Marvel's Blade creator Marv Wolfman has still never seen a Dracula movie (or most horror movies)

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Legendary comic book writer Marv Wolfman forever changed horror comics when he created Blade the Vampire Hunter for Marvel Comics in 1973. At the time, Wolfman was the writer on Marvel’s Tomb of Dracula series, featuring the most famous bloodsucker in fiction. But despite Wolfman’s status as a giant in the history of horror comics, he has never seen any Dracula film. And he has not seen very many horror movies, period. At his Spotlight panel at WonderCon 2024, Wolfman explained that he was a massive fan of Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, and horror fiction in general. That, however, did not translate to horror films.

“It’s strange, I had never seen horror movies. I’m a wimp, they scare me. I was not actually a big horror fan, not in terms of movies. Very much in terms of books, and short stories… I had never seen a Dracula movie, and I still haven’t – not a whole movie at least.”

Wolfman later stated that while writing Tomb of Dracula, he “didn’t want to be influenced by what Hammer [Film Productions] did [with Dracula].” For him, he wanted to be shaped only by Dracula’s characterization in Bram Stoker’s original novel. He reminded audiences that in Stoker’s novel, Dracula is featured in only about “eighty pages” or so, and that the bulk of the story is focused on the people hunting down Dracula. This was not the case with film adaptations of Dracula produced by Hammer, which featured actor Christopher Lee in the role across six films.

Stoker’s focus on the characters trying to track down Dracula led to Wolfman’s creation of Blade the Vampire Hunter. Wolfman intended Blade to be “the opposite of Dracula” while still having “some vampiric blood in him.” Blade was an immediate success among fans, and is a character that Wolfman remains deeply proud of.