I saw the other day on twitter that Rebellion Publishing were having a 24hr sale on selected TPB collections. I clicked through to their website and found this collection of "The Dracula File" strip from the UK's short-lived '80s horror comic Scream! for an absolute steal -- it cost me under £7, even with the postage & packing included.




I absolutely loved Scream! as a kid and still have tremendous fondness for its various strips. I already own Rebellion's collection of the "Monster" strip from Scream!, so for this kind of low price, there was no way I was not gonna buy this one.

Set in the then-contemporary mid-80s, The Dracula File sees the Lord of Vampires defecting from the Eastern Bloc to the UK, where he inevitably leaves a trail of absolute carnage in his wake, while ex-KGB officer Colonel Stakis stalks him. This gives, what is otherwise a pretty generic vampire comic, an unusual and very topical for the time Cold War twist.

Scream! only lasted a mere 15 issues and, as a result, The Dracula File ends abruptly, with its plotline unresolved. Still, it is what it is and the lack of a definitive ending won't stop me from enjoying a re-read of this beloved strip from my childhood.

No, I never read Misty at the time. It's heyday was a bit earlier than Scream! (late '70s and early '80s, I believe), and at that point, I was more into black & white Marvel and DC reprints of superhero comics (and Star Wars, natch!) or homegrown kiddy fare like The Beano or The Dandy. I didn't even really start reading slightly more serious UK comics like Battle Action Weekly, Commando or 2000 AD until about 1980 or so. That, along with the fact that, as you say, Misty was squarely targetted at girls, meant that it just wasn't even on my radar at the time.

I've only really become aware of it over the past decade, I guess, as the comic's cult following has steadily grown online. I can well believe it features some good art and stories though, as it had some great UK talent contributing to it.

Please let us know about the Team-Up Companion! I’d like to be able to flip through it to see how good the Bob Haney article is. I don’t want to order it and then find out the Haney article is not that great.

Slam_Bradley, I used to have a digest size Dennis the Menace comic that had a Hawaii story in it and I loved it so much that I would read it once a year. Sadly, I no longer have it. My wife accidentally(?) got rid of all of my digest sized comics several years ago. I tried to find this but I don't know the exact title of it and my google search was unsuccessful. I wonder if your collection happens to have the story that I used to read in my digest.

I'll do that as soon as I get it in the mail and read it.  It will likely be in the books thread though. 

So this sped it's way into my mail box

Had been enjoying Bates' Flash run so much that I wanted to, in some small way, encourage DC to print some more of it