Barry Windsor-Dracula!

Tomb of Dracula is one of the great runs in the history of comics. Three talents, Marv Wolfman, Gene Colan, and Tom Palmer, combined their considerable talents to make the series a compelling read which seemed only ever to pick up momentum until its demise with the seventy-fifth issue, outstripping all its companions quickened in the monster revival of the early Bronze Age of Comics. But in those early days, before the die was full cast, Marvel was not averse to playing around with its talent.

To that end it seems Barry Windsor-Smith appears to have been given the nod to illustrated a cover for the run, specially the eighth issue. I have never run across this art before, but it seems firmly to be in the style that Windsor-Smith was using in his second grand run at Marvel, the style he most famously used on Dr.Strange. The cover they eventually used, seemingly by Colan, is not better, though perhaps a tiny bit more dynamic. But then in those halycon days, dynamic could mean all the difference in sales on those overfull spinner racks. Lovely pieces nonetheless.

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