Beware: the mustache of Dracula!

[starwolf_oakley]

A page from LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN CENTURY: 1969. Mina Murray trips out and sees an old enemy.





So, did Dracula have a big white mustache in the novel? I'm not getting of an "Eastern European Sex God" vibe off this hallucination.

Comments

[silverhammerman]

Oh man, I thought you were gonna be talking about Gene Colan's amazing Lee Van Cleef-looking mustachioed Dracula. Tomb of Dracula Dracula is truly the Cadillac of Draculas.

[goattoucher]

"The Cadillac of Draculas" is the best phrase I have heard all day.

[kamino_neko]

Yes, IIRC, Drac had a thick moustache. Since Stoker based him partially on Vlad III Dracula, Viovode of Wallachia (AKA Vlad Tepes, AKA Vlad the Impaler), even if it wasn't mentioned in the novel, it's always been my mental picture.

Those bats, however, look more like Hiram Lodge.

[rainspirit]

It definitely was mentioned that Dracula had a moustache in the novel.

[cyberghostface]

I've actually heard varying things about the real Dracula being an influence on Stoker; one writer suggested that he was aware of the name and not much else and used it because it sounded interesting. An earlier draft used the name "Count Wampire" (so it's pretty fortunate Stoker discovered the name Dracula).

[theepicbeyond]

Dracula was never portrayed as uncommonly good looking in the novel. He ranged from at worst grotesque to at best swarthy. He was supposed to represent a host of various evils to the Victorian era. The implication of his attractiveness was a reflection of how the Victorians viewed sexuality. He had hairy palms a mustache and uni brow but all the ladies were charmed by him. Dracula was alluring but ugly, just like how the victorians felt about sex.

"Eastern European Sex God" thing came from modern renditions of the vampire myth as views of sexuality became more liberal.

I don't know how it was portrayed in the League of extraordinary gentle men, but in the book Dracula was Mina's enemy. she never was in love with him as she was in the 1992 film. He forcibly tried turning her into a vampire, almost killed her husband, and murdered her best friend turning her into a monster. If she were tripping she almost definitly view Drac in a negative light.

[mrstatham]

Well, Dracula isn't mentioned all that much - not by name, because it's a properly copyrighted character, unlike the public domain characters Moore works with - but the treatment of his character and his effect on Mina is definitely not one that makes her love him. The only thing that's kind-of interesting as a side-effect is that she both finds attention placed on the scars of her neck both disgusting and arousing, which maybe ties to that attitude you mention the Victorians having about sex. But it's definitely portrayed as having damaged Mina. Hence her freaking out here.

[bewareofgeek]

Actually, no. Dracula is in the public domain as well, and has been since 1962 (at least in Europe and the US). As I recall, Moore decided not to use him (or Sherlock Holmes) much because any story with him in it tends to become "a Dracula story".

[mrstatham]

Ah, that's it. My bad. I do think I agree with Moore on that one.

[icon_uk]

And when dressed to blend in with Victorian London, he wore Jonathan Harker's tweeds, so the whole stylish evening dress thing was a later addition too.

Indeed he did...

[bewareofgeek]

Our first glimpse:

"Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white
moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single
speck of colour about him anywhere."

And later:

"His face was a strong, a very strong, aquiline, with high bridge of
the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils, with lofty domed forehead,
and hair growing scantily round the temples but profusely elsewhere.
His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose,
and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion.
The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache,
was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp
white teeth. These protruded over the lips, whose remarkable
ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years.
For the rest, his ears were pale, and at the tops extremely pointed.
The chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin.
The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor."

He started getting younger after he'd fed.

[benuben]

I really don't want to come of as unoriginal, but WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?

[mrstatham]

In a 'what the fuck is this shit' sense or just one of general confusion?