- Alonso: "Death of Dracula is a one-shot we're using to explain and organize the vampire universe for future use. There's a lot of questions about vampires around the globe, the level of unification, who's on top of the pyramid. We're looking to answer that, and the inciting incident is the death of Dracula."
- Dracula's death is the shocking beginning of this upcoming change.
- Vampires vs. X-men is the first big thing happening.
- Gischler: "There were already these different types of vampires. To me, that was a good starting point. We used some of the old ones, we invented some new ones, just to sort of shape the vampire world, the vampire hierarchy. While we did start with things that already existed and went from there, one of the thing we wanted to get away from was the 'I vant to suck your blood' Count Chocula vampire,and wanted to make them a lot more modern a lot more hip."
- This is very serious! Not a parody says Marvel!
- Gischler speaks of "revamping" vampires in the Marvel Universepun only slightly intended.
- Brevoort: "The story that's coming up in X-Men is really only the tip of the iceberg. We're going to see these vampiric characters in
Avengers titles in the months to come. It's premature to talk about it now. Even though there's very little we can say today about it, it all goes back to this one-shot, that could fly under a lot of people's radar," but Brevoort stresses that it's something that people will be looking back to in six to nine months.
- Alonso on why he wanted to bring vampires to the forefront of the Marvel Universe: he says they've wanted to make Dracula into a big, Dr. Doom-type villain for a while. "At some point it occurred to me that vampires and Dracula might be the way to go," Alonso says.
- Brevoort: "The X-Men have a bit of a history with vampires, they've been on the periphery of the Marvel Universe for some time."
- Mutants and Vampires are both outcasts and their numbers are dwimbling... Maybe they will make peace and become 1 bigger group? =O
- Gischler on the redesign of Dracula: "We wanted Dracula to be cool, we wanted Dracula to be badass. We wanted to preserve the vampireness at the core, but still give him a hip, cool, badass look. I was consulted, but really we got some super design people and some artists."
- "These vampires are very aware of their power sets."
- There will be a vast diversity of the vampires, just like humans are very diverse in their culture.
- Event? Alonso says "Curse of the Mutants," starting with X-Men #1, is the event. Death of Dracula serves as the prologue.
- We recently talked with Gischler and Alonso about the storyline here:
http://www.newsarama.com/comics/c2e2-new-x-men-100419.html
- Gischler says something "much larger" is being set up by Death of Dracula.
- "Death of Dracula is one brick in the road," Brevoort adds. "'Curse of the Mutants' is the next brick. There's at least two or three more bricks," he says, that they can't go into now.
- "Death of Dracula might seem as a throwaway kind of thing, or a primer, but it will be an absolutely crucial piece in the Marvel Universe over the next 18 months or so," Brevoort says.
- Alonso says that they considered putting an X-Men banner on the book, but did not (even though they knew it would drive sales), since the X-Men don't appear in the book. But it does have a Heroic Age banner on the cover.
- No other vampires like Frankencastle style monsters or anything. Just Vampires!
- Death of Dracula is new reader friendly. No need to be reading Captain Britain (but it's praised, so just do it!) to be feeling left in the dark confused.
- Alonso talks more about the story. "It centers on a power play, that sets up a new dynamic for vampires. We hope, very quickly, to get readers up to speed on the way vampire societies are organized."
-Question from Comics Bulletin: Team up vampires with Dr. Doom or any other major players? Alonso: "No immediate plans. First things first."
- Last question, from CBR, concerns the intermingling of X-Men and vampires. "What is the nature of the threat that mutants present to them? Who is the driving force behind that attack?"
- Alonso says he can't give away too much, but reiterates that the story begins with a suicide bomber in San Francisco's Union Square, the opening shot for the vampires attempting to take over the X-Men's turf. The X-Men will assume they're dealing with Dracula, "but the truth is deeper than that."
- Alonso adds that even though Dracula is dead, "he casts a shadow over the proceedings."
ly good.
Not to mention there can be a very interesting concept between Mutants and Vampires. Both hated and dwimdling in numbers.
