Operation: Iron Coffin #2
Writer: Kenny Porter
Artist/Colorist: Tyrell Cannon
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Sometimes you pick up a comic that's just plain cool.
That's Operation: Iron Coffin.
Fangs for the Memories
Count Dracula—yes, that Dracula—is still on board a Nazi train carrying a deadly vampire virus. His mission: to stop the train and destroy the virus before it reaches its destination.
One small problem: Drac's currently impaled on the spear of a Nazi Holy Warrior, and the man's faith burns…
It wouldn't be much of a story if Dracula didn't overcome this foe, so of course he does. But there are more obstacles in his path: a sonic-weapon-wielding man who can hear "the sounds of the universe" and knows about the Count's deal with Death, a man in a giant Iron Monger-esque battlesuit, and the two mysterious vampires in charge of the virus—who claim to be Dracula's biological children…
Blah!
The first issue of Operation: Iron Coffin was a heavy metal album cover come to life, and I had an absolute blast with it. Issue #2 is more of the same, which I am perfectly fine with.
Dracula's mission, taking him from the rear of the train towards the front, reminds me of a side-scrolling beat-'em-up. I can totally picture a game like Double Dragon or Final Fight where the train is the setting, and you have to fight through hordes of zombie mooks to reach the boss of the level. The "bosses" here even escalate in terms of power level.
While Dracula fights through everything the Nazis throw at him, we get flashbacks to the years following his resurrection and his efforts to make amends for his past life. The scene where he visits Mina Harker and finds that Jonathan has died, due to the stress of living in fear that the Count would return, is particularly effective. She wants nothing to do with Dracula other than use him for target practice. But her son, Quincey, shows no fear and confronts the Count. Dracula promises the boy a boon, no questions asked—which we see that the boy, now a man, is the pilot flying over the train. So I think it's obvious what he asked the vampire for.
The different "bosses" that the Nazis throw at Dracula are unique, and each has plenty of character. The first one, the Spear, wields his holy weapon and the power of his faith, which makes the Count feel pain not only without but also within. The Gunner uses his sonic weaponry to shred flesh and bone, but it's his words that do the most damage to Dracula. He claims to be able to hear everything in the universe, and to know about the deal the Count made with Death itself. Since Drac doesn't fully understand the deal himself, that shakes him to his core. It's too bad for the Gunner that he apparently can't hear British fighter planes…
The last "boss" that we meet is the Bell. He's a soldier clad in a hulking armored warsuit, which he actually tests on his fellow countrymen. He stands among a charnel house when Dracula finds him. He will be a dramatic test of the Count's mettle, and even if the vampire should survive, he still has to deal with his children…
The first time I saw Drac and the pretty blonde barmaid making goo-goo eyes at each other in a flashback, I knew where this was going. And sure enough, I was right. Turns out that being a resurrected vampire lord who travels the globe to destroy all the monsters you previously left in your wake is lonely work. So when the Count and this barmaid found each other, even for a moment, it helped ease the pain. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to Dracula, it left her with child—twins, actually—that are more monster than human. As a quirk of their creation, anything they drink from does not turn, but rather decays away. This is why they created the vampire virus, to help their kind spread in defiance of their father's efforts.
A little bit more dramatic than most of your family squabbles, right?
The way the issue weaves in and out of action, horror, and drama is truly impressive. We can go from pages of gory violence against a powerful foe straight to a flashback showing the pain that Dracula must endure in his quest to make amends, then jump right back to a train car filled with blood and body parts. It works incredibly well, and keeps things from ever getting too stale (bet you thought I was going to say "long in the tooth," didn’t you?)
Raining Blood
When we got to interview Kenny Porter a couple of months back, he told us that he was having an absolute blast writing this comic. And that definitely shows on the printed page. The pacing is frenetic, moving from one setpiece to the next, but at the same time it slows down to insert flashbacks or conversation scenes that move the story along. Dracula comes across as a proper character here; you can feel his remorse and regret for what he has done in the past. Yet at the same time, the monster still comes out to say "hello." And speaking of monsters—most of the Nazis he faces may be human, but by their actions they are even more monstrous than the Count himself.
Tyrell Cannon handles both the art and the coloring here, and the result is a consistently spectacular look. His art is very stylized, with characters' proportions changing from panel to panel as befits the Rule of Cool. He's got a very kinetic sense of motion, and an eye for cartoonishly overwhelming amounts of blood and gore. Dracula's design is striking—I don't know why, but the little mustache cracks me up every time I look at his face—with the very human expressions yet monstrous claws instead of fingernails. The various Nazi villains are creative in their design and in how they move or act. In fact, the most generic thing in the whole issue is the twins, but even that is by design. They've got blonde hair and blue eyes, so even though they're vampires of a sort, they're the Nazi ideal. As for the colors, there are plenty of blacks and shadows, but the characters and effects are done in a brighter palette that makes them stand out against the darkness of the world. Everything comes together to have a very unique, almost manga-inspired look.
I Did Nazi That Coming
Operation: Iron Coffin #2 is another wild ride where Count Dracula carves his way through a Nazi train carrying a deadly vampire virus. Not only does he have to face men of faith, men who can hear all of his secrets, and giant suits of armor, but he also has to deal with the pain and remorse he feels for all the horrors he committed in his past life. He's still committing horrors now, mind you, but now they're horrors for the cause of good, which makes all the difference.