WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Wolverine #1, by Benjamin Percy, Adam Kubert, Frank Martin, Viktor Bogdanovic, Matthew Wilson, VC’s Cory Petit and Tom Muller, on sale now.
As the Lord of Vampires, Dracula is synonymous with horror, power and death. After a humbling experience in the pages of Avengers wherein he was reduced to a shadow of his former self, Dracula looks to be returning to his days of glory in the pages of Marvel’s new Wolverine series.
Dracula was first brought to life in the pages of Marvel comics in the early '70s. In the decades since his Marvel Universe debut, the vampire has clashed numerous times with the Avengers, X-Men and his vampire-hunting arch-nemesis Blade. And outside of his superhero rivalries, this Dracula is more or less the same as his literary counterpart. He's an undead creature of unimaginable evil who lives off of the blood of others and suffers from a few glaring weaknesses, most notably sunlight.
After taking part in a vampire civil war in Transylvania that eventually dragged in the Avengers, Dracula marshaled his forces in the Vampire Nation underneath Paris. And in Wolverine #1, Dracula reintroduces himself in the lives of mutants through an unlikely source: Omega Red.
Omega Red arrives on the X-Men's mutant island nation by traveling through a Krakoan portal and requesting the amnesty that Professor X has extended to all mutants. This doesn’t sit well with Wolverine, who immediately sees Red as a threat and rushes in to attack.
Magneto stops Wolverine in mid-air and points out to him that Omega Red is badly hurt and clearly didn’t come looking for a fight. He then encourages Wolverine to find out what circumstances led to the villain visiting the island, using his control over metal to toss Wolverine through the Krakoan gateway.
When Logan lands on the other side, he finds himself in France, near a wrecked car full of dead bodies piled in the trunk. A still-distrustful Wolverine heads back to Krakoa to interrogate his old enemy, who points the X-Man towards a club called the King’s Oubliette.
When Wolverine arrives at the club, he quickly realizes that it's full of vampires who capture him. With help from a vampire hunter named Louise, Logan escapes, and the pair stage a counter-attack against the vampires.
Over the course of that attack, Wolverine is set upon by vampires, who drain him of copious amounts of his blood that they then take back to their leader, Dracula.
While Wolverine’s healing factor keeps him from being turned into a vampire, the blood consumed by Dracula has an effect on the undead creature as well. When he is last seen, the Lord of the Vampires is able to walk freely in daylight without being harmed by the once deadly rays of the sun.
Even with the traditional weaknesses of a vampire, Dracula was already one of Marvel's deadliest villains. Now that he's stronger than ever and no longer on the sidelines, Dracula has reemerged as a force to be reckoned with, and he already has one of the X-Men's deadliest foes in his pocket. What this unholy union has in store for the mutants of Krakoa island remains to be seen, but with a history of bad blood between the mutants and the vampires, it’s a sure bet that it won’t be pretty.