Dracula: An Interview with Matt Wagner & Kelley Jones

Summary

Last Podcast On The Left
Episode: Dracula: An Interview with Matt Wagner & Kelley Jones
Date: October 14, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode features a deep-dive interview with comic book legends Matt Wagner and Kelley Jones, renowned for their dark, imaginative work on titles like Sandman, Batman, and more recently, a bold new Dracula series. Hosted by Marcus and the Last Podcast crew, the discussion centers on their innovative reimagining of Dracula, exploring Vlad the Impaler's journey as told from Dracula’s own point of view. The conversation ranges from comic book industry tales, the creative process behind their new Dracula project, to broader topics of horror, villainy, and favorite vampire lore.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Comic Legends: Origins and Industry Tales (02:00–11:28)

• Matt Wagner and Kelley Jones reminisce about their first work together on Sandman and the DC crediting system, often granting “creator” status to the first contributor, sometimes resulting in surprises about who gets royalties.
  • “I've created about a half dozen characters I had no idea I created.” — Kelley Jones [03:22]
• Kelly recalls his time on Dino Riders, an assignment he wanted off but led to an unexpected financial windfall when the line was canceled.
  • “I was so angry because I kept saying, get me off... They canceled all the license books. So I get this very large check, larger than I would have gotten from anything they did.” — Kelley [06:00]
• Both discuss how work-for-hire contracts at Marvel and DC shaped their early careers and the subtle rebellion in their art styles.
  • “You always put your all into something, as ludicrous as it was.” — Kelley [07:58]
• They touch on subverting editorial boundaries—like sneaking in adult language to distract censors from more subversive content.
  • “If you had something questionable you wanted to get through, you would throw a fuck or two into the script… and then that's all they would focus on.” — Matt Wagner [10:28]

2. Reinventing Dracula (11:28–16:41)

• Main Topic: Their comic series tells the story of Dracula from Dracula’s own perspective, filling gaps left in Bram Stoker’s epistolary novel and focusing on stories only hinted at.
  • “The one voice missing is Dracula… after this long, we deserve to see, hear his point of view.” — Matt [12:12]
• Stories explore themes like Dracula’s occult education at the mythical Scholomance and the origins of his brides.
  • “I realized what we need to do is… tell everything else that the novel only hints at and doesn't tell.” — Matt [12:25]
• Kelley credits Matt for the idea’s originality, sharing his instant enthusiasm upon hearing the concept.
  • “In three minutes, I went from ‘Dracula?’ to ‘When do we start?’” — Kelley [15:42]

3. Building Canon: Research & Creative License (16:41–18:11)

• The team adheres closely to Stoker’s canon, supplementing with newly imagined material only where the novel is vague.
• Details like the timing of Dracula’s actions are meticulously mapped with annotated calendars—including moon phases and sunrise/sunset times—to satisfy both scholars and casual readers.
  • “I had to make it fit all that. This thing even had the sunrise and sunset times and the phases of the moon.” — Matt [17:24]

4. Art, Gore, and Characterization of Evil (18:11–25:40)

• Kelley discusses his approach to horror art: focusing on “the little things” that evoke pain readers can relate to, like a bat biting someone’s eye or subtle cruelties.
  • “It's the little things that look painful… everyone can relate to that kind of pain.” — Kelley [18:43]
• Matt stresses that empathy—even with monsters like Dracula—derives from strong characterization, not romanticization.
  • “You have to keep him as this unrepentant villain… there's nothing romantic about him.” — Matt [22:23]
• The creative challenge: making readers care about characters in a genre plagued with clichés.
  • “With contemporary vampire stories… you have to do something to make people care, even just in passing.” — Matt [21:38]
• Exploration of the brides’ unique backstories, Dracula’s motivations, and the loss inherent in their vampiric transformation.

5. Villainy from Within (25:56–27:22)

• Matt reflects on the compelling nature of antiheroes and villainous protagonists.
  • “Because we each have a villain inside of us, baby. You recognize it.” — Matt [26:14]
• Comparison to characters like Hannibal Lecter; the allure of unrepentant evil.
• Extended discussion on Vlad the Impaler’s historical brutality and how the comic brings real atrocity to life, including impalement as actual Vlad did it, not sanitized for popular culture.

6. Vampires in Pop Culture (28:14–36:05)

• Contrast between monstrous and “sexy” vampires—Dracula is depicted here as monstrous, not the seductive version of modern takes (à la Twilight or Anne Rice).
• Discussion of Nosferatu, the evolution of Dracula’s accent (due to Lugosi), and the details comics adapt vs. discard.
  • “Dracula is a different character. Dracula is not a decaying corpse. He's also much more courtly than that.” — Matt [29:14]
• Recommendations and admiration for other vampires in film and literature, including Let the Right One In, Buffalo Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones, Blade, and Sinners.
  • “To my mind, the best horror is always about something else other than the scares…” — Matt [30:38]
• Commentary on how myths like sunlight harming vampires diverge from Stoker’s original text, where Dracula is merely weaker by day.

7. Creative Process & Influences (36:25–47:38)

• The dynamic between Matt’s scripts and Kelley’s spontaneous, emotion-driven art style.
  • “I don't pre-plan anything… I work very emotionally, so I want to feel it that day.” — Kelley [37:58]
• Their method of “keeping out” other creators’ work while developing their Dracula: staying away from classic runs and consciously avoiding overlap.
• Mini-history of Dracula portrayals—from Dan Curtis’s Jack Palance adaptation to Gene Colan’s comics, including co-opting tropes (garlic, crosses).
  • “My approach is it has to be wielded with a faith behind it… to have an effect on him.” — Matt [47:07]

8. Honoring Horror Comics’ Past (48:25–52:19)

• Kelley’s touching reflection on completing Frankenstein Alive, Alive! after Bernie Wrightson fell ill and passed.
  • “It was as big of an honor as you could get… a tremendous honor and terribly sad at the same time.” — Kelley [48:25]

9. Collaborative Energy and Character Voice (52:36–54:10)

• Further exploration of drawing mania vs. restraint, feeling the emotion in the pen.
• Matt’s praise for Kelley’s ability to make Dracula sinister, even while blending into society.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Horror Artistry
  “My favorite gore… are the little things that look painful. It can be a small thing, like a needle in a finger… I think everyone can relate to that kind of pain, to those little moments.”
  — Kelley Jones [18:43]

• On Giving Dracula A Voice
  “The one voice missing is Dracula… after this long, we deserve to see, hear his point of view.”
  — Matt Wagner [12:12]

• On the Antihero
  “Because we each have a villain inside of us, baby. You recognize it.”
  — Matt Wagner [26:14]

• Horror’s Depth
  “To my mind, the best horror is always about something else other than the scares.”
  — Matt Wagner [30:38]

• Dracula’s Appetite
  “Dracula goes on and on about how women just taste better. Like he says, there's a certain assertive tang in the gore of males.”
  — Matt Wagner [42:25]

• Empathy in Villainy
  “You know, Dracula is a bad guy. He's like the most notorious bad guy in the world. But, you know, I'm reading this thing, I'm like, ah, you know, I get it. I like you.”
  — Marcus [26:52]

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Important Timestamps

| Time | Segment / Topic | |----------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:00 | Wagner & Jones meet on Sandman; crediting quirks at DC | | 04:47 | Kelly’s Dino Riders story; contract woes and creative rebellion | | 10:28 | Editorial boundaries & sneaking content past censors | | 11:28 | Introduction to Dracula project: telling the story from Dracula’s POV | | 12:25 | Filling in Dracula’s canon with fresh material (Scholomance, Brides) | | 17:24 | Research depth: annotated calendars for Dracula’s canon | | 18:43 | Kelley on horror art & the power in the “little agonies” | | 26:14 | Matt on why we’re drawn to stories from villains’ perspectives | | 28:14 | The series’ commitment to a monstrous (not romantic) Dracula | | 30:38 | Favorite vampire stories; what makes horror last | | 36:25 | Creative partnership: scripting vs. emotional drawing | | 42:25 | Dracula’s tastes: why he preys on women | | 48:25 | Kelley's emotional work finishing Wrightson's last Frankenstein book | | 52:36 | How the art changes with Dracula’s mood; evoking emotion through pace | | 57:08 | Details on the latest Dracula Kickstarter; getting hardcovers | | 58:04 | Quick wrap-up: praise for the series’ historical depth and impact |

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Bonus: Upcoming Projects & How to Get the Book (57:08–end)

• Kickstarter for Dracula Book Three ('The Count') launches October 1st.
  • Hardcovers for books one and two also available via Kickstarter.
  • Dark Horse to release trade paperbacks to retail after hardcover backers.
• Exclusive original art collaborations available as rewards.
• Collaboration between Matt Wagner and the host Marcus on a Sid & Nancy comic project—another example of their creative synergy.

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Episode Tone & Takeaway

This episode is an energetic, irreverent, and deeply informed conversation about reshaping a classic horror myth for a contemporary audience. Matt Wagner and Kelley Jones are passionate about honoring Bram Stoker’s legacy while shaking up expectations—returning Dracula to terrifying, monstrous roots, adding rigorous research, and always letting character drive even the goriest moments. Fans of horror comics and gothic fiction alike will find inspiration, dark laughter, and a new reason to revisit the world’s most iconic vampire.

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For more and to support the latest chapter:
Search Kickstarter for "Dracula Matt Wagner Kelly Jones" (launching October 1st, hardcovers exclusive to Kickstarter).
Trade editions coming soon from Dark Horse Comics.

Transcript

[Matt Wagner]

Morning, Zoe. Got donuts.

[Kelly Jones]

Jeff Bridges, why are you still living above our garage?

[Matt Wagner]

Well, I dig the mattress and I want to be in a T mobile commercial like you teach me. So Dana.

[Kelly Jones]

Oh no, I'm not really prepared. I couldn't possibly at t mobile get the new iPhone 17 Pro on them. It's designed to be the most powerful iPhone yet and has the ultimate pro camera system. Wow, impressive.

[Matt Wagner]

Let me try. T mobile is the best place to.

[Marcus]

Get iPhone 17 Pro because they've got the best network. Nice.

[Kelly Jones]

Je free. You heard them.

[Matt Wagner]

T mobile is the best place to get the new iPhone 17 Pro on us with eligible traded in any condition. So what are we having for lunch?

[Kelly Jones]

Dude, my work here is done.

[Matt Wagner]

The 24 month bill credits on experience beyond for well qualified customers plus tax and 35 device connection charge credit send and balance due. If you pay off earlier, Cancel Finance Agreement. IPhone 17 Pro 256 gigs 1099.99 A new line minimum 100 plus a month plan with auto pay plus taxes and fees required. Best mobile network in the US based on analysis by Oklahoma Speed Test Intelligence.

[Interviewer]

Data 182025 Visit T mobile.com Dead is just a word.

[Marcus]

On October 17th, just in time for.

[Interviewer]

Halloween, the terrifying Black Phone 2 hits theaters.

[Matt Wagner]

Directed by Scott Derrickson and starring Ethan.

[Interviewer]

Hawke, who is back as the Grabber and more sinister than ever.

[Matt Wagner]

The Grabber's story wasn't over and he.

[Interviewer]

Asked the question, do you know what happens when you die?

[Matt Wagner]

Find out for yourselves.

[Interviewer]

October 17th. Hell is in flames. It's ice. Black phone 2 only in theaters. Well, today we have not one, but two comic book legends with us. First we have artist writer Matt Wagner, creator of such legendary characters as Grendel Mage and the author of one of my personal favorite series, Sandman Mystery Theater. We also have artist Kelly Jones, legendary for his work on Batman and one of, if not the best artist. I'm sorry, Matt. To ever draw the Sandman.

[Matt Wagner]

Well, I'll take that one because it's true. But today that's how Kelly and I met because we both drew. He drew the bulk of Seasons of the Mist, which is the most famous Sandman story arc. I drew one chapter in that. And so we were both together with a lot of the PR tour stuff and that's how we first met.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I mean, you. You co created Dead Boy Detectives, you know.

[Matt Wagner]

Right. Like, I mean, yeah, I don't take much credit for that because again, it was just that one issue. They weren't detectives yet.

[Interviewer]

No, they were just a Couple of.

[Matt Wagner]

Ghosty high school kids, you know, so.

[Interviewer]

Okay, so you created the dead boy part.

[Matt Wagner]

Yeah, there you go. The dead boy part, not the detective part. Yeah.

[Marcus]

I always like a good guy who creates dead boys. It's good for our show. It really. It helps. I'm glad it's a good interview.

[Kelly Jones]

Ye.

[Matt Wagner]

And I will say, you know, dc, the way they credit you is whoever drew it first, they get the credit.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Matt Wagner]

And I don't feel like I deserve it because I didn't do them as those characters, as the detectives. And yet when they had that one season of the show, I got a bit of money out of it, you know, and I was just like, okay. I mean, it wasn't. You know, I didn't quit my job.

[Marcus]

But get that money, dude.

[Kelly Jones]

Yeah. I've created about a half dozen characters I had no idea I created. And he's right. I looked and I said, I don't even know who this is. And they say you did it.

[Matt Wagner]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

I mean, that's the thing that both of you have just drawn and written so much over the years. Do you sometimes just forget things that you've done?

[Matt Wagner]

Sometimes, yeah. Details. Details. More than whole movements or anything like that. But, yeah, it takes. For instance, I know George R.R. martin has a dude that helps him keep track of everything in Westeros because he's lost track of all that shit, you know? Yeah. But yeah, no, just little things here and there. But no, for the most part, I can keep track of it pretty well.

[Marcus]

Maybe you could finish that.

[Matt Wagner]

We're busy on something else right now.

[Marcus]

Oh.

[Interviewer]

I mean, before we get to your. Your current project, I. I do have to bring up something that. That Kelly, you may have forgotten that you did way back in the day. I'm sure I did, but it was a. It's. I realized this morning when I was looking at the books that you've done over the years, I realized that you were the very first artist to really have an effect on me as a child. The first comic book to really have, like, a huge effect on me. Dino Riders.

[Kelly Jones]

Dino Riders. Yeah, I still have the toys.

[Interviewer]

Really?

[Kelly Jones]

Yeah, they sent. They. I was under contract with Marvel then, and because I had started on the Micronauts, they simply just assumed you do licensing. Yeah. So I didn't get a say in it. And one day I got this gigantic box of toys, and I had no idea what. Why. And it said, from Marvel. Right, it came from Marvel. I had no idea what it was. And then they get a hold of me and said about a day or so later. So I have no clue. And they said, you have been assigned this. The scripts are being written, blah, blah, blah. And when you're under contract, you have no say.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Matt Wagner]

And that sucks ass. Yeah.

[Kelly Jones]

Oh, it did. Because you don't. You don't get a say. And I didn't. I. When I was on Micronauts, though it was licensed. You can invent stuff and you could make up things. And they didn't care because the toys, they quit making. These went through, like, layers of people to approve one page. So I quit, but I didn't tell them. I didn't tell them I'm quitting. I just accepted a job from D.C. and I just said, okay. Whatever they do, they do. You know, they can, and it wasn't worth pursuing you. I can't, because I can't get through this. And one of the great moments of my career, besides working with Matt, was this went on for about two or three months. I drew a few, and then I just couldn't deal with this anymore. But I went over to dc. Well, in that time, I'm wondering, when are they going to call and say, where's the art? I was completely unprofessional. But I was so angry because I kept saying, get me off. Get me off. And they wouldn't do it. Take me off this thing. And then I find out that they had canceled all the license books. And because of that, they owed me a lot of money. I had signed this contract. So I get this very large check, larger than I would have gotten from anything they did.

[Interviewer]

Amen.

[Kelly Jones]

And I was working on Dead man, so it was like one of those, you know, I made the right decision for all the. You know, I did it. I should have said, I'm just quitting. But they wouldn't take no for an answer.

[Matt Wagner]

Yeah.

[Marcus]

Yeah.

[Kelly Jones]

Because nobody wanted to do it. Yeah.

[Matt Wagner]

Yeah. We got this guy yoked in, right?

[Kelly Jones]

And so I remember everyone saying, God, you really changed. And I go, no, I never got to be there. You know, you didn't get to be who you were. So, you know, it was one of those good things, because Deadman turned everything around. But I owe it to Air Raiders, and I owe it to.

[Marcus]

That's like getting an inheritance from a relative you didn't know existed.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Kelly Jones]

I always felt like. I felt like Jed Clampett. I oil.

[Interviewer]

But, hey, you know, whether you. You know, whether you really cared about it or not like that, that art, like, it truly disturbed me when I was a kid.

[Kelly Jones]

Like, the one professional part was. I put everything I could into it. Yeah, you did. I realized this isn't the fan's fault. This is me and an editor and the company. So you never. You always. You always put your all into something as ludicrous as it was. And I'll be honest with you, I don't have bad feelings about it because I have an enormous amount of. People love those books. Yeah. I get offers because I just put the original art in a box and said, who's going to want it? Everybody. Want is one of the most requested thing. Are those two licensed books, Micronauts and Dino Writers. It is. You know, it was designed for kids, so I gotta remember, what was I into as a kid? Well, I would love it too, whatever those things were, you know, it's one of the reasons.

[Matt Wagner]

Was it. I don't know, Dino, Right. Was it gruesome? Did you make it gruesome?

[Kelly Jones]

Oh, yeah.

[Interviewer]

Oh, yeah. That's what. That's what disturbed me because I was like six and it's like, oh, here's a guy. Like, I remember someone getting eaten by a dinosaur.

[Kelly Jones]

That was me. Because you do things to get fired.

[Matt Wagner]

Yeah. Well, that.

[Interviewer]

Seriously, that your attempt to get fired changed my entire life.

[Matt Wagner]

Yeah, but, like, it really.

[Interviewer]

That was my first introduction to, like, gore to horror. All kinds of stuff.

[Kelly Jones]

The visual idea is great, like weapons on dinosaurs and guys fighting. Well, yeah, that's cool. But then. But then they. They wouldn't go as far as they should, so I went as far as I could and I started doing a thing where I turn in everything really late, so they had to approve it. So you got people getting eaten and killed and whatever. And I got a lot of pushback on it. And then, like I said, when you're doing stuff and you're trying to bring that extra whatever and you're getting. That's where you're getting shit on you. Just. All right, fine, I'm out of here. And then. And then I watch because I watch all my goofy friend artists and they were pulling stunts all the time and would still get work.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Kelly Jones]

I thought, this will be my one time. I'll change it and I'll do this stuff. And what's good is it carried over to Dead Man. Because I was so angry at that time. I said. They said, well, you know, Neil Adams, Dead Man. And so I just said, now my version and fire me. Then I had a bad fire me point of my career. And that.

[Matt Wagner]

That's like early in the. Early in the Vertigo days, we weren't allowed to say the word fuck? Yeah. You know, even though it was a supposedly adult aimed, comics weren't allowed to say fuck. So Neil Gaiman, I used to talk about how if you had something questionable you wanted to get through, you would throw a fuck or two into the script.

[Kelly Jones]

Yeah.

[Matt Wagner]

And, and then that's all they would focus on. You gotta take that fuck out.

[Kelly Jones]

Yeah.

[Matt Wagner]

Everything else good? Yeah, fine.

[Marcus]

What are the dirty words for comics? Like, is there a list? Is there a George Carlin, seven dirty words, or is it just fucking?

[Matt Wagner]

No, I'm sure, you know, cunt and shit and piss and all that. You talk about mainstream comics like, I've always done indie comics. I've done some mainstream stuff, but Jesus Christ, man, my stuff's foul.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Kelly Jones]

You should read his scripts because in his scripts he's really foul in describing what he wants. And I'm like going, this is wonderful. Matt finds 14th century curse words.

[Matt Wagner]

And I'm like, that's just wonderful.

[Interviewer]

Speaking of 14th century curse words, the reason that we brought the two of you in today is to discuss your incredibly innovative new take on everyone's favorite Eastern European warlord, Dracula.

[Matt Wagner]

Dracula.

[Interviewer]

I mean, so, I mean, your take on Dracula. I, I, it's one of those ideas that you can't believe you've never seen it before.

[Matt Wagner]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

No, you can't believe that no one's ever done this is it. Y' all are telling the story of Dracula from the perspective of Dracula.

[Matt Wagner]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Like, and it's one of those ideas, like, you can't, like I told my wife about it, she's like, oh my God, I've always wanted to hear that. I've always wanted to see him. She's a massive fan of the Bram Stoker book, so she, but it just, for some reason never occurred to people.

[Matt Wagner]

To just tell the story on for, I want to say, more than a decade on. I always want to try my hand at Dracula. But what do you do? It's been done to death, you know, and you know, the original novel is what's described as epistolary, which means it's told in the form of there's no omniscient narrator. Letters, journals, news articles, and the one voice missing is Dracula. And, you know, it works in the original novel because it makes him a sinister kind of other presence, you know, but after this long, we deserve to see, hear his point of view. Right. You know, so I finally realized what we need to do is not adapt the novel. We need to tell everything else that the novel only hints at and doesn't tell like for instance, book one, which is called the Impaler. Twice in the original novel, Van Helsing mentions that when he was alive, Dracula attended something called the Scholomance, which is an Eastern European legend about this seminary for the dark arts that Satan himself hosts way up in the mountains. And it's a seven year tenure and he takes ten students every time, every tenure. And then at the end of that, he keeps one of them. And I thought, how could we have fucking done anything with this before? This is so. It's such a deep well of story to be told, you know. And so that was our beginning, you know. And then the second one's called the Brides because the, you know, the three vampiric women make a. This indelible appearance in the novel. And they're only there for three pages. And I was like, well, we gotta hear their story too. We gotta hear how he got each one of them and who they were before they became his brides, you know. And the new one we're getting ready to launch in just a few days, the Kickstarter, we do all these as Kickstarter campaigns.

[Marcus]

Nice.

[Matt Wagner]

And the new one, any fan of the novel knows that once the action shifts from his castle in Transylvania to the streets of London, Victorian London, he's off stage for the rest of the novel. He's just this shadowy presence, you know, he's. You get some reports of things he's done, but nothing first person account. Right. And so we're showing you what he's doing because he's obviously doing something and the whole time he's there, you know, and. And we. You get to see everything that he does and it's been a blast. And you know, I keep writing these sequences thinking to myself, oh, Kelly's going to fucking nail this. It's going to be so awesome. And then he turns in the art and it's like, better than I could have imagined it to be, you know, And I'm an artist too, so I've imagined quite a bit. And you know, he. It's such a beautiful synthesis between the two of us. We.

[Kelly Jones]

I liked your reaction, Marcus, to when you were saying, how did no one think of this? Because when Matt called me about, do you really want to work together? Because we'd known each other for so long and we'd always done this little two step about working together. And when he told me the idea, I reacted exactly the same way. And he would just throw out the thing with the Scholomance or he would just Throw out. How did. What are the backstories of the brides? And then when he told me the third one wouldn't be an adaption of what we know, but a exploration of what he was up to, I was reacting the same way. And when that happens to you, I give Matt all the credit for this because he had to do all the research. It was his idea. In the 120 plus years of Dracula, no one's done this. And it was completely interesting to me because when he first said Dracula, I said, well, what are we going to do with. And then he tells me this. And so in three minutes, I went from Dracula to. When do we start?

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Marcus]

So how much of this. Because I never knew about Satan and Dracula being buddies, you know, like, that was like.

[Kelly Jones]

And he was right. There's the track the Devil Teach. I'm like, where did I miss that?

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I. I completely went over it. Like, skimmed over that as well.

[Marcus]

Yeah. And so how much of this is your own creative license? And how much of this is, like, strictly is. They come straight from.

[Matt Wagner]

Well, we are trying to strict. Stick religiously to the canon of the text. And yet, as I said, so much of it is only kind of this vague hints, you know, of. He mentions the scholomance. He doesn't say what went on there, you know. But I took that opportunity to. I felt also an important impetus to have a very special way for him to become a vampire. Because I figured, you know, he's. He's the OG vampire. He's the name, you know, I maintain he's the most famous literary character of all time. There's almost nowhere in the world you can say the name Dracula and people don't know who the fuck you're talking about.

[Marcus]

Well, God. God's pretty big.

[Matt Wagner]

God's pretty big, too. Yeah. Talking about fictional characters. Yes, God's pretty big. But I thought, well, he's got a very special way to become a vampire. He can't just get bitten by another vampire. That's how every other fucking vampire becomes a vampire. Therefore, that's boring. So had to come up with a very special way for him to become a vampire, which we see in book one, you know, and the rest of it, you know, like, Ed, you're asking how much of it's from the canon. So regardless of it's, you know, I wouldn't say Dracula is considered by a lot of literary scholars as, you know, not on the level of Dickens or Tolstoy or, you know, these highbrow writers. It's Considered kind of a pulp thing.

[Marcus]

Yeah.

[Matt Wagner]

And yet it is one of the most dissected and annotated fucking books in the English language ever. I have, like, four different annotated versions. When I was writing this third one, I was working off a calendar again, since it's told in the form of letters and journals, they're all dated. So I had a calendar based upon the original text of what happens every goddamn day. And I had to make it fit all that. This thing even had the sunrise and sunset times and the phases of the moon.

[Interviewer]

Incredible.

[Marcus]

That's awesome.

[Matt Wagner]

I had to appeal and make sure I passed the sniff test for all the Dracula scholars. Yet I also had to make it so that if you've never read the book, you would still be interested in the story as it unfolds. You know? So the third one was pretty intense in a way. The third one's what we've been working for since the beginning.

[Kelly Jones]

So I just had to worry about how much breasts and blood to put in.

[Interviewer]

So speaking of breasts and blood, I actually do have a question for you because. Because, Kelly, I mean, your. Your horror stuff is just incredible. Like the way you draw pain and anguish in a way that's just so evocative. But your gore is just off the charts. What's your favorite piece of gore to draw? This is like the James Lipton. Like, what's your favorite word? Like, what's your favorite gore?

[Kelly Jones]

I think my favorite gore, if I'm to be perfectly honest, are the little things. It's the little things that look painful. It can be a small thing, like a needle in a finger or something where I can do that, because I think everyone can relate to that kind of pain, to those little moments.

[Matt Wagner]

In the second book, there's a scene where the villagers storm the castle and Dracula drives them away by commanding lightning and then summoning rats and bats. And there's a scene where a bat is clinging to a woman's face and plucking out her eyeball with its teeth. I remember thinking, oh, wow, that looks painful.

[Kelly Jones]

But horror has totally different tropes and shtick than superhero.

[Matt Wagner]

Yeah.

[Kelly Jones]

So I try to take advantage of that as much as I can. And Matt. And it's all characterization, it's more characterization. And Matt will do a thing where he. In why the books are so entertaining to draw is he does sequences all through its scenes and they all stitch together, but it's like you'll get a six to ten page sequence, maybe. And within that, he gives you something, and so you get to build that atmosphere for that one shot or that one moment. And I think that's what makes people react even stronger to it than if I just drew an axe murder going on. And. And it's, you know, this wonderful grotesqueness, this, that Matt will write where it's unapologetic, non biased, There it is. And then we move on. So it isn't like, you know, you're. You're getting off on it. It's like you go, oh, that's disgusting, or that's frightening, or that's horrible, or that more importantly, painful.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I mean, I had the reaction of damn quite a bit when I was reading.

[Kelly Jones]

Matt will do casual things. Like he casually. There's this corrupt politician in the second one and he gives Dracula this boy. And Matt just has him casually carry off the boy. But they're discussing things the whole time. And that really bothered me, you know, But I thought, yeah, that's cool. I mean, at the same time, you're going, matt, kind of. It's like a psychological test. How disturbed are you because you find yourself enjoying it? And then saying, why am I enjoying this? This horrible mayhem going on? But I do. Because, Matt, everything's driven by character. So you feel a lot. Feel it much, much more.

[Matt Wagner]

To me, yeah, that's very important, especially with a contemporary vampire story, because again, vampire's been done to death and you have to do something to make people care, even just in passing about what's happening to these characters.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. I mean, as far as the characterization of Dracula goes, once you started fleshing out this character that has not over the years, been fleshed out all that much. I mean, the most might be, you know, might be Francis Ford Coppola, like giving him a romantic backstory. But when you're fleshing out, he's there.

[Matt Wagner]

In the fucking book.

[Interviewer]

Not at all. Not even close.

[Marcus]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

This weird muscle armor. Was there anything that you discovered about the character of Dracula that sort of surprised you?

[Matt Wagner]

Well, yeah, in that. So you have to keep him as this unrepentant villain, you know, he doesn't. And also, there's nothing romantic about him. You know that. Again, as I said in the Coppola, I have this love hate relationship with the Coppola movie because I adore the cinema of it. His filmmaking in that is fucking brilliant. Top to bottom. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And you can't argue with Tom Waits as Renfield.

[Matt Wagner]

Well, no, I don't like the casting much. Kind of top to bottom. I think the casting is kind of all bad. I'll get Back to that in a second. But the whole love story thing just, you know, once he gets to London and gets hooked up with Mina, he turns into this fucking fop for the most part. You know, there's the scene where she, she's been fooling around with him. And then Jonathan gets rediscovered and she rushes to his side to marry him. And they have this sequence of Dracula, you know, weeping copiously and smashing things. All right. Dracula does not fucking weep ever. And, and so, you know, I just had to maintain that, you know, he's not full of remorse. He doesn't have any remorse. There's one little bit of remorse he shows at one point in one of the books.

[Kelly Jones]

But.

[Matt Wagner]

But one thing I did find interesting is that he has these three brides that is in book two. And I also had to be careful to not contemporize that, you know, he would not think of them as equals at all. That whole, that whole concept, that modern day concept of marriage and relationships not there at all. And, and yet these are the first. He never any children with his, with his living wives. These are the first things he's ever created as opposed to destroyed. So he feels some sense of responsibility for them. He feels a need to provide for them. He goes without eating himself to provide food for them, to provide blood for them. So that was a. And I wouldn't even call that a moment of humanity. It's almost more of his megalomaniacal sense in that, you know, I did this, I have to maintain this. This is part of my, these are my conquests. I can't let them go, I can't let them wither, you know.

[Kelly Jones]

No, the characterization that I loved is why he chose them. That was the thing that got me was each one, he can have anyone, I guess he wants. So when I was reading this, I thought, oh, this is interesting because as he, he chooses each one of the girls, it's why he would, it's what interests him. So you get something from Dracula never thinks he's evil. He never thinks, oh, I'm, I'm evil. He's doing what he does. And his, he knows he strikes terror.

[Matt Wagner]

Though, that's slightly different.

[Kelly Jones]

Yeah, but he, but he did that as a warlord.

[Matt Wagner]

Yeah, right.

[Kelly Jones]

So that, that to me was cool. So when you get the other side of like, why would he be with each one of these girls? What is. That's fascinating. It's horrific.

[Matt Wagner]

It's, it's, it's for three different reasons because they're each three very distinct women.

[Kelly Jones]

That complexity of Of.

[Matt Wagner]

Of.

[Kelly Jones]

As well as him. I always describe Matt as literary pulp. And that's it. It's like, boy, you don't need that. But when you get it, you're saying, how can you read this without that? That's so much grist for me.

[Matt Wagner]

Another cool thing about the brides is once he gets each of them, one of the things that first attracted each of them to him, they kind of lose that when they catch his contagion. Right. His gift destroys part of what he liked about them to begin with, you know?

[Interviewer]

Yeah, of course. So, I mean, so Matt, you know, you're kind of. I guess you know how to do an antihero like that, that. Like, you absolutely know how to do that. So what do you. What is it that you think we gain from hearing stories from the perspectives of villains? Like the direct perspective of a villain?

[Matt Wagner]

Because we each have a villain inside of us, baby. You know what I mean? You recognize it. You recognize God, but they're proof of the grace of God. Go I. You know, I mean, when somebody's behaving like an absolute fucking shit, you think to those times in your life when you behaved like an absolute fucking shit. And it might have not been for the same reasons or in the same manner, but, you know. You know, there's a famous quote from Marcel Proust that he never heard of a crime committed by man that he didn't imagine himself fully capable of doing. And, you know, that's what I love about antiheroes, you know, and just that they're so unrepentant, you know? So, you know, we have enough redemption stories. Fuck that.

[Marcus]

It was crazy reading it because, you know, Dracula is a bad guy. He's like the most notorious bad guy in the world. But, you know, I'm. I'm reading this thing, I'm like, ah, you know, I get it. I like you.

[Matt Wagner]

Yeah.

[Kelly Jones]

Well, I can.

[Matt Wagner]

I can point you to another very famous example of that. Hannibal Lecter.

[Kelly Jones]

Yeah.

[Marcus]

Yeah.

[Matt Wagner]

You know what I mean? He's. He's horrible. And yet all through Signs of the Lambs, you're like, he's got to get out of there. Yeah, I can't wait to see how he gets out of there. And at the end when he calls her and he's going to go eat that dude, you're like, yeah, get that. The dude needs it. You know, I was.

[Marcus]

What I found interesting about it is, I don't know if this was Kelly or you, Matt, because Vlad the Impaler, you know, I'm also like, Very. Like, I'm not a huge Dracula nerd. Like. Like everyone else in this room.

[Matt Wagner]

But.

[Marcus]

Vlad the Impale, I always thought he used heads. Not like.

[Matt Wagner]

No, no, no. It's full bodies, baby up. The poop shoot for the most part. Or the design, that was. Yeah, that's just.

[Interviewer]

That's historically accurate.

[Matt Wagner]

Terribly excruciating about it is the weight of your body would slowly pull you down and. And that would, like, dig its way up through your innards. You know, Horrific way to die.

[Interviewer]

Head on a pike. That's like that. That everyone did head on a pike. Like, that was. That was standards at the time. Yeah.

[Matt Wagner]

When they put your head on a pike, you know what I mean? The head's come off already, right? No. Impalement's a just awful, awful way to go. Yeah, It's.

[Interviewer]

I mean, so this Dracula. I mean, this is a. A monstrous Dracula. This is not a romantic or a sexy vampire. But, you know, vampires have, over the years, kind of gone more towards that area. More towards, like, a bit softer, a bit sexier.

[Matt Wagner]

Well, sure, With Anne Rice and. And the Twilight shit, you know.

[Interviewer]

Sure. Like.

[Matt Wagner]

Like. But then you look at something like Robert Eggers version of Nosferatu, you know, which really pulled it back to being this foul, disgusting creature.

[Marcus]

You know, it was very cool. Only other time I've seen the beard and the mustache, other than you guys.

[Matt Wagner]

Is that.

[Marcus]

Is that accurate to.

[Matt Wagner]

That's accurate, yeah. He wears a mustache to basically. To hide his teeth.

[Marcus]

Yeah.

[Matt Wagner]

He's not. He's not. He can't retract the fangs. Like, so many modern cinematic interpretations. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

What did you think of asthmatic Nosferatu?

[Matt Wagner]

Oh, I loved it. Now you know it. I've. I've loved every. Kelly, too. We've. We've talked about this extensively. We love every version of that film. You know, the.

[Kelly Jones]

The.

[Matt Wagner]

The Murnau version, the Herzog version and the Eggers version.

[Kelly Jones]

Yeah.

[Matt Wagner]

Now, that said, that is not. That is not Dracula. You know, that's not Dracula. Dracula is a different character. Dracula is not a decaying corpse. He's. He's also much more courtly than that.

[Interviewer]

The.

[Matt Wagner]

The thick Romanian accent. You know, that. That's not in the book at all, that Harker comments to him. He's trying real hard to perfect his English so he can fit in and not attract attention when he's in England. And Harker comments to him twice. Oh, you speak great English. You don't have any accent at all. You know, the accent we're so familiar with. Comes from the Bela Lugosi film version. Lugosi was Romanian and spoke almost no English, so he had to learn his lines phonetically so that accent became the, you know, default Dracula accent. But again, not in the book. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So besides Dracula, what other vampires do you love? And Nosferatu, of course.

[Matt Wagner]

Oh, Kel, you got any that you want to jump in there with?

[Kelly Jones]

I, I really like Count Yorga. Yeah, Yeah, I, I dig him quite a bit. I think there's little touches they did that. I always liked that he knows all these languages so when a deaf person comes up, he communicates in sign. And I thought that's nice, that, that was pretty good. And he's sadistic in it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah, of course there's a lot.

[Matt Wagner]

Of good, there's a lot of good film versions. I've gone through a lot of film versions. First of all, both the book and the film of Let the Right One in are some of my favorite things ever, you know. You know, that, that the film. You know, to my mind, the best horror is always about something else other than the scares, you know. Yeah. You know, Rosemary's Baby is about fear of pregnancy, you know, and Let the Right One in is about loneliness, you know, it's about the loneliness of being a bullied 12 year old boy or a 200 year old vampire, you know, and that one is just so poignant and so delicate at the same time as being scary as, you know. I'm reading a new one right now by a new horror author. Well, now he's not that new, but a guy I really like named Keith Rosin who lives here in Portland and his brand new book's called Coffin Moon and it's a vampire book. I'm about halfway through it. It's terrific. There's a Native American writer named Stephen Graham Jones. I'm not sure if you're familiar with him.

[Interviewer]

He was my creative writing professor in college.

[Matt Wagner]

Oh, wow. Yeah, I actually world man.

[Interviewer]

I actually used to lend him comics when, when I was in, in college. Like I lent him like my entire run of the Max.

[Matt Wagner]

Oh, cool.

[Marcus]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And he's like. Yeah. He once showed up to my house at 8am to return them on a Saturday after I was extraordinarily hungover.

[Kelly Jones]

How did he like Dino Riders?

[Matt Wagner]

His most recent book's called the Buffalo Hunter. Hunter. It's about a Native American vampire and it's terrific.

[Interviewer]

I gotta read it.

[Matt Wagner]

Really great. There was a one just a number of years ago called Bite Marks. You remember that one, Kelly, I turned you onto that one.

[Kelly Jones]

Yeah, that was a good one.

[Matt Wagner]

That was.

[Kelly Jones]

That.

[Matt Wagner]

That one's rough, man. Yeah. In it.

[Marcus]

At the risk of you guys talking shit about something that could, you know. You know, make you upset, how do you feel about Blade?

[Matt Wagner]

Oh, love Blade.

[Marcus]

Yeah, Blade.

[Matt Wagner]

Yeah, Blade's great. Blade's great.

[Kelly Jones]

Yeah, that's Blade.

[Marcus]

Oh.

[Matt Wagner]

Oh. And I'm totally remiss for not mentioning Sinners. Holy shit.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sinners was incredible.

[Matt Wagner]

Sinners is like Dust of dawn done. Right.

[Kelly Jones]

Classy.

[Matt Wagner]

From dust till dawn is how I've already. Yeah, yeah. Blade, you know, Blade uses. One thing I want to point out is, you know, the Hulk. And that seems to run through almost every vampire myth, is the whole. Vampire destroys sunlight destroys a vampire. Again, not so in Dracula, not so in the book.

[Interviewer]

I don't know.

[Matt Wagner]

I don't know how well you remember the Coppola movie. In the book, he can walk around during sun, daylight hours. He's just not as powerful. Yeah, he gets. He gets his full vampiric powers at night, and he has to sleep during the day on a bed of his own soil to fully recharge his powers. But if you recall the Coppola movie, when he first meets Mina, it's on the streets of London during broad daylight.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Kelly Jones]

You know.

[Matt Wagner]

But, yeah, Blade is just full of those, you know, just vampires bursting into dust and dust and flame. Just awesome.

[Marcus]

I love it.

[Matt Wagner]

Like a lot of franchises, though, it went downhill fast. You know, Number one and two were great.

[Interviewer]

I don't know. One of my favorite things to see is to watch a vampire explode. That's gonna make me happy every single time if a vampire explodes for whatever reason.

[Matt Wagner]

Great scene of that. And let the Right One in, where the one. The one guy's girlfriend gets bitten and she's turning and. And she. She asked the hospital attendant to open the window because she knows that will destroy her, and she just bursts into this ball of flame that's like licking the ceiling immediately, you know?

[Kelly Jones]

Yeah.

[Marcus]

You know, one isn't good, but I love it. Anyway, John, there's a lot of those vampires.

[Matt Wagner]

Yeah, which one?

[Marcus]

John Carpenter's Vampires.

[Matt Wagner]

Yeah, It's a bad move.

[Marcus]

It's a bad movie. I know it's a bad movie, but I'll put it on anytime I can.

[Matt Wagner]

Appreciate that. Big and A Carpenter. We just got a quote, a blurb from Carpenter, an endorsement.

[Interviewer]

Really?

[Marcus]

Well, I take it back, then.

[Matt Wagner]

Thank Mr. Jones for that one.

[Interviewer]

No, I mean, the blurbs that y' all have been getting for this book. I mean, I'm not alone in saying that this book is incredible. I mean, the reaction that y' all have got from. From this, like, how does it feel to have so many people just say, like, holy shit, this is the Dracula story that I've been waiting to hear to read my entire life?

[Matt Wagner]

Well, it makes me feel like, wow, we got it right. Because of course, you never know going into it. You know, you might hit a lot of resistance. But I don't know this from the very beginning, as Kelly said. When I first started outlining to him what I wanted to do, and I was seeing his reaction, I was like, yeah, we're really on to something here. You know, it's, it's. It's working.

[Kelly Jones]

You know, I couldn't tell anybody. I mean, I would read this, he would tell me this. I didn't want it out there. And so I was alone for. With this for a while.

[Matt Wagner]

We sat on it for a while.

[Marcus]

Yeah.

[Kelly Jones]

And. And it was driving me crazy because I knew how I was reacting. So when I started hearing other people, when they would read the first one or whatever and react the exact same way, then I knew.

[Matt Wagner]

I.

[Kelly Jones]

Well, I always knew Matt was on to something because I know this stuff pretty well. And I felt stupid when he was telling me this. Why didn't I think of this? And then very entertained when I would read it. How do you sustain this idea? And when he said, well, in the first one, which is, I think, a great how he got there and he really doesn't become a vampire till the very end. Yeah, it sustained interest.

[Matt Wagner]

Yeah. At the same time, we had to make him very recognizable as Dragon Hands.

[Kelly Jones]

In lesser hands. What Matt wrote would be dreadfully boring.

[Matt Wagner]

It would.

[Kelly Jones]

It would be. And I always told him, I said this. This would be great if someone drew it in stick figures, because it's just all there. And it's the ideas. I'm very big on ideas. I think ideas, if you've got those, that. That really is compelling to people. And Matt had ideas everywhere on this. I mean, just from just how you do a good comic book to what you're going to say, to bringing a new light on something. All of it was working, all of it, and it is all I can do. I mean, people will say to me, you know, how. How you go about sustaining that energy, it's very easy. I mean, like I said, he writes all these scenes, which for me, I like, because people, when. When they like something, they'll describe something they like. And I found most. This happens to me the most with What Matt's done. They tell me so much from both the first books. Yeah, they'll just go on and on and on about. And this scene and this scene and this scene. And I'm going, well, that's what I thought. That's why, you know, I'm like. And a lot of stuff too will just pop up. I mean, there are things I don't pre plan anything. I don't do thumbnails. I don't do anything. I work very emotionally, so I want to feel it that day. I'll read Matt's stuff over a lot and sometimes I'll get an idea, but most of the time that idea is rejected by the time I get to actually drawing it. And then I always think, well, how can I really emphasize what Matt's doing here? And that's where it comes together really well. Because I don't know that a lot of this stuff's going to happen. Some stuff I think is going to be really gory isn't. And other stuff becomes very gory. And I didn't think of it that way. But that's the pleasure of working with someone who's figured it out. There's no plot holes with Matt. There's no. I don't understand this. So at that point you kind of bend the knee because you realize somebody put a lot of effort thinking research to scare the hell out of you. And it works that he does do that. I'll read it and go, Jesus Christ.

[Matt Wagner]

Even down to. Fellas, you have a. You have a copy of the first volume sitting in front of you there.

[Marcus]

Yeah.

[Matt Wagner]

The logo we use is the same logo that was on the very first 1897 hardcover edition.

[Interviewer]

Hell yeah.

[Marcus]

That's great.

[Matt Wagner]

Keeping it, keeping it real.

[Marcus]

Now if this is too much of a spoiler for the first book, please tell us to not put it in the episode. But I'm curious. Why was Satan a boy?

[Matt Wagner]

Just because it's the opposite of what you expect. Yeah, yeah.

[Kelly Jones]

And he looks.

[Matt Wagner]

I mean, you get to see what he really is later. Yeah.

[Kelly Jones]

And he presents himself differently to everybody.

[Matt Wagner]

Yeah. There's that one scene where all the various scholars, depending on their nationality, are describing how they see him. And it's all basically derivative of their own mythologies, you know?

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah. So what, what was it about, like the Eastern European mythology, like Dracula's mythology that made him see Satan as.

[Matt Wagner]

Oh, it's Catholic based, you know, and. And I'm sure in my mind it was. It was some little boy that he had fucking impaled yeah. Some peasant boy, you know.

[Marcus]

Yeah. That was one of the things, the.

[Matt Wagner]

First and Dracula's response is, I don't give a shit.

[Interviewer]

Like, Satan tried to freak me out.

[Matt Wagner]

Fuck you, Satan. Right, Right. I was there. I saw that thing go up his.

[Marcus]

Yeah, because right up top, when you see the impaled people, when he's still Vlad and he's still in charge, and you see a little boy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Kelly Jones]

That's what I thought when I read it. That's why I put the little boy there. I didn't think it would be that, but I. I thought that's what Matt was thinking, was this is somebody. Or a presentation of. Of somebody he did this to.

[Matt Wagner]

Yeah. You know, this is not endemic to that time period. I mean, look at the. Look at the casualties in Gaza.

[Kelly Jones]

Yeah.

[Matt Wagner]

You know, I mean, indiscriminate of age and. And class and sex and everything. You know, war destroys everything.

[Kelly Jones]

Any war. Yeah, any war is like that.

[Interviewer]

And.

[Kelly Jones]

And considering that Vlad doesn't see himself as a sick guy, but using that as a psychological terror weapon. Which worked in real life. It worked. No, he's not even. He's. It's a means to his end. So he's not even thinking about, geez, I really shouldn't have done that. He's thinking, man, those shrieks will keep the Turks away.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Matt Wagner]

And then in book two, we had a sequence where. So in the actual novel, you only ever see him prey on women, right? You get the feeling that, sure, he bites guys, but you only ever see him prey on women. And if you go down the Anne Rice route, you know, all the. All the vampires are ambisexual. You know, they. They have sex with men and women doesn't. You know that you live that long and it doesn't matter to you, you know?

[Marcus]

Party time.

[Matt Wagner]

So I had to figure out a reason why he only prays on women. And I took his inspiration. Certain predators, like, we've all seen a cat play with a mouse, right? And I know from the. From you guys, the. The sequence of orcas you did with SeaWorld that Ed, you. You were the host on that one.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Matt Wagner]

That orcas can toss a seal around in the air for an hour. You know, why do they do this? You know, and. And certain annual behavioralists will say, well, they're honing their skills. And I'm like, really? They already caught the thing. How's this Honing the skills?

[Marcus]

Yeah.

[Matt Wagner]

And my thought was always, maybe this just makes it taste better.

[Marcus]

Oh, like tender.

[Matt Wagner]

Maybe somehow the fear juices are marinating that meat and it just tastes better, you know. So Dracula goes on and on about how women just taste better. You know, like he says, there's a certain assertive tang in the gore of males.

[Kelly Jones]

That's the thing. I love stuff I've not thought of. And when he said that, I went, that really helps me draw this.

[Matt Wagner]

Yeah, you know, that does.

[Kelly Jones]

Because then I see him being more, rather than seductive, more consumptive. Yeah, it's. He's culinary about it.

[Matt Wagner]

Yeah, yeah.

[Kelly Jones]

You know, if I had to meet.

[Marcus]

A person, I'd choose a woman.

[Matt Wagner]

Yeah, there you go.

[Kelly Jones]

When I remember telling my wife about that, she goes, that's. Yeah, that's exactly what would. I mean, there's so many things Matt does. I always run it by her and I'll say, well, okay, what would you react? And she goes, no, that's good, that's good. And it's all horrible things happening to women. So she'll go, no, that's scary, that.

[Matt Wagner]

That, you know, if it's passed, if it passes your artist's wife test. Yeah, you're good. Yeah, yeah.

[Kelly Jones]

So I'll always say it like, well, would this bug you? And she goes, no, that's really good. Don't change that. And I'm like going, okay, that's good.

[Matt Wagner]

In book three, when he's in London, he's. I have him describe the taste of everybody he bites. And in most cases it has to do with their social status. Like, I remember one is, she tasted of liniment and broken dreams.

[Kelly Jones]

Yeah, yeah.

[Matt Wagner]

And, you know, and it varies from whether it's a man or a woman or high class or low class, you know.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. And so when you're writing something like this, like, something like Dracula, that's been done so many times, and I'm sure you've seen basically every, you know, every Dracula adaptation out there and probably read quite a few of them as well. Like, how do you kind of keep the ideas of other people out of your head?

[Matt Wagner]

That's tough. And I do stay away from certain things. Like when we started this, I deliberately did not go check out Marv Wolfman and Gene Colon's long running classic run at Marvel Comics. Tomb of Dracula, which is where Blade was first introduced. That was so much material. I thought, well, I don't want to cross over with something they might have done consciously. If I do it accidentally. Fine. But yeah, deliberately, deliberately stayed away from those.

[Kelly Jones]

I love reading those too. So when I got on this, I just took all those books I used to and put them away. When I was doing Batman, I wouldn't read Batman comics from the artists I love. I mean I went on a 10 year not reading it. It was because you don't want to be influenced by it or, or, or take the same ground if you know, consciously or unconsciously you try not to.

[Matt Wagner]

And speaking of crossover material, I don't know if you guys know this or not. Have either of you ever seen the. The Dan Curtis directed 70s TV movie starring Jack Palance? No, I did not know that existed. It's adapted by Richard Matheson. By the legendary fucking Richard Matheson.

[Interviewer]

Twilight Zone.

[Matt Wagner]

Pretty darn good.

[Kelly Jones]

I think it's excellent. I think it's an excellent.

[Matt Wagner]

It's where they first introduced the theory that Mina is his. The reincarnation of his long lost love.

[Kelly Jones]

It's actually.

[Matt Wagner]

But that was on when they were developing Tomb of Dracula. And so artist Gene Colan based his Dracula on Jack Paul Lance.

[Kelly Jones]

Yes. And he did a great job of it.

[Matt Wagner]

He gave him a little mustache. But if you go and look, it's got like this broad face and a broad mouth like Jack Palance and the eyes kind of beady and.

[Kelly Jones]

And he's mean as shit in that too.

[Marcus]

Now is there any like Dracula lore? You're like, fuck it, that's stupid. Like I didn't see anything about garlic in the first up in the first book or anything.

[Matt Wagner]

We get garlic. Yeah, I mean he's so powerful, I have that most of it doesn't affect him all that much. It's also, you know, the whole thing with the Scholomance. First of all, in the novel we don't see many other vampires and they're all women. But he exhibits powers way beyond what the other ones have. You can see them. Mainly what they do is they can turn into a mist and materialize here and there, but you never see them command the weather or transform into animals or command animals, you know. And I myself approach was that's all, that's all necromancy that he learned at the Scholomance. You know, that's outside of vampiric powers. We do bring in garlic in the third one. Crosses and stuff though. Like there's. There's a famous. It's actually a pretty good movie, but it has a silly ending. It's Hammer's second film called Brides of Dracula did not star Christopher Lee. Christopher Lee didn't come back for that one. And it's got a lot of good stuff in it.

[Kelly Jones]

It does.

[Matt Wagner]

But at the very end they turn A windmill, so that the arms of the windmill are across and he gets kind of like fucked up by the cross. Now that doesn't make any sense because there are crosses in architecture everywhere you look, picket fences are full of crosses. He wouldn't be able to go anywhere. So my approach is it has to be wielded with a faith behind it. An active faith, too, not, not a cursory or a casual faith, you know, to, to have an effect on him.

[Marcus]

Oh, so if you're an atheist and show Dracula across, it ain't gonna do shit, buddy.

[Matt Wagner]

Yep.

[Marcus]

Hell yeah. Yep.

[Kelly Jones]

I think, I think he would be the best. Dracula did exist. You'd fill churches. Yeah. Because you'd go, man, I don't know. I just want to go to the store at night. So I got.

[Interviewer]

Well, on the, you know, we're here on the subject of, of monsters and Kelly, like, this isn't the first of, like, the massive, like, monsters, the universal monsters that you worked on, like Frankenstein Alive. Alive, I adore. Is absolutely incredible. But you took over and did the last issue and took over from like, the legendary Bernie Wrightson, the guy who co created Swamp Thing. Like, what was it like to, to work on something like that?

[Kelly Jones]

It was, it was as big of an honor as you could get. He called me and as soon as he asked me, I knew bad things were going on in his life.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Kelly Jones]

You know, and it was ill health.

[Matt Wagner]

Right. He was kind of towards the end of his life. Yeah.

[Kelly Jones]

He, he had reached a point where he obviously, his doctors had said they've done all they could do and he wanted it completed and all I. Oh, he didn't. He had penciled very little. Most of it was on little thumbnails about this big, almost a little bigger than a postage stamp where he would just kind of indicate what he want, but he would write it down. He would write what the, what the, what the quotes were and he gave. So. And they. He had all the stuff sent in his preparation for it. But it was, like I said, a tremendous honor and terribly sad at the same time. I, you know, that same year, I do that. And he passes. So did Lynn Wein, who I'd been doing Swamp Thing with.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Kelly Jones]

And you know, as, as an 11 year old when I first found their books, 11 or however old I was, those things had never figured. I'd never figured that. And, and the fact with, like, with Wrightson's Frankenstein, he, like I said, he had a few beautiful penciled pages and I said, I, you know, I don't Want to ink those? I'll trace them, whatever. And because I didn't, I wanted the originals to stay him intact. Yes. And. But they were gorgeous. Absolutely as good as you can imagine. So at that point, you know, like I said, it was very, very sad to do, but I'm glad I did it because it finished out his book. And. And I made a point that. So people would really know. I didn't let them publish it in grayscale, but in color, scale, so you could see all my work so you'd know it's okay now. It's me. It's not him. Just out of respect. I didn't. I didn't. You know, I didn't. But he was. He. I don't know how he did it, but he did it. Yeah.

[Matt Wagner]

It's funny you should mention those small layouts. That's. I do that sometimes. I give advice like that.

[Kelly Jones]

So small.

[Matt Wagner]

I know, but I, I. A little bit bigger than that. I give advice to young wannabes. I say, do your layouts this big because if you can make it clear that size, then you're. Then the rest is all just.

[Kelly Jones]

Yeah, you know, he did. And, and even with. And if something was more complex, his compositions would. That's what you really writeson if anything was composition. And he would indicate where the light sources were. So I just went with that. But that was a tough draw. But I was very happy with it while doing it because he had passed at that point, and so there was nowhere to go for a question or something. They, I, I was glad that they sent me a few things he had done in and it was finished. So I could see how he pushed or pulled a line, how he applied washes and stuff. And that. That was extremely instructive. There's no way to do it. I mean, it was that good. And he drew so much with the brush. It was. Man, it was exhilarating to see that you could tell that wasn't drawn. He just went and did it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Matt Wagner]

Yeah. You see that in there from his early career. There's a bunch of large pieces that he had penciled and then started to ink and quit for whatever reason halfway through. So you really get to see those stages and how much. As you said, yes, he's. He's rendering in the actual brush. It was.

[Kelly Jones]

It was amazing, which, which takes a.

[Matt Wagner]

A mastery and a confidence that is supreme.

[Kelly Jones]

He could just sit down and draw. He didn't really. I mean, I looked at some of this stuff and I go, there's no real. I know He. He would do preliminaries, but there's not a lot of sketching. Pretty. Pretty brief.

[Matt Wagner]

Yeah.

[Kelly Jones]

You just draw. Yeah, it was. It was just all there, structural shapes.

[Matt Wagner]

And that's about it.

[Kelly Jones]

Yeah. I'm big on. I'm big on composition myself, but it was a clinic.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. So is that when you're drawing, like, two different types of. Like, it seems like with Frankenstein, there's, like, more of a slow pace, but Dracula, far more manic. Like, does that sort of change, like, the way that, like, do you. When you're drawing something more manic, do you draw faster or slower?

[Matt Wagner]

I do, too. Yep.

[Kelly Jones]

There's days, I think you said he's. He's very angry and he's very. Or he's. He's very emotional. Dracula is the third one. He has to be more. A little more reserved because he's in public now. Well.

[Matt Wagner]

And he's in an alien environment he doesn't know anything about.

[Kelly Jones]

But when he lets himself go, it does work on me. I do find myself. You do draw faster, Dracula. I don't have any trouble figuring out what I want to do. I think a lot of it is that Matt's scripts are pretty clear on what he wants, but he's also pretty clear on the intent.

[Interviewer]

So.

[Matt Wagner]

And you just make him so sinister in every shot. Like, no matter what he's doing it, like. Yeah, that guy looks sinister as. Yeah, but it's good.

[Interviewer]

It's more of a. It's more of a hiss than a.

[Kelly Jones]

Like, you know.

[Matt Wagner]

Yeah, it's different. Yep.

[Kelly Jones]

Well, he's in charge. I always see it like he's got all this ability. He's got to be cautious in certain ways, but he's. He's clearly the alpha of whatever.

[Matt Wagner]

Whatever setting he's in. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Yep. Well, guys, thank you all so much for joining us today. This has been such a pleasure.

[Marcus]

Yeah.

[Matt Wagner]

Real quick before we go, Marcus, we'd be remiss if we don't mention our project.

[Interviewer]

God damn.

[Matt Wagner]

Well, if it ever fucking comes out.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Matt Wagner]

Me.

[Interviewer]

Me and Matt worked on a project. I wrote a 21 page, 22 page Sid and Nancy retelling of the Sid and Nancy story. Matt drew it. It was a goddamn absolute pleasure to work on.

[Matt Wagner]

And it all came about because my son Brennan turned me on to last pod.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Matt Wagner]

And from there, I discovered no dogs.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Matt Wagner]

And so I wrote them a note, and I was like, you guys, your show, that was the soundtrack of my entire career. And Marcus came back and said, hey, well, I'm writing A story about that kind of music. Would you be interested in drawing it? You know, I mean.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. My God, it was just so cool.

[Matt Wagner]

It was totally fun.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. To work.

[Matt Wagner]

You're in a very small club, dude. Because I've almost never worked with other writers.

[Interviewer]

I know. It's absolutely incredible. But, yes.

[Matt Wagner]

Thank you so much. Kevin Smith on a month or so ago, something like that. Right. I drew Kevin's very first comic book story.

[Marcus]

Really?

[Matt Wagner]

Yeah. It was a Jay and Silent Bob short story called Walt Flanagan's Dog, where they get in these misadventures and they end up, like, having a run in with this little yappy dog. So they get the dog stoned, and then when they kind of come out of their days, the dog's laying there with this enormous fucking heart on.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Matt Wagner]

I read it.

[Interviewer]

I remember.

[Matt Wagner]

Designed the first Jay and Silent Bob action figures. And we included the dog as one of the accessories. And we named him Tripod because he's standing on his front two legs and his dick, and then his little hind legs are just kind of, like, waving around behind me.

[Interviewer]

But, yeah, I mean, I hope, you know, once our next book comes out. We're still working on that right now, when exactly that will come out. But once that does come out, and, yeah, it's, you know, it's, you know, me writing and Matt drawing the full Sid and Nancy story and every bit.

[Matt Wagner]

And my son coloring.

[Kelly Jones]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And Brennan coloring as well. Like, it's. It's so. And it's gory as hell. It's just as gory as hell.

[Matt Wagner]

Yeah. Brennan said to me, dad, this is one of the most extreme things you've ever done. I was like, well, I was very proud. That's.

[Interviewer]

That actually makes me very proud that.

[Matt Wagner]

I wrote one of the most extreme things.

[Marcus]

I didn't know this existed. I can't wait to read it. It must have been fun to draw all those needles.

[Matt Wagner]

Yeah, it was.

[Interviewer]

You know, a lot of needles and a lot of knives.

[Matt Wagner]

A lot. A lot of decrepit shit. Yeah, a lot of. You know, that scene was pretty gnarly, as Marcus accurately described, you know, so. It was.

[Interviewer]

Thank you. I really. I can't wait for people to see it, but it'll be out at some point when, you know, that whole thing gets released.

[Marcus]

Oh, more Gary.

[Matt Wagner]

And before we split, everybody. The campaign for the new one launches Wednesday, October 1st. Go to Kickstarter. Dracula, book three, the Count.

[Marcus]

Nice.

[Matt Wagner]

You can still get books one and two. You can still get the hardcovers of books one and two.

[Interviewer]

And people can get the hardcovers for books one and two from the Kickstarter.

[Matt Wagner]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

All right.

[Marcus]

Okay.

[Matt Wagner]

Yep. They'll be offered on this one as well.

[Interviewer]

Yep. Yeah. And are these for sale in bookstores and comic book stores?

[Matt Wagner]

Can they hardcover them from their. The Kickstarter is the only place to get the hardcovers. Then Dark Horse Comics releases the trade paperback version via regular retail outlets about a month after the backers get their hardcover editions.

[Interviewer]

All right, cool. So, yeah, so, yeah, you can.

[Matt Wagner]

And we have extra rewards. We actually have some original art this time. That's a collaboration between me and Kelly. 10 original pieces.

[Interviewer]

Cool. So that's Kickstarter.com again.

[Matt Wagner]

If you just search on Kickstarter for Dracula, Matt Wagner, Kelly Jones, you'll find it. Got it.

[Interviewer]

Got it. Yeah. Or of course, you know. You know, ask your. Your local comic book store to order for you if you can.

[Marcus]

Yeah. Make sure you read this. It's really cool. It's like history meets Dracula.

[Matt Wagner]

I don't know.

[Marcus]

It's just badass.

[Matt Wagner]

I love it.

[Interviewer]

Thanks, guys. Yeah, I. I did the volumes one and two. Yeah. I love so much. And read through the whole things in one night. They were.

[Matt Wagner]

It's a lot of work. So much, boy, it's a ton of fun, as you can tell from the way we enthuse about it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Well, thank y' all so much.

[Matt Wagner]

Thanks for having us, guys.

[Kelly Jones]

Thanks.

[Matt Wagner]

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[Interviewer]

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[Matt Wagner]

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[Interviewer]

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[Matt Wagner]

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[Interviewer]

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[Matt Wagner]

Pataday. Bring it on.

[Kelly Jones]

You know how everything's a subscription now. Music, movies, even socks. I swear.

[Matt Wagner]

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[Interviewer]

Uh, what?

[Kelly Jones]

No. Anyway, Blue Apron, this is a pay per listen ad.

[Matt Wagner]

Please confirm your billing.

[Kelly Jones]

Oh, that's annoying. At least with the new Blue Apron, there's no subscription needed. Get delicious meals delivered without the weekly plan.

[Matt Wagner]

Wait, no subscription?

[Kelly Jones]

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