Marvel’s classic Vampire Tales comics get a gorgeous collection

Marvel Comics and Dark Horse are teaming up to release a collected edition of 1970s horror fun with the first volume of The Best of Marvel’s Vampire Tales. This hardcover archival edition clocks in at nearly 300 pages, collecting selections from the horror anthology’s first six issues. This includes works by comics legends like Tony Isabella, Gardner Fox, Roy Thomas, Gil Kane, Steve Gerber, and many more.

Running from 1973-1975, Vampire Tales ultimately released 11 issues with one annual special. The comic was published by Marvel’s corporate sibling Magazine Management, which allowed for an atypical format. Large-sized and featuring gorgeous painted covers and painstakingly detailed black and white interior art, the book was ostensibly intended for an older audience. This caveat allowed the comic to feature significantly more graphic horror content.

In the U.S., horror comics were massively popular until they caught the attention of censors in the mid-1950s, most notably the psychiatrist Fredric Wertham. He and others claimed that comics in general caused increased juvenile delinquency; a notion that has, naturally, been disproven. Real or not, these accusations led to extended hearings in which EC Comics publisher Bill Gaines was forced to defend books like Tales From The Crypt. The hearings went poorly for Gaines, who was accused of corrupting the youth.

Ultimately, the publisher shuttered with the birth of the comic industry’s self-censoring Comics Code. The Code openly targeted horror comics from the market. Still, that wasn’t exactly how it played out. Though EC was done for, by the 1960s, the publisher, Warren, was able to skirt the strict censorship of the Comics Code by printing in large format black and white. As such, horror comics like Creepy and Eerie were sold on magazine racks, not as comics. Somewhat ironically, considering Marvel’s wholehearted acceptance of the code, they would soon be pulling the same trick.

Vampire Tales remains a bit of a hidden gem, often overlooked in overviews of 1970s Marvel. The unique format may play a role in its omission, as would the graphic content. After all, Marvel characters like Morbius, Werewolf By Night, and Blade were usually still soundly grounded in the superhero genre at this time. With Vampire Tales, all bets were off. It’s clear from the first pages of the series that this will be a different beast entirely.

Image: John Romita Sr./Marvel Comics

Running roughly three times the length of a regular comic, the issues also featured articles, including a breakdown of Montague Summers’s The Vampire: His Kith & Kin written by Chris Claremont, among other tidbits. It’s unclear whether those will make it into the trade, but it was another aspect of the series that set it apart from other books on the stands. It features stories with fan favorites like Blade and Morbius, allowing them to take the center stage. The series also introduced the delightful succubus Satana, sister of Daimon Helstrom.

Vampire Tales itself was accompanied on the stands by sister titles, Dracula Lives, Monsters Unleashed and Tales of the Zombie, all of which were similarly formatted but focused in their own specific corners of Marvel Horror. While Dracula Lives specifically zeroes in on the Marvel comics version of Dracula, Vampire Tales is able to wander around and even establish some of its own lore.

The collection will be released on Oct. 26, right in time for Halloween. It can currently be preordered online or at your local comic shop.