Tomb of Dracula #15

The cover of this December 1973 Marvel issue poses a genuinely unsettling question — a rifleman stands shaken, crying "I shot a bat… but I killed a vampire!" as Dracula lies sprawled on the rocky ground, his cape spread wide and his white-streaked hair fanning out beneath him. Three sequential spotlight panels above capture the bat mid-flight, mid-shot, and mid-transformation, making the horror of the moment viscerally clear. The cover's haunting tagline — "But how long will a vampire stay dead?" — sets the stage perfectly for Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan's atmospheric series, with cover art by Gil Kane, John Romita, and Dan Adkins delivering sharp, dramatic energy.