Jubilee vs Vampire

[angelophile]

Back in the 1998 Generation X Annual, the Gen X kids came into conflict with the granddaddy of all vampires - Dracula. (Possibly because Dracula was pissed at Chamber for being a descendant of his old enemy, Apocalypse, but that's another story entirely.) Anyway, they didn't fare great - Chamber was plagued by nightmarish visions, Paige gets stalked in her underwear (just so you know it really is a Dracula story, presumably) and Jubilee, well, it wasn't her finest hour...

This might possibly prove to be relevant.













Later there's a trip to the theater, where Jono gets tackled by a vampire in the rest room (although why he even needs to go there is a mystery), leaving Paige and Jubilee alone in the school.







Which means sneaking up on the blonde while she's wandering around in her underwear and kidnapping her, in good Dracula tradition. The rest of Gen X mount a rescue mission, but Jono's distracted by Dracula attempting to sway him with visions of his face and body restored and winds up being a snack, while Jubilee tries for a rematch.

It's brief.









Good to see Jono was raised on the Hammer Horror classics.

Comments

[icon_uk]

I suppose I really don't consider the firey thing he has to be his life force per se, it's a psychically generated life support machine as much as anything, more akin to a Green Lantern construct perhaps.

I find it easier to accept the writer hadn't thought it through than suddenly have the MU Dracula completely change his eating habits for one story.

[psychopathicus_rex]

But my point is that he WOULDN'T be changing his eating habits - going by this hypothesis, vampires suck blood because the lifeforce is IN the blood. In this case, though, Jono HAS no blood, or at least not a normally functional circulatory system, so his lifeforce isn't in it - it's manifesting in a more concentrated form than usual as the energy that keeps him alive. If Dracula fed on Jono, he would still be sucking out the lifeforce like he's been doing for centuries - it's just that said lifeforce would be PURE lifeforce, without being mixed with blood.
And I'll grant you that the writer probably didn't write the story with all these background details in mind - this is just my own attempt to explain Dracula's actions. If I'd written Marvel a letter at the time, I'll bet I would've gotten a No-Prize.

[icon_uk]

And I admire the creativity applied in your No-Prize proposal, but I still don't buy it. The hypothesis requires Dracula to display a never seen before and never seen after ability, and the "we really feed on lifeforce" notion is not present in MU vampires AFAIK, who drink blood for sustenance (and as Dracula is seen doing to Jono, what with the bloodstained mouth and everything).

It'd be more akin to me deciding to not eat meat any more when I can stick my fingers into a power outlet instead.

[psychopathicus_rex]

Well, yes, but the difference between the two situations is that if you did that, you'd be fried, whereas presumably, tapping directly into the lifeforce would NOT fry a vampire, as it's merely a logical extension of what they already do.

[icon_uk]

Only if you accept that "blood = lifeforce and lifeforce is the important bit, not the blood" as logical, which I accept you do, but which I don't.

[psychopathicus_rex]

*shrugs* Well, it's just a hypothesis. It just seems to me that there must be something IN the blood which keeps vampires going, and lifeforce is as good an explanation as any. (It would also explain how sometimes the victims become vampires themselves - presumably, if vampires can extract lifeforce, they can also inject a bit of their own, perverted lifeforce into the victim in the process, which remains in the body after death and resurrects them.) Still, it's not like I can provide documentation to support my point or anything.