Last Podcast On The Left - Dracula: An Interview with Matt Wagner & Kelley Jones

Episode Date: October 14, 2025

Marcus & Eddie sit down with the creators of the new multi-volume graphic novel Dracula - Matt Wagner & Kelley Jones join the show to break down the gory new hit series & the untold side of Dracula's story. For Live Shows, Merch, and More Visit: www.LastPodcastOnTheLeft.comKevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of Last Podcast on the Left ad-free, plus get Friday episodes a whole week early. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Well, today we have not one but two comic book legends with us. First, we have artist writer Matt Wagner, creator of such legendary characters as Grendel, Mage, and the author of one of my personal favorite series, Sandman Mystery Theater. We also have artist Kelly Jones, legendary for his work on Batman, and one of, if not the best artist, I'm sorry, Matt, to ever draw the Sandman. Well, I'll take that one because it's true But today And actually that's how Kelly and I met

Because we both drew He drew the bulk of Seasons of the Mist Which is the most famous Sam Man story arc I drew one chapter in that And so we were both Together with a lot of the PR tour stuff And that's how we first met Yeah Matt I mean you

Al you co-created dead boy detectives You know right Like I mean that Yeah I don't take much credit for that Because, again, it was just that one issue. They weren't detectives yet. No, they were just dead. They were just a couple of ghosty high school kids, you know?

So you created the dead boy part. Yeah, there you go. The dead boy part, not the detective part, yeah. I always like a good guy who creates dead boys. It's good for our show. It really, it helps. I'm glad it's a good interview again. And I will say, you know, D.C., the way they credit you is whoever drew it first, they get the credit.

Right. And I don't feel like I deserve it because I didn't do them as those characters, as the detectives. And yet, when they had that one season of the show, I got a bit of money out of it, you know, and I was just like, okay. I mean, it wasn't, you know, I didn't quit my job, but. Hey, man. Get that money, dude. Yeah. I've created about a half a dozen characters. I had no idea I created.

And he's right. I looked and I said, I don't even know who this is. And they say you did it. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing that both of you have just, you know, drawn and written so much over the years. Like, do you sometimes just forget things that you've done? Sometimes, yeah. Details, details more than, you know, whole movements or anything like that. But, yeah, it takes, you know, for instance, I know George R.R. Martin has a dude that helps him keep track of everything in Westros.

Because he's lost track of all that shit, you know. Yeah. But, yeah, no, just little things here. and there. But no, for the most part, I can keep track of it pretty well. Maybe you could finish that. You're busy on something else right now. I mean, before we get to your current project, I do have to bring up something that, Kelly, you may have forgotten that you did way back in the day.

I'm sure I did. But it was a, it's, I realized this morning when I was looking at the books that you've done, over the years. I realized that you were the very first artist to really have an effect on me as a child, the first comic book to really have like a huge effect on me, Dino Riders. Dino Riders. Yes. I still have the toys. Really? Yeah, they sent they, uh, I was under contract with Marvel then. And because I had started on the Micronauts, they simply just assumed you do licensing. Yeah. So I didn't get a say in it. And one day I got this gigantic, box of toys and I had no idea what why and it said from Marvel right it came from

Marvel I had no idea what it was and then they get a hold of me and said about a day or so later so I have no clue and they said you have been assigned this the scripts are being written blah blah blah and when you're under contract you have no say yeah and um that sucks ass you know it did You don't get a say, and I didn't, when I was on Micronauts, though it was licensed, you can vent stuff, and you could make up things, and they didn't care, because the toys they quit making. These went through, like, layers of people to approve one page. So I quit, but I didn't tell them, I'm quitting. I just accepted a job from D.C. And I just said, okay, whatever they do, they do.

You know, they can. And it wasn't worth pursuing you. I can't because I can't get through this. And one of the great moments of my career besides working with Matt was this went on for about two or three months. I drew a few and then I just couldn't deal with this anymore. But I went over to D.C. Well, in that time, I'm wondering, I'm wondering, when are they going to call and say, where's the art? You know, I was completely unprofessional.

But I was so angry because I kept saying, get me off, get me off, and they wouldn't do it. Take me off this thing. And then I find out that they had canceled all the license books. And because of that, they owed me a lot of money. I had signed this contract. So I get this very large check, larger than I had gotten from anything they did. And I was still, and I was working on Dead Man. So it was like one of those, you know, I made the right decision for all the, you know, I did it, I should have said I'm just quitting.

But they wouldn't take no for an answer. Yeah. Yeah. Because nobody wanted to do it. Yeah. We got this guy yoked in. Right. And so I remember everyone saying, God, you really changed.

And I go, no, I never got to be there. You know, you didn't get to be who you were. So, you know, it was one of those good things. because a dead man turned everything around but i owe it to air raiders and i owe to those guys that's like getting an inheritance from a relative you didn't know existed yeah i felt like i felt like jed clamped i oiled people in the back yard but hey you know whether you know whether you really cared about it or not like that that art like it truly disturbed me when i was a kid like the one professional part was i put everything i could into it yeah you did i realized

this isn't the fan's fault. This is me and an editor and the company. So you never, you always, you always put your all into something, as ludicrous as it was. And I'll be honest with you, I don't have bad feelings about it because I have an enormous amount of people

love those books. Yeah. I get offers, because I just put the original art in a box and said, who's going to want it? Everybody wants it. It is one of the most, The most requested thing are those two licensed books.

And I'm not joking. They, it is, you know, it was designed for kids, so I got to remember what was I into as a kid. Well, I would love it too, whatever those things were. You know, it's one of the reasons. Was it, I don't know, Dinah Riders. Was it gruesome? Did you make it gruesome?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's what disturbed me because I was like six and it's like, oh, here's a guy. Like, I remember someone getting eaten by a dinosaur, I think? That was me. I finally do things because you do things to get fired. Seriously, that's your attempt to get fired changed my entire life. Yeah.

But, like, that was my first introduction to, like, gore, to horror, all kinds of stuff. The visual idea is great. Like, weapons on dinosaurs and guys fighting. Yeah. That's cool. What does you need? But then they wouldn't go as far as they should. So I went as far as I could.

And I started doing a thing where I turn in everything really late, so they had to approve it. So you got people getting eaten and killed and whatever. And I got a lot of pushback on it. And then, like I said, when you're doing stuff and you're trying to bring that extra whatever, and you're getting, that's where you're getting shit on, you just, all right, fine, I'm out of here. And then I watch, because I watch all my goofy friend artists, and they were pulling stunts all the time and would still get work. Yeah. So I thought, this will be my one time.

I'll change it and I'll do this stuff. And what's good is it carried over to Dead Man, because I was so angry at that time. I said, well, you know, Neil Adams, Deadman. And so I just said, no, my version and fire me then. I had a bad fire me point of my career. And that's like early in the, early in the Vertigo days. we weren't allowed to say the word fuck even though it was supposedly adult

aimed comics weren't allowed to say fuck so Neil Gaiman and I used to talk about how if you had something questionable you wanted to get through you would throw a fuck or two into the script and then that's all they would focus on you gotta take that fuck out everything else good yeah fine what are the dirty words for comics

like is there a list is there a George Carlin seven dirty words or is it just fuck Um, no, I'm sure, you know, cunt and shit and piss and all that. You're talking about mainstream comics. Like, I've always done indie comics. I've done some mainstream stuff, but Jesus Christ, man,

my stuff's foul. Yeah. You should read his scripts because in his scripts, he's really foul in describing what he wants. And I'm like going, this is wonderful. Matt finds 14th century curse words. And I'm like, that's just wonderful. Speaking of 14th century curse words, the reason why that we brought the two of you in today is to discuss your incredibly innovative new take on everyone's favorite Eastern European warlord, Dracula.

Dracula, I mean, so, I mean, your take on Dracula, it's one of those ideas that you can't believe you've never seen it before. Yeah, no shit, right? You can't believe that no one's ever done this, is that y'all are telling the story of Dracula from the perspective. of Dracula. Yeah. And it's one of those ideas like you can't, like I told my wife about it.

She's like, oh my God, I've always wanted to hear that. I've always wanted it. She's a massive fan of the Brand Stoker book. So she'd, but it just for some reason

never occurred to people to just tell the story from Dracula. So this is something I've been stewed on for, I want to say more than a decade on. I always want to try my hand at Dracula. But what do you do? It's been done to death, you know.

And, you know, the original novel is what's described as epistolary, which means it's told in the form of, there's no omnisionionary. narrator, letters, journals, news articles, and the one voice missing is Dracula. And, you know, it works in the original novel because it makes him a sinister kind of other, a presence, you know.

But after this long, we deserve to see you hear his point of view, right? You know, so I finally realized what we need to do is not adapt the novel. We need to tell everything else that the novel only hints at and doesn't tell. Like, for instance, book one, which is called the Impaler, twice in the original novel, Van Helsing mentions that when he was alive, Dracula attended something called the Scolamance, which is an Eastern European legend about this seminary for the dark arts that Satan himself hosts way up in the mountains.

And it's a seven-year tenure, and he takes 10 students every time, every tenure, and then at the end of that, he keeps one of them. And I thought, how could they have fucking done anything with this before? This is such a deep well of story to be told, you know. And so that was our beginning, you know. And then the second one's called the brides because the, you know, the three vampiric women make this indelible appearance in the novel.

And they're only there for three pages. And I was like, well, we got to hear their story too. We got to hear how he got each one of them and who they were before they became his brides, you know. And the new one, we're getting ready to launch in just a few days, the Kickstarter. We do all these as Kickstarter campaigns. Nice. And the new one, any fan of the novel knows that once the action shifts from his campaign, Castle in Transylvania to the streets of London, Victorian London, he's off stage for the rest of the

novel. He's just this shadowy presence, you know. You get some reports of things he's done, but nothing first person to count, right? And so we're showing you what he's doing because he's obviously doing something the whole time he's there, you know. And you get to see everything that he does. And it's been a blast. And, you know, I keep writing these sequences thinking to myself, oh, Kelly's going to fucking nail this. It's going to be so awful. And then he turns in the art and it's like better than I could have imagined it to be, you know. And I'm an artist too, so I've imagined quite a bit. And, you know, he, it's such a beautiful synthesis between the two of us.

I like your reaction, Marcus, to when you're saying how did no one think of this? Because when Matt called me about, do you really want to work together? Because we'd known each other for so long and we'd always done this little two-step about working together. And when he told me the idea, I reacted exactly the same way. And he would just throw out the thing with the scolomance. Or he would just throw out, what are the backstories of the brides? And then when he told me the third one wouldn't be an adaption of what we know, but an exploration of what he was up to.

I was reacting the same way. And when that happens to you, I give Matt all the credit for this because he had to do all the research. it was his idea in the 120 plus years of Dracula no one's done this and it was completely interesting to me to

because when he first said Dracula I said well what are we going to do with and then he tells me this and so in three minutes I went from Dracula to when do we fucking start so how much of this

because I never knew about Satan and Dracula being buddies you know like that was like and he was right there's the Dracula the devil teach I'm like, where did I miss that? Yeah, I totally went over

it like skimmed over that as well. Yeah. And so how much of this is your own creative license and how much of this is like striply, is they come straight from brand short? Well, we are trying to stick religiously to the canon of the text. And yet, as I said,

so much of it is only kind of this vague hints, you know, of, he mentions a scolomance. He doesn't say what went on there. You know, but I took that opportunity to, I felt also a, an important impetus to have a very special way for him to become a vampire. Because I figured, you know, he's the OG vampire.

He's the name, you know, I maintain he's the most famous literary character of all time. There's almost nowhere in the world you can say the name Dracula and people don't know who the fuck you're talking about. Well, God. God's pretty big. God's pretty big, too. We're talking about fictional characters, yes. God's pretty big.

But I thought, well, he's kind of a very special way to, you know, but I thought, well, he's kind of a very special way to became a vampire. He can't just get bitten by another vampire. That's how every other fucking vampire becomes a vampire. Therefore, that's boring. So I had to come up with a very special way for him to become a vampire, which we see in book one, you know. And the rest of it, you know, like, Ed, you're asking how much of it's from the canon. So regardless of it's, you know, I wouldn't say Dracula is considered by a lot of literary scholars as, you know, not on the level of Dickens or Tolstoy or, you know, these highbrow writers. It's considered kind of a pulp thing.

And yet, it is one of the most dissected and annotated fucking books in the English language ever. I have like four different annotated versions. When I was writing this third one, I was working off a calendar, again, since it's told in the form of letters and journals,

they're all dated. So I had a calendar based upon the original text of what happens every goddamn day. Yeah. And I had to make it fit all that. This thing even had the sunrise and sunset times

and the phases of the moon. It's incredible. I had to appeal and make sure I passed the sniff test for all the Dracula scholars, yet I also had to make it so that if you've never read the book, you would still be interested in the story as it unfolds, you know? So the third one was pretty intense. In a way, the third one's what we've been working for since the beginning. I just had to worry about how much breasts and blood to put in.

Speaking of breast and blood, I actually do have a question for you. Because Kelly, I mean, your horror stuff is just incredible. Like the way you draw pain and anguish in a way that's just so evocative. But your gore is just off the charts. What's your favorite piece of gore to draw? This is like the James Lipton, like what's your favorite word? Like, what's your favorite gore? I think my favorite gore, if I'm to be perfectly honest, are the little

things. It's the little things that look painful. It can be, it can be a small thing like a needle in a finger or something where I can do that because I think everyone can relate to that kind of pain, to those kind of those little moments. In the second book, there's a scene where the villagers storm the castle, and Dracula drives them away by commanding lightning and then summoning rats and bats. And there's a scene where a bat is clinging to a woman's face and plucking out her eye ball with its teeth. And I remember thinking, oh, wow, that looks painful.

But horror has totally different tropes and schick than superhero. Yeah. So I try to take advantage of that as much as I can. And Matt, and it's all characterization. It's more characterization. And Matt will do a thing where, He, why the books are so entertaining to draw is he does sequences all through its scenes. And they all stitch together, but it's like you'll get a six to ten page sequence, maybe.

And within that, it gives you something. And so you get to build that atmosphere for that one shot or that one moment. And I think that's what makes people react even stronger to it than if I just drew an axe murder going on. And it's, you know, this wonderful grotesqueness that Matt will write, where it's unapologetic, non-biased, there it is. And then we move on. So it isn't like, you know, you're getting off on it. It's like you go, oh, that's disgusting or that's frightening or that's horrible or that more importantly painful. Yeah, I mean, I had the reaction of, damn, quite a bit when I was reading.

Matt will do casual things. Like, he casually is, you know, there's this corrupt politician in the second one, and he gives Dracula this boy. And Matt just has him casually carry off the boy, but they're discussing things the whole time. And that really bothered me, you know, but I thought, yeah, that's cool. I mean, at the same time, you're going, Matt, kind of, it's like a psychological test. How disturbed are you?

Because you find yourself enjoying it and then saying, why am I enjoying this, this horrible mayhem going on? But I do because Matt, everything's driven by character. So you feel it much, much more. To me, that's very important, especially with a contemporary vampire story. Because, again, vampire's been done to death. And you have to do something to make people care, even just in passing, about what's happening to these characters, you know. Yeah, I mean, as far as the characterization of Dracula goes, like, once you started, like, fleshing out this character that has not over the years been fleshed out all that much. I mean, the most might be, you know, might be Francis Ford Coppola, like, giving him a romantic backstory.

But when you're flushing out... Which is not there in the fucking book. Not at all. Not even close. Yeah. This weird muscle armor. Was there anything that you discovered about the character of Dracula that sort of surprised you? Well, yeah. In that, so you have to keep him as this unrepentant villain, you know?

He doesn't, and also there's nothing romantic about him, you know, that, again, as I said, in the Coppola, I have this love-hate relationship with the Coppola movie because I adore the cinema of it. His filmmaking in that is fucking brilliant top to bottom. Yeah, and you can't argue with Tom. weights is Renfield. Well, no, I don't like the casting much, kind of top to bottom. Oh, okay. I think the casting's kind of all bad. I'll get back to that in a second. But the whole love story thing, just, you know, once he gets to London and gets hooked up with Mina, he turns into this fucking fop for the most part. You know, there's a scene where she, she's been fooled around with him, and then Jonathan gets rediscovered and she rushes to his side to

marry him, and they have this sequence of Dracula, you know, weeping copiously and smashing things. All right. Dracula does not fucking weep, ever. And so, you know, I just had to maintain that, you know, he's not full of remorse. He doesn't have any remorse. There's one little bit of remorse he shows at one point in one of the books. But one thing I did find interesting is that he has these three brides that is in book two. And I also had to be careful to not contemporize that. You know, he would not think of them as equals at all. That whole, that whole concept, that modern day concept of marriage and relationships, not there at all. And yet, these are the first, he never had any children with his living wives. These are the first things he's ever created,

as opposed to destroyed. So he feels some sense of responsibility for them. He feels, a need to provide for them. He goes without eating himself to provide food for them, to provide blood for them. So that was a, and I wouldn't even call that a moment of humanity. It's almost more of his megalomaniacal sense in that, you know, I did this. I have to maintain this. This is part of my, these are my conquests. I can't let them go. I can't let them wither, you know. No, the characterization that I loved is why he chose them. That was the thing that got me was Each one, he can have anyone, I guess, he wants. So when I was reading this, I thought, oh, this is interesting because as he chooses each one of the girls, it's why he would.

It's what interests him. So you get something from, Dracula never thinks he's evil. He never thinks, oh, I'm evil. He's doing what he does. He knows he strikes terror, though. That's slightly different. But he did that as a warlord. Yeah, right.

So that, that to me was cool. So when you get the other side of like, why would he be with each one of these girls? What is, that's fascinating. It's horrific. And it's for three different reasons. Yes. And that complexity of the brides as well as him. I always describe Matt as literary pulp and that's it.

It's like, boy, you don't need that. But when you get it, you're saying, how can you read this without that? that's so much grist for me. Another cool thing about the brides is once he gets each of them, one of the things that first attracted each of them to him, they kind of lose that when they catch his contagion, right? His gift destroys part of what he liked about them to begin with, you know. Yeah.

Of course. So, I mean, so Matt, you know, you're kind of, I guess, you know how to do an anti-hero, like that, like you absolutely know how to do that. So what is it that you think we gain from hearing stories from the perspectives of villains, like the direct perspective of a villain? Because we each have a villain inside of us, baby. You know what I mean? You recognize it.

You recognize God, but they're for the grace of God, go I. You know, I mean, when somebody's behaving like an absolute fucking shit, you think to those times in your life, when you behaved like an absolute fucking shit. And it might have not been for the same reasons or in the same manner. But you know, you know, there's a famous quote from Marcel Proust that he never heard. heard of a crime committed by man that he didn't imagine himself fully capable of doing. And, you know, that's what I love about anti-heroes, you know, and just that they're so unrepentant, you know. So, you know, we have enough redemption stories. Fuck that.

It was crazy reading it because you know Dracula is a bad guy. He's like the most notorious bad guy in the world. But, you know, I'm reading this thing. I'm like, eh, you know, I get it. I like, yeah yeah well i can i can point you to another very famous example of that hannibal fucking lector yeah yeah yeah you know what i mean he's he's horrible and yet all three signs of the lambs are like he's got to get out of there yeah i can't wait to see how he gets out of there and at the end when he calls her and he's going to go eat that dude you're like yeah get that the fucking dude needs it you know what i found interesting about it is i don't know if this was uh kelly or you mad because vlad the impaler you know i'm also like very like i'm not a huge

Dracula nerd like everyone else in this room like I obviously him yeah but Vladia Pell I always thought he used heads

not like no no no it's full bodies baby up the poop shoot for the most part or the time that was

that's historical accurate that's also terribly excruciating about it is the weight of your body would slowly pull you down

and that would like dig its way up through your innards you know horrific horrific way to die head on a pike

that's like that everyone did head on a pike. Yeah. That was standard for the time. You're already dead when they put your head on a pike. You know what I mean?

The heads come off already, right? No, the ailment's a just awful, awful way to go. Yeah. I mean, so this Dracula, I mean, this is a monstrous Dracula. This is not a romantic or a sexy vampire. But, you know, vampires have over the years kind of gone more towards that area, more towards like a bit softer, a bit sexier. Well, sure, with Anne Rice

and the Twilight shit, you know. Sure. But then you look at something like Robert Eggers' version of Nospheratu, you know, which really pulled it back to being this foul, disgusting creature, you know. It was very cool. Only other time I've seen the beard and the mustache, other than

you guys. Is that accurate to, uh? That's accurate. Yeah, he wears a mustache to, basically to hide his teeth. Yeah. He's not, he's not, he can't retract the fangs like so many modern, uh, cinematic interpretations. Yeah, what did you think of asthmatic nosferatu? Oh, I loved it. Now, you know, it, I've loved every

Kelly, too, we've talked about this extensively. We've loved every version of that film, you know, the Mernell version, the Herzog version, and the Eggers version. Now, that said, that is not, that is not Dracula, you know. That's not Dracula. Dracula is a different character. Dracula is not a decaying corpse. He's he's also much more courtly than that. The thick Romanian accent, you know, that's not in the book at all.

That Harker comments to him, he's trying real hard to perfect his English so he can fit in and not attract attention when he's in England. And Harker comments to him twice, oh, you speak great English. You don't have any accent at all. You know, the accent we're so familiar with comes from the Bell-Legosi film version. Lagosi was Romanian and spoke almost no English. so he had to learn his lines phonetically. So that accent became the, you know,

default Dracula accent, but again, not in the book. Yeah. So besides Dracula, what other vampires do you love? And Nosferatu, of course. Oh, Kel, you got any of that you want to jump in there, whether? I really like Count Yorka. Yeah. Yeah.

I dig him quite a bit. I think there's little touches they did that I, always liked that he knows all these languages. So when a deaf person comes up, he communicates and sign. And I thought, that's nice. That was pretty good. And he's sadistic in it. Yeah.

Of course. There's a lot of good, there's a lot of good film versions. I've gone through a lot of film versions. First of all, both the book and the film of Let the Right One in are some of my favorite things ever. You know, that the film, you know, to my mind, the best horror is all. always about something else other than the scares. You know? Yeah. You know, Rosemary's baby is about fear of pregnancy, you know, and let the right one in is about loneliness. You know,

it's about the loneliness of being a bullied 12-year-old boy or a 200-year-old vampire, you know. And that one is just so poignant and so delicate at the same time as being scary as shit, you know. I'm reading a new one right now by a new horror author. Well, now he's not that new, but a guy I really like named Keith Rawson, who lives here in Portland. And his brand new book's called Coffin Moon, and it's a vampire book. I'm about halfway through it. It's terrific. There's a Native American writer named Stephen Graham

Jones. I'm not sure if you're familiar with him. He was my creative writing professor in college. Oh, shit! Wow! Yeah, I actually All fucking world, man. I actually used to lent him comics when I was in college. Like, I lent him my entire

run of the Max. Oh, cool. Yeah, and he once showed up to my house, at 8 a.m. to return them on a Saturday after I was extraordinarily hung over. How did he like Dino Writers? His most recent book's called The Buffalo Hunter Hunter. It's about a Native American vampire. And it's terrific. It's really, really great.

There was a one just a number of years ago called Bite Marks. Do you remember that one, Kelly? I turned you under that one. Yeah, that was a good one. That was a good one. That one's rough, man. that's some rough shit in it. At the risk of

you guys talking shit about something that could, you know, make you upset. How do you feel about Blade? Oh, I love Blade. Yeah. Blade's great. Blade's great. Yeah, that's all right. Blade, oh, oh, I'm totally remiss for not mentioning sinners. Holy fucking shit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sinners was incredible. Sinners is like Dust to Dawn done right. Classy from Dustal Dawn is how I've already. Yeah, yeah. Uh, uh, uh, uh, blade, you know, Blade, uh, uh, uses, one thing I want to point out is, you know, the whole can, that seems to run through almost every vampire myth is the whole, uh, vampire destroys, uh, sunlight destroys a vampire. Again, not so in Dracula, not so in the book.

Uh, I don't know, I don't know how well you remember the Coppola movie, uh, in the book, he can walk around during the sun daylight hours. He's just not as powerful. Yeah. gets his full vampiric powers at night and he has to sleep during the day on a bed of his own soil to fully recharge his powers but if you recall the copula movie when he first meets mina it's on the streets of london during broad daylight yeah you know um but yeah blade is blade is just full of those you know just vampires bursting into dust and dust and flame just awesome like like a lot of franchises though it went downhill full of fast, you know, number one and two

were great and me. I don't know, one of my favorite things to see is to watch a vampire explode. That's going to make me happy every single time if a vampire explodes for whatever reason. Great scene of that and let the right one in, where the one guy's girlfriend gets bitten and she's turning and she

asked the hospital attendant to open the window because she knows that will destroy her and she just burst into this ball of flame that's like licking the ceiling immediately, you know? Yeah. You know one isn't good, but I love it anyway? John Carpenter's vampires Yeah

John Carpenter's vampires Yeah It's a bad movie It's a bad movie I know it's a bad movie But I'll put it on any time I can appreciate that in Being in a carpenter

We just got a quote A blurb from Carpenter An endorsement Really? Yeah Why take it back then Thank Mr. Jones for that one No I mean

The blurbs that y'all have been getting for this book I mean I'm not alone in saying that this book is incredible. I mean, the reaction that y'all have got from this, like, how does it feel to have so many people just say, like, holy shit, this is the Dracula story that I've been waiting to hear to read my entire life?

Well, it makes me feel like, wow, we got it right. Because, of course, you never know going into it. You know, you might hit a lot of resistance. But I don't know. This is from the very beginning, as Kelly said, when I first started outlining to him what I wanted to do. And I was seeing his reaction. I was like, yeah, we're really on to something here.

You know, it's, it's working, you know. I couldn't tell anybody. I mean, I would read this. He would tell me this. I didn't want it out there. And so I was alone with this for a long time. Yeah, we sat on it for a while, yeah. And it was driving me crazy because I knew how I was reacting.

So when I started hearing other people when they would read the first one or whatever and react the exact same way. Then I knew, well, I always knew Matt was on to something because I know this stuff pretty well and I felt stupid when he was telling me this stuff. Why didn't I think of this? And then very entertained when I would read it. How do you sustain this idea?

And when he said, well, in the first one, which is, I think, a great how he got there. And he really doesn't become a vampire until the very end. Yeah. It's sustained interest. Yeah. At the same time,

we had to make him very recognizable as Dracula. Oh, in lesser hands, in lesser hands, what Matt wrote would be dreadfully boring. It would be. And I always told him, I said, this would be great

if someone drew it in stick figures because it's just all there. And it's the ideas. I'm very big on ideas. I think ideas, if you've got those, that really is compelling to people. And Matt had ideas everywhere on this. I mean, just from just how you do a good comic book

to what you're going to say to bringing a new light on something. All of it was working, all of it. And it is all I can do. And I mean, people will say to me, you know, how you go about sustaining that energy. It's very easy. I mean, like I said, he writes all these scenes, which for me I like because people, when they like something, they'll describe something they like.

And I found most, this happens to me the most with what Matt's done. They tell me so much from both the first books. Yeah. They'll just go on and on and on and on about, and this scene, and this scene, and this scene. And I'm going, well, that's what I thought. That's why I'm not, you know, I'm like, and a lot of stuff, too, will just pop up. I mean, there's things. I don't pre-plan anything. I don't do thumbnails. I don't do anything. I work very emotionally. So I want to feel it that day. I'll read Matt's stuff over a lot. And sometimes I'll get an idea. But most of the time, that idea is rejected by the time I get to actually drawing it. And then I always think, well, how can I really emphasize what Matt's doing here? And that's where it comes together. really well because I don't know that a lot of this stuff's going to happen. Some stuff I think

is going to be really gory isn't and other stuff becomes very gory and I didn't think of it that way. But that's the pleasure of working with someone who's figured it out. There's no plot holes with Matt. There's no, I don't understand this. So at that point, you kind of bend the knee because you realize somebody put a lot of effort thinking research to scare the hell out of you. And it works that he does do that. I'll read and go, Jesus Christ. Even down to, fellas, you have a, you have a copy of the first volume

sitting in front of you there. Yeah. The, uh, the logo we use is the same logo that was on the very first 1897 hardcover edition. Nice. Hell yeah. That's great. Keeping it, keeping it real. Now, uh, if this is too much of a spoiler for the first book, please tell us to not put it in the episode.

But I'm curious. Why was Satan a boy? just because it's the opposite of what you expect. Yeah. You know, and he looks... I mean, you get to see what he really is later. Yeah, and he presents himself differently to everybody. Yeah, there's that one scene where all the various scholars,

depending on their nationality or describing how they see them, and it's all basically derivative of their own mythologies, you know. Yeah, so what was it about, like, the Eastern European mythology, like Dracula's mythology that made him see Satan as a little boy? Oh, it's Catholic-based, you know? Yeah. And I'm sure in my mind, it was some little boy that he had fucking impaled. Some peasant boy, you know?

Yeah, that was one of the things the first time you see. And Dracula's response was, I don't give a shit. Like sitting trying to freak me up. Fuck you, say. Yeah, right, right. I was there. I saw that thing go up his asshole. Yeah, because right up top, when you see the impaled people,

when he's still flat and he's still in charge and shit. you see a little boy yeah yeah yeah that's what i thought when i read it that's why i put the little boy there i didn't think it would be that but i thought that's what matt was thinking was this is somebody or a presentation of of somebody he did this too yeah you know this is not uh endemic to that time period i mean look at the look at the casualties in gaza yeah you know i mean it's indiscriminate of age and and class and sex and everything you know war war destroys everything. Any war. Yeah, any wars like that. And considering that Vlad doesn't see himself as a sick guy, but using that as a psychological terror weapon, which worked, in real life, it worked,

no, he's not even, he's, it's, it's a means to his end. So he's not even thinking about, geez, I really shouldn't have done that. That's, that. He's thinking, man, those shrieve, still keep the Turks away. Yeah. And then in book two, we had a sequence where, so in the actual novel, you only ever see him pray on women, right? You get the feeling that, sure, he bites guys,

but you only ever see him pray on women. And if you go down the Anne Rice route, you know, all the vampires are ambisexual. You know, they have sex with men and women, you know, you live that long and it doesn't matter to you, you know. Party time. So I had to figure out a reason why he only prays on women.

And I took his inspiration, certain predators, like we've all seen a cat play with a mouse, right? And I know from you guys, the sequence of orcas you did with SeaWorld that, Ed, you were the host on that one. Yeah. Orcas can toss a seal around in the air for an hour, you know? Well, why do they do this? You know, and certain annual behavioralists will say, well, they're honing their skills. And I'm like, really? They already caught the thing.

How's that's owning the skills? Yeah. And my thought was always, maybe this just makes it taste better. Oh, like tenderizing. Maybe somehow the fear juices are marinating that meat, and it just tastes better, you know? So Dracula goes on and on about how women just taste better. You know, like he says there's a certain assertive tang in the gore of males. See, that's the thing I love.

stuff I've not thought of. And when he said that, I went, that really helps me draw this. You know, that does, because then I see him being more, rather than seductive, more consumptive. Yeah, he's culinary about it. Yeah, yeah. If I didn't need a person, I'd choose a woman. Yeah.

Yeah, there you go. Yeah. When I remember telling my wife about that, she goes, that's, yeah, that's exactly what would, I mean, There's so many things Matt does. I always run it by her, and I'll say, well, okay, what would you react? And she goes, no, that's good. That's good. And it's all horrible things happen into women.

So she'll go, no, that's scary. You know, if it's passed, if it passes your artist's wife test, you're good. Yeah. So I'll always say it like, well, would this bug you? And she goes, no, that's really good. Don't change that. And I'm like going, okay, that's good. In book three, when he's in London, I have him describe,

the taste of everybody he bites. And in most cases, it has to do with her social status. Like, I remember one is she tasted of liniment and broken dreams. Yeah. And, you know, it varies from whether it's a man or a woman or high class or low class, you know. Yeah. And so when you're writing something like this, something like Dracula that's been done so many times. And I'm sure you've seen basically every, you know, every Dracula adaptation

out there and probably read quite a few of them as well. Like, how do you kind of keep the ideas of other people out of your head? That's tough. And I do stay away from certain things. Like, when we started this, I deliberately did not go check out Marve Wolfman and Gene Colan's long-running classic run at Marvel Comics to Madracula, which is where Blade was first introduced. That was so much material.

I thought, well, I don't want to cross over with something. something they might have done consciously. If I do it accidentally, fine. But, yeah, deliberately stayed away from those. I love reading those too. So when I got on this, I just took all those books I used to and put them away. When I was doing Batman, I wouldn't read Batman comics from the artists I love. I mean, I went on a 10-year not reading it. It was because you don't want to be influenced by it or take the same ground if, you know, consciously or unconsciously, you try not to. And speaking of a crossover material, I don't know if you guys know this or not. Have either of you ever seen the Dan Curtis directed 70s TV movie starring Jack Palance?

No. Of Dracula? It's adapted by Richard Matheson by the legendary fucking Richard Matheson. It's pretty darn good. I think it's excellent. I think it's an excellent. It's where they first introduced the theory that Mina is the reincarnation of his long-lost love. Yeah, it's excellent.

But that was on when they were developing Tomb of Dracula. and so artist Gene Cullen based his Dracula on Jack Paul Lance. Yes, and he did a great job of it. He gave him a little mustache, but if you go and look, it's got like this broad face and a broad mouth like Jack Palance and the eyes kind of beady and... And he's mean as shit in that, too. Yeah, he is mean as shit.

Is there any like Dracula lore? You're like, fuck it, that's stupid. Like, I didn't see anything about garlic in the first book or anything like that. We get to garlic. Yeah, I mean, he's so powerful. I have that most of it. it doesn't affect him all that much. It's also, you know, the whole thing with the scolomance,

first of all, in the novel, we don't see many other vampires, and they're all women. But he exhibits powers way beyond what the other ones have. You can see them, mainly what they do is they can turn into a mist and materialize here and there. But you never see them command the weather or transform into animals or command animals, you know, and my approach was that's all shit, that's all necromancy that he learned. at the scolomance, you know, that's outside of vampiric powers.

We do bring in garlic in the third one. Crosses and stuff, though. Like, there's a famous, it's actually a pretty good movie, but it has a silly fucking ending. It's Hammer's second film called Brides of Dracula. Did not star Christopher Lee. Christopher Lee didn't come back for that one. And it's got a lot of good stuff in it. It does.

But at the very end, they turn a win. mill so that the arms of the windmill are a cross and he gets kind of like fucked up by the cross now that doesn't make any sense because there are crosses in architecture everywhere you look you know ticket fences are full of crosses you know he wouldn't be able to go anywhere so my approach is it has to be wielded with a faith behind it an active faith too not not a cursory or a casual faith you know to have an effect on him oh so if you're an atheist and show Dracula cross it don't do shit buddy yep hell yeah yep I think he would be the best.

If Dracula did exist, you'd fill churches. Yeah, because you'd go, man, I don't know. I just want to go to the store at night. So I got it. Well, on the, you know, we're here on the subject of monsters. And Kelly, like, this isn't the first of, like, the massive, like, monsters, the universal monsters that you worked on. Like, Frankenstein, alive, alive. Yeah.

I adore. It is absolutely incredible. But you took over and did the last issue and took over from like the legendary Bernie Wrights and the guy co-created swamp thing. Like what was it like to work on something like that? It was as big of an honor as you could get. He called me. And as soon as he asked him, I knew bad things were going on in his life.

Yeah. You know. It was ill health, right? He was kind of towards the end of his life. Yeah. He had reached a point where. obviously his doctors had said they've done all they could do and he wanted it completed and uh all i all he didn't he had penciled very little most of it was on little thumbnails about

this big almost a little bigger than a postage stamp where he would just kind of indicate what he want but he would write it down he would write what the what the what the quotes were and he gave So, and he had all the stuff sent in his preparation for it. But it was, like I said, a tremendous honor and terribly sad at the same time. I, you know, that same year, I do that, and he passes, so did Len Ween, who I'd been doing Swamp Thing with. And, you know, as an 11-year-old when I first found their books, 11 or however old I was, those things had never figured. I'd never figured that. And the fact, like, with Reitzin's Frankenstein,

like I said, he had a few beautiful penciled pages. And I said, you know, I don't want to ink those. I'll trace them, whatever. And because I didn't, I wanted the originals to stay him. Intact. Yes. And, but they were great. Absolutely as good as you can imagine.

So at that point, you know, like I said, it was very, very sad to do, but I'm glad I did it because it finished out his book. And I made a point that so people would really know, I didn't let them publish it in gray scale, but in color scale. So you could see all my work lines. So you know it's, okay, now it's me, it's not here. just out of respect. I didn't, I, you know, I didn't, but, uh, he wasn't, he, he, uh, I don't know how he did it, but he did it. And it's funny to mention those small layouts. That's, uh, I do that sometimes. I give advice like that. They were so small. I know, but I, I, I, I, I, I, a little bit bigger than that. I give advice to young wannabes. I say,

do your layouts this big. Because if you can make it clear that size, then you're, then the rest is all just dressing, you know, he did. And, and, uh, even with, uh, even with, uh, uh, even with, uh, And if something was more complex, his compositions would, that's what you really, writes in if anything, was composition. So, and he would indicate where the light sources were. So I just went with that. But it was a, that was a tough draw, but I was very happy with it while doing it, because he had passed at that point.

And so there was nowhere to go for a question or something. I was glad that they sent me a few things he had done, and it was finished, so I could see how he pushed or pulled a line, how he applied washes and stuff. And that was extremely instructive. There's no way to do it. I mean, it was that good. And he drew so much with the brush. It was, man, it was exhilarating to see that. You could tell that wasn't drawn.

He just went and did it. Yeah. Yeah, you see that from his early career, there's a bunch of large pieces that he had paid. penciled and then started to ink and quit for whatever reason halfway through. So you really get to see those stages and how much, as you said, yes, he's rendering in the actual brush. Yeah, it was, it was amazing. Which takes a mastery and a confidence that is supreme. He could just sit down and draw.

He didn't, he didn't really, I mean, I looked at some of this stuff, and I go, there's no real, I know he, he would do preliminaries, but there's not a lot of sketching. Pretty brief, yeah. Yeah, he just draw. Yeah, it was. was just all there. Structural shapes, and that's about it. Yeah, I'm big on composition myself, but it was a clinic. Yeah.

So when you're drawing like two different types of, like, it seems like with Frankenstein, there's like more of a slow pace, but Dracula, far more manic. Like, does that sort of change like the way that, like, do you, when you're drawing something more manic, do you draw faster or slower? I do. Yeah, I do, too. Yep. There's days. I think you said he's very angry and he's very, or he's, he's very emotional. Dracula is, the third one, he has to be a little more reserved because he's in public now.

Well, and he's in an alien environment. He doesn't know anything about. But when he lets himself go, it does work on me. I do find myself, you do draw faster. Dracula, I don't have any trouble figuring out what I want to do. I think a lot of it is that Matt's scripts are pretty clear on what he wants, but he's also pretty clear on the intent. And you just make him so sinister in every fucking shot. Like, no matter what he's doing, it's like, yeah, that guy looks sinister as shit. But it's good.

It's more of a hiss than a br. Yeah, it's different. Well, he's in charge I always see it like he's got all this ability He's got to be cautious in certain ways But he's clearly The alpha of whatever

Of whatever setting he's in Yeah Yeah Well guys, thank y'all so much For joining us today This has been such a pleasure Yeah Real quick where we go Marcus

We'd be remiss if we don't mention our project God damn Well if it ever Fucking comes out Yeah Yeah, me and Matt worked on a project. I wrote a, a 21 page, 22 page, Sid and Nancy, retelling of the Sid and Nancy story. Matt drew it.

It was a goddamn absolute pleasure to work on. And it all came about because my son, Brennan, turned me on to Last Pod. Yeah. And from there, I discovered no dogs. Yeah. And so I wrote them a note. And I was like, you guys, your show, that was the soundtrack of my entire career. And Marcus came back and said, hey, well,

well, I'm writing a story about that kind of music. Would you be interested in drawing it, you know? I mean, it's, I, yeah, my God. It was just so cool. It was totally fun, yeah. Yeah, to work. And Marcus, you're in a very small club, dude, because I've almost never worked with other writers.

I know. I know. It's absolutely incredible. But, yeah, thank you so much. You guys had Kevin Smith on a month or so ago, something like that, right? Yeah. I drew Kevin's very first comic book story. Really?

Yeah. It was a, it was a Jay and Silent Bob short story called Walt Flanagan's dog where they get in these misadventures and they end up like having a run in with this little yappy dogs so they get the dog stoned and then when they kind of come out of their days the dogs lay in there with this enormous

fucking hard on. Yeah. I read it. I remember. And I later designed the first Jay and Silent Bob action figures and we included the dog as one of the accessories and we named him tripod because he's standing on his front of two legs and his dick.

And then his little hind leg Legs are just kind of like waving around behind me. But yeah, I mean, hopefully, you know, once our next Z2 book comes out, we're still working on that right now when exactly that will come out. But once that does come out, and yeah, it's, you know, it's, you know, me writing and Matt drawing the full Sidon Nancy's story and every bit of... And my son coloring. Yeah, and Brennan coloring as well.

Like, it's so, and it's gory as hell. It's just as gory as the story is. Yeah, Brennan's dead. This is one of the most extreme things you've ever done. I was like, well. I was very proud. That actually makes me very proud that I wrote one of the most extreme things with that way. I didn't even know this existed.

I can't wait to read it. It must have been fun to draw all those needles. It was, you know, I mean. A lot of needles and a lot of knives. A lot of decrepit shit. Yeah, a lot of, you know, that scene was pretty gnarly, as Marcus accurately described, you know. So it was. Thank you.

I really, I can't wait for people to see it, but it'll be out at some point. when, you know, that whole thing gets released. Wow. More Gary Oldman. And before we split, everybody, the campaign for the new one launches Wednesday, October 1st. Go to Kickstarter, Dracula, Book 3, The Count. Nice. And you can still get books one and two.

You can still get the hard covers of books one and two. And people can get the hard covers for books one and two from the Kickstarter? Yes. All right. Okay. They'll be offered on this one as well. Yeah. And are these for sale in bookstores and comic bookstores?

Can they order them from their... The Kickstarter is the only place to get the hard covers. Then Dark Horse Comics releases the trade paperback version via regular retail outlets, about a month after the backers get their hardcover editions. All right, cool. So, yeah. So, yeah, you can... And we have extra rewards.

We actually have some original art this time. That's a collaboration between me and Kelly, 10 original pieces. Cool. So that's kickstarter.com slash... Again, if you just search on Kickstarter for Dracula, Matt Wagner, Kelly Jones, you'll find it. Got it. Got it. Yeah, or, of course, you know, ask your local comic book store to order for you if you can.

Yeah, make sure you read this. It's really cool. It's like history meets Dracula. I don't know. It's just badass. I loved it. Yeah, thanks, guys. Yeah, I've did both volumes one and two. Yeah, I love so much and read through the whole things one night. It's a lot of work. Boy, it's a ton of fun, as you can tell from the way we enthuse about it.

Oh, yeah. Well, thank you all so much. You bet. Thanks for having us, guys. Thanks. Thank you.