Aged actor Bela Lugosi relives his life through flashbacks from rehab while also seemingly facing literal ghosts of his past.
Sometimes I like to read comics that aren't about superheroes. Not often, but occasionally. I think this is a good one in that category.
I've been a fan of Bela Lugosi for a while. His Dracula is legendary even though it's very dissimilar to the one in the source material. I'm also a fan of the Ed Wood film where Lugosi is portrayed by Martin Landau. I always assumed that the sad state of Lugosi's life that was presented in that film was related to him just being typecast because of his accent. Turns out there was a bit more to it than that, at least if this graphic novel is to be believed.
The story of Lugosi's life is framed here by scenes of the actor going through rehab later in his life. It starts with him entering the facility, then switches between flashbacks that cover the length of his life and career, and episodes of him interacting with nurses, friends, and hallucinations of those whom he felt wronged him (like Boris Karloff).
It starts with a young Lugosi (before he changed his name to that) pursuing acting against his father's wishes. Then it follows him getting married for the first time, then fleeing the country and joining acting troupes in Austria and eventually the U.S. He gets the motivation to learn English when a Hollywood type tells him he'd like to cast him in a stage play. He plays Dracula on stage and gets brought in to play the vampire in the Universal film that would go on to make him a household name.
He gets married a few more times and wastes a lot of money on luxuries, develops a rivalry with Boris Karloff that eventually leads to the latter refusing to play Frankenstein's monster again, and gets addicted to drugs, which is what leads him to rehab. Finally, he meets Ed Wood and appears in a few more films in his latter days, getting to do what he loved most after it seemed he would never act again.
It's a sad story, for sure, though the tragedies are almost all due to Lugosi's own stubbornness. He was a terrible husband and very foolish with his money. He also seemed to think too much of himself and his acting abilities, though there did definitely appear to be times when he was undervalued, as well. It's a difficult dichotomy to nail down in my mind.
(And who knows how his life would've turned out if he hadn't gotten in bed with the Communists in Hungary? Once the Soviet government was overthrown, Lugosi was a marked man, which is why he fled in the first place.)
I recommend this biography to anyone interested in the man or in classic films.
