Comic Review: Dracula: The Company of Monsters #12

Issue: Dracula: The Company of Monsters #11
Release Date: July 27, 2011
Author: Kurt Busiek, Daryl Gregory
Artist: Scott Godlewski
Colors: Stephen Downer
Letters: Johnny Lowe
Cover: Ron Salas (Colors: Nick Filardi)
Publisher: BOOM! Studios

And now for the conclusion…

OK, I’m not going to lie. I’ve been curious all month as to exactly what choice Evan ended up making. At one point, I was just so relieved that he finally made a choice; it didn’t occur to me to be bothered about what that choice actually was.

Over the course of the month, I decided that the best option would be to get rid of Conrad and side with Dracula. It’s not that I think that Dracula is a good guy who’s misunderstood, I just think that he’s the lesser of two evils and that he can be reasoned with (or possibly blackmailed ever so slightly). It turns out that Evan made much the same decision, and the bullet he fired at the end of the previous issue was destined for Conrad. The bullet wasn’t what ultimately killed him though. Dracula put his sword through Conrad’s throat before the bullet had time to finish Conrad off.

As soon as Conrad dies, or dies again as the case may be, his army starts to die too. Without the power that flows from Conrad, there’s nothing to sustain his army. Dracula sees that there’s no need to fight anymore, mainly because there’s no one left to fight anymore, and leaves with his army. Dracula has his own agenda and whatever his own desires are, they aren’t as destructive as Conrad’s ever were. His army was an army of necessity — no more, no less. When there was no one left to fight, there was no need to hang around.

Due to the fact that most of the employees at Barrington Industries had been vampirised, when they had turned to dust and the dust had settled, Evan was the one who was in prime position to assume leadership of the company. Despite the protestations of the Board and most likely the shareholders, Evan refused to let the company fail or go into liquidation. His plan was to position Barrington Industries as far away from what Conrad had done as possible and build the company back up away from Conrad’s craziness and his influence.

In order to try to present some kind of stability, Evan goes through the sham of biting his Mother, even though the Mother that he knew was long dead and what he was actually burying was just the husk that a vampire lived in.

Back at Barrington Industries, Evan is still adamant that Barrington Industries is a going concern and that there is no need for any more layoffs. Obviously he has a plan that nobody else knows about. And I think that the decision he made to shoot Conrad is rooted in the desire to save Barrington Industries from Conrad.

It turns out that Evan had planned all along to use Dracula to refinance the company. Knowing that Dracula needs a financial lifeline and that Dracula isn’t overly fond of magical silver bullets, Evan convinces him to put money in to the company to save it and save the jobs of the employees that are left.

So Evan ends up in charge of the company, knowing that he’s safe from Dracula and that all he’s gone through was finally and ultimately worth it.

At the end of this series, I have to applaud what Busiek has done here. There’ve been a ridiculous amount of Dracula stories over the years and adding something new to the overall legend of Dracula isn’t an easy thing to do. This new idea of Dracula as a businessman is one that I’ve never seen before and one that I like very much. It kind of makes sense that a guy who is presumably going to live forever would be a guy who plans for the future..

All in all, I really enjoyed the series and I hope that there’s a follow-up series in the not too distant future. Because if there’s anybody who’s going to be able to survive this recession… it’s Dracula.