
Successful comic-book characters nearly always demand a female doppelganger: Spider-Woman, She-Hulk, Supergirl, Batgirl, etc. Dracula was so popular in the 70s that Marvel spun off Lilith, his undead daughter, in a series of tales. They were scattered around various hard to find magazines, but fear not—I’ve got them all here!

Lilith debuted in Giant-Size Chillers #1, in a Dracula story by the regular team of Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan. The cover is by John Romita, so I must assume that he created the costume. For a female vampire, a sexy costume is a given, and this skin-tight number with a cleavage split certainly is appealing. I don’t care for that tiara—did Lilith die after winning a beauty pagent? In a way, this costume is almost the inverse of Vampirella’s red-strap band-aid outfit.

Lilith isn’t your usual garden variety vampire. In the first few pages, we see her soul rise from the grave. She’s summoned by the hatred that another woman, Angel O’Hara, feels for her father—who has just killed her husband.

It all goes back to before Dracula was a vampire. He was forced to marry Lilith’s mother. As soon as he can, Dracula dumps his first wife by threatening to have her impaled. Nowadays this would get you locked up for a long time, but back then Transylvania was a man’s paradise.

Lilith is taken to a gypsy, who raises the girl after the mother commits suicide. After Dracula becomes a vampire, he kills all the gypsies he can find—including this lady’s brother. In retaliation, she puts a whammy of a curse on Lilith to punish Drac. Lilith will be a vampire, but never fear the cross or the sun. If Lilith dies, she’ll be reborn in the body of a woman who wishes death to her own father.

Nothing much happens in Lilith’s first appearance. She tracks down Dracula, they take in a soccer game together, and Drac spurns her offer to rule the world together. From there, I had to hunt the black and white magazines to find Lilith’s adventures: Vampire Tales #6, Dracula Lives 10 & 11, Marvel Preview 12 & 16. Her solo tales contained 70s elements that are extremely kitsch thirty years later.

Marv Wolfman plotted the first solo outing in Vampire Tales #6, while Steve Gerber finished the scripting. We meet Martin Blank, an unpublished writer who lives in Greenwich Village, at the very same moment that his common-law wife is being murdered. Martin, who is innocent, is taken into custody by the police. He is released in a few hours after the same M.O. (axe murderer) is repeated in another part of the city.



With a sword ready to decapitate Maria, Dracula capitulates. However, when left alone with his wife, Maria tearfully tells Dracula that she was gang-banged by Turkish soldiers while he was in a coma. The Turk storms in and throws Maria to the stone floor, killing her. Dracula snaps. Using his newfound vampiric powers, he breaks his bonds and sucks the blood out of the Turk. Again, Wolfman succeeded in writing a story where Dracula was the hero. Neal Adams rendered the story effectively (if you’re an Adams fan you will have to get this), really making you feel the shock at the death of Dracula’s wife.






