It's true. Vlad Dracul of Wallachia (a province roughly where Romania is now) was, by all accounts, a bloodthirsty ruler who murdered opponents and allies alike in horrible ways--for example, beheading them and displaying said heads on posts for all to see and, um, "enjoy."
The story of Dracula, the vampire, has been told many times in many different media--novels, movies, TV, comic books, stage plays, etc.
But the story of Vlad the Impaler has not been told nearly as often. There was a movie called In Search of Dracula made back in the '70s starring Christopher Lee (a man with no small experience playing Dracula), and I recall a book being published around the same time that explored his old castle and lands. There was even a prologue added to Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula emphasizing that Dracula had started out as a man--a warlord, really, who loved and lost--who became Lord of the Vampires.
Veteran comic book writer Roy Thomas and artist Estaban Maroto, who drew more than a few issues of Vampirella, teamed up to tell the tale of Vlad the Impaler for Topps, the baseball card company that oh-so-briefly had a comic book line a few decades ago.
And now, thanks to the good folks at IDW Comics, Thomas' and Maroto's version of the Dracula origin tale is available again.
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