Fear Itself: Hulk vs. Dracula #3 – Review

By: Victor Gischler (writer), Ryan Stegman (pencils), Mike Babinski & Rick Magyar (inks), Frank Martin & Antonio Fabela (colors), Clayton Cowles (letters), Jake Thomas (assistant editor) & Mark Paniccia (editor)

The Story: The Fear Itself version of the Hulk is running loose in Dracula’s countryside.  Will the vampires be able to stop him?

What’s Good: If you’ve been following Gischler’s vampire-related stories over the last year or so, you know that he’s been building a bit of a vampire mythology.  Instead of just having Dracula and a bunch of nameless vampire underlings, he’s created a web of political intrigue having to do with Dracula’s extended family and all these different breeds and sects of vampires.  Dracula is King of the Mountain, but he has to control and direct all of these forces and they’ve all got different skills and political goals.  This miniseries also introduced what is basically a vampire superhero team called the Forgiven.  The Forgiven have the customary blend of power sets and are a neat concept as they don’t have an allegiance to any of the vampire sects, so they should be free to leave vampire-land and have adventures with the rest of the Marvel Universe.  Hopefully we’ll be seeing Gischler or other creators telling more Forgiven stories in the near future.

In fact, the Forgiven is probably what puts this miniseries over the top.  Most of the Fear Itself tie-ins where just complete crap because the stories just ran in a circle.  Hulk vs. Dracula actually brought us something new and that is what we’re hoping for when we read superhero comics.  The only other mini that did anything “new” was The Deep, which kicked off the formation of the new Defenders team.  If you didn’t catch this miniseries in single issues, maybe you’ll get lucky and The Deep and Hulk v. Dracula will get paired up in a trade paperback without making you read some of the really bad miniseries.