(the illustrated) dracula lives again!

a lost item from my childhood that for many years i could recall very little about beyond simple nostalgia. i can recall neither how or where i got it. despite being deprived, by the fog of time, of a title or an artist or a year, dogged net-sleuthing unearthed a book not seen in print since 1975, "(the illustrated) dracula", a black & white trade paperback comic first published more than half a century ago in 1966 (as simply "dracula") by russ jones, creator of warren publishing's popular "creepy" horror comic magazine.

preceded with a four-page introduction by famed dracula portrayer christopher lee, the comic is a faithful retelling of bram stoker's 1897 opus, condensed by otto binder and craig tennis, and moodily rendered by gold-through-bronze-age talent alden mcwilliams, whose strong draftsmanship favorably evokes his more famous contemporaries alex raymond, wally wood and al williamson. bob larkin provided the cover portrait. copies can still be found on amazon and abeBooks, so i ordered one and, after finding my nostalgia fully justified, i set about the laborious task of scanning the entire 161-page volume:

cover of the original 1966 "dracula" first edition:

"(the illustrated) dracula" was a cheap paperback printed on cheap newsprint to be sold to the hoi polloi. starkly illustrated in this unretouched scan are the browning of age, the coarse texture of the cheap pulp paper stock, the uneven and patchy application of the ink, and most challenging, ghost impressions left by ink from the facing page. before and after:

as with many bound book formats, paperbacks can be difficult to scan completely flat. even before the book arrived, in my original plan i had resigned myself to cutting the pages apart. however, despite its age, the book was surprisingly flexible and resilient and proved amenable to the considerable torsion required to hold the pages flat. thanks to the generous gutter space placed between the spine and the artwork, i was able to keep this classic tome in one piece.