DRAGON is a graphic novel authored by Saladin Ahmed, with art by Dave Acosta and colors by Chris O’Halloran that revisits the story of Vlad Dracula’s timeless evil. It approaches the “classic” Dracula story from an angle I’d never seen before (this isn’t rich British people and a Dutch doctor striving to keep a creeping predator from London). This puts at it the heart of its setting the historical interplay between Vlad the Impaler and the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II. Dating back to Bram Stoker, tales of Dracula look west, rather than interrogating the very real interactions between Dracul and the Muslim world to its east. Not so in DRAGON.

Adil is a Janissary commander who has fallen from grace in the wake of enduring the trauma of Dracula’s violence. He finds common cause with Sister Marjorie, a Catholic nun who is also forced from her place in her convent by Dracula’s evil. A third compatriot, another man who exists in the margins travels and who doesn’t fit in the religious or social expectations of the circles where he travels, joins Adil and Marjorie in their task to confront Dracula and end us reign of terror.

In particular, Adil and Marjorie stand out as interesting lenses into their societies as this isn’t Jonathan Harker secure in his societal position working with other men mostly unaffected by Dracula’s predation save for the pain caused over Lucy’s demise. No, Adil suffers from obvious PTSD and seeks some degree of solace in alcohol. When Marjorie’s sister in the convent is murdered by Dracula and Marjorie somehow survives and ends the threat of a risen vampire, she falls under suspicion and is driven from her home. Both Adil and Marjorie’s lives are more or less ruined simply by being exposed to, but not directly victims of, Dracula’s evil.

(The third character deserves a similar analysis, but in the interest of avoiding spoilers, I will defer).

Interesting character and quest origins aside, the book coalesces onto the path you might expect, team up, travel to evil castle, kill Dracula. It is a satisfying adventure with a grisly tension that held me in place from page 1 to the end.

The tension is due, in no small part, to the fantastic art. When an ambush kills an unsuspecting victim, there is no sanitized death–an arrow pierces the poor man’s throat and we are made to confront the visceral, disgusting, violence. The supernatural evil is rendered in vivid, horrifying, detail–this is no sparkly vampire type of a style. Similarly, the colors are dark, saturated, and lend a sense of foreboding to the entire experience.

If you can find a copy, I highly recommend it. I say “if you can find a copy” because this project came about after a successful Kickstarter. I just received the digital copy (which is the copy I read for this review), and as I set out to write this I wanted to put a link to purchase… but I can’t find one. The Kickstarter includes this language:

“This will be a lavish book, published as a Kickstarter exclusive. An oversized, slipcovered deluxe format hardcover printed on high quality paper and crammed with extras from creators’ notes to concept art to script and pencil pages.

There are currently no plans to release DRAGON in trade paperback or digital. For now, this special event hardcover is the only way to experience the story!”

So, assuming we’re taking the creative team at their word, I’m not sure where to point you to pick up a copy. I hope that at some point the team makes this available in a more widely-distributed format, because it was a great read.