Matt Wagner and Kelley Jones have returned to the coffin one final time, and horror readers have responded by bringing their wallets. The Kickstarter campaign for Dracula: Book IV – The Undead, the concluding volume in the pair’s long running graphic novel series, launched this week and has already blown past its modest $666 funding goal, pulling in more than $125,000 from over 1,400 backers within its first few days live.
The fourth and final instalment picks up where Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel left its ending deliberately unresolved. Matt Wagner, who has spent three prior volumes expanding the Count’s shadow history while staying faithful to Stoker’s canon, imagines a Dracula who survived his climactic battle and now turns his fury on the “peasants” who nearly destroyed him. At 122 pages it’s the longest entry yet in a saga built on filling the gaps Stoker left behind.
Series artist Kelley Jones, whose gothic linework has defined the look of this Dracula since the first volume, called the ending Wagner handed him a crowning achievement to his career.
“It was Matt saying I have an ending and it’s not the finish of the novel, and I swooned when he revealed it.”
Kelley Jones
Wagner, for his part, told Daily Dead that the ending was built into the series from the start. Colourist José Villarrubia and letterer Rob Leigh both return for continuity across all four volumes.
Backers can choose between three hardcover editions: Jones’s standard cover, a Wagner variant, and a signed, numbered edition limited to 666 copies. Rewards also include a black light poster rendered in psychedelic colour and a run of merchandise, while copies of the first three Dracula volumes remain available in limited quantities for newcomers catching up on the saga. The Kickstarter campaign runs for several more weeks, leaving plenty of time for backers to get in before the coffin closes for good.
