Welcome to 31 Days of Horror Comics, where I will spotlight some of the best horror comics around, as chosen by a bunch of my favorite horror comic writers and artists around!

Today's horror comics creator is Nancy A. Collins, perhaps best known in the world of comics for her long run as the writer on Swamp Thing in the early 1990s...

Outside of comics, she is best known for her vampire novels, especially the Sonja Blue series of books. She did work on a vampire series for Vertigo that sadly never made it past its initial graphic novel state (she also has done some good Vampirella work, but what can I say, I really liked Dhampire when it came out and was sad that the tragic death of the editor behind the project, Lou Stathis, led to it not going to series)...

Nancy's recommendation is Marv Wolfman, Gene Colan and Tom Palmer's run on Tomb of Dracula. This was a popular choice among the various creators, and more than a few creators had this as one of their top choices but I went with one of their alternatives for the sake of variety. I figured I'd save this one for the end of the month, since it's also a personal favorite of mine. Nancy noted that the series was highly influential on her work, and since she is such a renowned vampire writer, that's saying something!

Wolfman amazingly did not even join the series until the SEVENTH issue, which serves as a recap of the three main hunters of Dracula in the series, Quincy Harker, son of Jonathan and Mina Harker (from the famed Dracula novel), Rachel van Helsing, granddaughter of Abraham van Helsing (also from Dracula) and Frank Drake (a descendant of Dracula from before Dracula was turned into a vampire) as well as a creepy bit where Vampire hypnotizes a group of children into becoming assassins for him...

The run, naturally, is best known for a new vampire hunter who was introduced in Tomb of Dracula #10, Blade!

One of my favorite issues is Tomb of Dracula #25, where a woman's husband is murdered when he runs afoul of one of Dracula's schemes and the woman hires a private investigator to look into her husband's death and he does so, but draws himself into Dracula's path as well in the process....

After the case is solved, though, we learn that Hannibal King, the P.I., is a vampire himself!

Great stuff.

Wolfman, Colan and Palmer remained on the series until it ended with issue #70.

Thanks for the suggestion, Nancy!