can assume the form of the nubile, busty woman she could have been, tantalizing Akira with mature erotic possibilities.

The role of the “nymphet” in Japanese pop culture is one upon which I’m not knowledgeable enough to speak with authority. I know, as many do, that the figure of the nymphet appears in many manga that aren’t exclusively erotic or romantic in tone, such as TENCHI MUYO, which some have called the progenitor of all Japanese “harem manga.” Many of the appearances of “girls-on-the-verge” are not “lolicon” as such, and their primary purpose may be to tap into a mass-market demand for the presence of “cute kids” to offset even the most grisly or violent serials.

And yet Tamaki is clearly playing around with the concept of “lolicon,” teasing the reader with the possibility while making clear that Humbert Humbert doesn’t live here. In the first DANCE continuity, Mina meets Akira for the first time in seven years, and uses an assortment of stratagems to make him want to serve as her bodyguard willingly, rather than out of a sense of impersonal duty. One of these stratagems includes disrobing in front of him. Her pre-pubertal form doesn’t entice Akira, but making him uncomfortable accomplishes the same end: that of helping her manipulate him into her service. This is made palatable by the fact that she does have an abiding love for him, and clearly would like to assume her mature form in order to be with him. During a dream-sequence in TPB volume 6, Mina imagines herself living a normal human life, which attests to her romantic desires for Akira, though only in mature form.

Though Tamaki holds off on the lolicon, he does present a sequence of outright “shotacon,” which is the same setup with the sexes reversed. Like many vampire-sagas, DANCE allows for a wide range of sexual arrangements. Characters Josie and Hamaseji have a “normal” hetero relationship, but Mina’s female bodyguard Vera had a relationship with Mina’s deceased mother, and a male-male vibe is fleetingly suggested between Akira and an androgynous werewolf buddy.

In closing I’ll note that Tamaki is one of the best “cinematic” manga-artists I’ve ever encountered. Tamaki avoids the cluttered, frenetic look found in many of the popular action-manga, using white (or dark) space skillfully. He also shows a facility with facial expression comparable to that of Dave Sim, whose talents in that department eclipse most of his contemporaries. The plots about various conspiracies and skullduggeries are simple but provide the groundwork for solid action-sequences that don’t get lost in a maze of speed-lines. My only complaint is that Tamaki depicts a few too many women with torpedo-tits. I've nothing against fan-service for us evil hetero overlords of the dominant phallocracy. But perhaps in this case a little less would count for more.

As of now I’ve only read six of the nine TPB’s released, but I’m certain I’ll be accepting further invitations to this DANCE.

A MOVEABLE FEASTER, PART 2

Back in my essay "Archetypal Library" I was groping for a basic example that "could distinguish the mythopoeic literary function from other functions in literary works." I had thought of comparing figures from WATCHMEN and SQUADRON SUPREME since I'd just done a compare/contrast on both of them, but I lost interest in that particular opposition. But as I started doing my Halloween post on the "sacred earth" element in Stoker's DRACULA., it occured to me that this might serve as a better example of the mythopoeic function I'm talking about. After all, what's more "basic" than the earth beneath our feet?

It should be said that just because an element has mythopoeic associations does not mean it's something airy-fairy in its complex symbolism; that it's divorced from any function within the narrative. On the contrary, the more complex it is, the more integrally the story-element works within the narrative, both to communicate plot-events and symbolic discourse.

For instance, at base Stoker's idea of "sacred earth" is a device that liberates Dracula from his burial earth but also gives him a weakness that the vampire hunters can exploit. Both of those are functions integral to the plot, and as base functions they're no different from a similar element in Polidori's "The Vampire," where Lord Ruthven, apparently struck dead, is revived by moonlight. Polidori's moonlight and Stoker's sacred earth both function to advance the plot. However, though Polidori's moonlight may carry some potential symbolic associations, the author doesn't do anything to enlarge upon those associations, and so that element remains what I call a "null-myth."

In contrast, Stoker takes this particular element-- which is, of course, just one isolated element in his elaborate vampiric cosmology-- and invests it with a wide variety of symbolic values that go beyond ONLY fulfilling what the plot requires.

For instance, one should give a little extra thought to this odd turn of Van Helsing phraseology:

"There have been from the loins of this very one [Dracula] great men and good women, and their graves make sacred the earth where alone this foulness can dwell"

Prior to this Dracula only spoke of the earth being saturated with the blood and memories of the heroic dead, which includes even women and children. He doesn't speak as explicitly as Van Helsing does later of his need for sanctified soil but he does comment to Harker that he wants an old house in England because "to live in a new house would kill me." But Van Helsing puts an extra twist on Dracula's celebration of his heroic ancestors, for the professor speaks as if the sacredness from the soil comes from the very "great men and good women" who have sprung from Dracula's own "loins," which is to say, not his ancestors, but his children.

The novel is ambivalent about Dracula's specific past. To Harker the vampire naturally disassociates himself from the historical figure we now call Vlad Tepes, since that ruler would have been long dead by the time of the novel, but Stoker clearly counts on the reader not to believe Dracula, who rages bitterly against a "brother" of that long-dead ruler who betrayed his people to the Turks. So Dracula is Tepes, perhaps raised to undead life by a bargain with Satan himself, or maybe from some strange electrochemical phenomenon (Van Helsing seriously proposes both origins at different sections of the novel). But for all his talk of the glory of the Sekely family, Dracula makes no allusions to either mother nor father. He seems the embodiment of a domineering paternal principle that owes nothing to earlier forbears, though this would of course be impossible if he were indeed a historical figure. Still, though Van Helsing sees him as vampirizing the "holy memories" of the soil where his children lie, it's certainly possible to see the reverse as well. If the soil also holds the sanctity of all those who preceded the historicized Dracula, then he is drawing vitality from both his ancestors and his descendents. It's possible to see in him an incest-happy myth-figure like Zeus, pretty much "vamping" any old relative-- mother, sister, daughter-- though in DRACULA only the figurative "daughters" matter to the story, since they're the only ones among the living.

Side-note: Stoker gives us few clues about the origins of two of his three vampire brides, who unlike the third one are said to resemble the king-vampire with his "aquiline nose." They could be daughters, one supposes, if one takes as gospel Van Helsing's assertion that many "great men and good women" have sprung from the vampire's loins at some time in the past, but it's broadly implied that Dracula no longer has the power to spawn as living things do, and can only create symbolic offspring through vampirism. Like Dracula, all three vampire brides apparently have existed in the undead state for centuries, since all of them dissolve into dust once staked-- a fate which is in marked contrast to Lucy, who, getting staked after having been a vampire for only a few weeks, returns to being a not-long-dead corpse. Thus, for neatness of timing if nothing else, I would think that the two brides with the physical resemblances are more likely sisters than daughters, though the identity of one with the mother of Dracula is not impossible, since Stoker's vamps can temporarily turn younger with the imbibing of stolen blood.

Again I feel compelled to harp upon how much complexity of association Stoker has imbued into what *could* have been treated as a simple weakness for the vampire hunters to exploit, along the level of such comic-book analogues as the Martian Manhunter (weakness to fire) and Green Lantern (weakness to the color yellow). I don't include the better-known example of Superman and his radioactive rock-nemesis here, for kryptonite did accrue a fair amount of mythicity over the years-- though Stoker's treatment of the associations of "sacred earth" is on the whole more complex.

In fact, I'm moved to reflect that only recently have academics begun to appreciate the deep symbolic discourse in DRACULA. When I was growing up in the 1960s, there were no scholarly treatises on DRACULA, though there were quite a few on that other half of horror's "diabolical duo," FRANKENSTEIN. I believe that this was because Shelley's work, despite all of the novel's flaws and despite the popular iterations of the story, carried the associations of "high art" because it seemed to be "about something important"-- a hallmark attitude one encounters with works that follow the pattern of thematic realism. In contrast, DRACULA must have looked more like a pure thrill-ride, which is the hallmark of works that follow the pattern of thematic escapism. Yet though both the Shelley novel and the Stoker work possess considerable mythicity, I tend to favor the discourse of DRACULA a bit more. Intellectually, FRANKENSTEIN is easier to take more seriously, with its guilt-haunted protagonist unconsciously using his doppleganger to slaughter just about everyone he ever loves or even knows, while DRACULA's theme, such as it is, doesn't bear a lot of close analysis. Yet it may be that the very absence of a "serious theme" allowed Stoker's imagination greater free play, and allowed him, a la William Blake, "to see heaven in a grain of sand--"

Or memories of ancient blood-sheddings in a handful of earth.