I read a lot of comic books as a kid. This series of posts is about the comics I read, and, occasionally, the comics that I should have read.

I started reading superhero comics just as the X-Men were turning into a sensation. Because the comics I bought and voraciously consumed that first month of devotion all gave a huge chunk of their covers to a teasing promise of potential riches, I know with certainty that the landmark X-Men #137 was on spinner racks at the time. Setting aside that unique equivalent of carbon dating, I know my earliest span of fandom corresponded with the rocket-ship trajectory of Marvel’s merry mutants from watching it happen in real time. I basically took it for granted that the ongoing saga of the X-Men, as dependably written by Chris Claremont, was the height of popular comic book storytelling, the blockbuster peak of the form. I think that disguised the thorough weirdness of so much of Claremont’s run.

In their initial conception, the X-Men were students at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, the classroom efforts favoring the effective use of their varied superpowers rather than trigonometry. By the early nineteen-eighties, that notion was pretty much long gone (though partially revised for a sibling periodical dubbed The New Mutants). Beyond that, Claremont often seemed barely interested in the X-Men as figures occupying a corner of New York states and opposing feet-on-the-ground adversaries. As X-Men and any of its associated titles grew in popularity, Claremont clearly felt increasingly empowered to take his stories in whatever digressions struck him, which mostly led to a lot of space opera folderol. In a very sure-why-not tangent, it also wound up setting the team in conflict with none other than Dracula.

Written by Claremont with art by Bill Sienkiewicz, X-Men Annual #6 was released in the summer of 1982 as part of Marvel’s regular series of double-sized bonus issues timed to when young readers had more time on their hands and maybe a few extra quarters thanks to lawn-mowing gigs and the like. The opening chapter lays out the dilemma. Ororo Munroe, a.k.a Storm, is plagued by dreams that she has turned into a vampire and is draining the literal lifeblood from her X-cohorts. This frightful turn doesn’t come out of nowhere. It’s an extension of the story told in Uncanny X-Men #159, true believer. In that earlier tale, Dracula nearly enthralled Ororo with his fanged, coercive wooing, so she goes straight to the source of her problems in an attempt to put an end to the troubling visions.

Again, this isn’t some newly invented character with vampiric abilities familiar from a century or more of well-traveled lore. It’s Dracula. Dracula. The Transylvanian count had certainly swooped through his fair share of Marvel mag pages by this point and even tangled with the biggest heroes in the publisher’s galaxy of stars. Even so, it was decidedly bizarre to see him up against the X-Men when they, of course, came to their teammate’s rescue.

I was willing to follow Claremont anywhere he took this crew of vivid misfits, but even then I felt like this whole issue has the lopsided energy of stoned fanboy speculation. Much as Claremont dutifully slotted the story into ongoing continuity, the plot is a run-on sentence of geeky invention. Like, so, what if Wolverine fought Dracula, but then, like, Dracula, possessed Wolverine and made him fight the X-Men instead? That’d be awesome, right?

For all my snide commentary, I have to admit that X-Men Annual #6 has stuck in my memory all these years due to its bleak ending. At the start of the issue, Rachel Van Helsing, a character who appeared in Marvel’s Tomb of Dracula series and who was the descendent of Dracula’s most famed foe, is captured by Dracula. He turns her into a vampire, a fate she can’t abide. So she asks the X-Men to release her from this existential prison in the only way possible.

For wee, impressionable me, that was hardcore. Maybe having the X-Men and Dracula in the same comic book wasn’t so odd after all. In the final verdict, I didn’t regret the buck I spent to add it my collection.

Previous entries in this series (and there are a LOT of them) can be found by clicking on the “My Misspent Youth” tag.