Artist: Alberto Breccia
This edition: 2021
Contains spoilers
The blurb: In this wordless, full-colour collection of satiric short comics stories, an internationally acclaimed cartoonist chronicles the waning days of the most famous vampire of them all. Alberto Breccia's Dracula is composed of a series of brutally funny satirical misadventures starring the hapless eponymous antihero. Literally defanged (a humiliating trip to the dentist doesn't help), the protagonist's glory days are long behind him and other, more sinister villains (a corrupt government, overtly backed by American imperialism) are sickening and draining the life out of the villagers far more than one creature of the night ever could. This is the first painted, full-colour entry in Fantagraphics' artist-focused Alberto Breccia Library, and the atmospheric palette adds mood and dimension. It also includes a sketchbook showing the artist's process. Dracula has no co-author, and so Breccia's carnivalesque vision is as pure Breccia as it gets. Created during the last of a succession of Argentine military dictatorships (1982-1983), this series of short comics stories ran in Spain's Comix Internacional periodical in 1984. The moral purpose of Breccia's expressionistic art style is made explicit; he shows that every ounce of his grotesque, bloated characters' flesh and blood has been cruelly extracted from the less fortunate.
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The review: It was Adrien who turned me onto this and I am so very glad he did. This is an English edition though the comics themselves have no dialogue – the titles and in-art phrases (such as graffiti) are translated and yet, despite the lack of dialogue, these are so expressive. Breccia was an Argentinean comic creator who lived through the various dictatorships – the chapter I Was Legend most openly satirises this. He could also see the US hand behind the scenes – the first chapter the Last Night of the Carnival includes a superhero (clearly styled on Superman) interfering with Dracula’s activity and yet failing himself, with the superhero clearly representing the view the US has of itself (not forgetting the necessary collective swig of the kool-aid to summon said view).
This Dracula seems to be symbolic of a time before the dictatorship – corrupt in and of himself and yet ineffectual when compared with the modern (at the time) regime, making him a figure of farce but also, rightly, the repository of undead memory. The artwork is what makes this and Breccia’s style is glorious, making the hardback edition a truly beautiful edition to a collection. This, however, is one to explore yourself. This edition contains a sketchbook to explore Breccia’s methods. 9 out of 10.
In Hardback @ Amazon US
In Hardback @ Amazon UK
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