Journey into Mystery #520
The Long Cold Kill - Chapter One
Vampire Detective Hannibal King has been hired to find Summer Klein, the 19-year-old daughter of a wealth meat rendering plant. The trail leads him right to Henry Klein’s business where a group of vampires have kidnapped her daughter. The blood suckers taunt King for being a traitor to his kind by not drinking the blood of mortals.[1] What they don’t expect is that the detective is armed with a gun that fires incendiary bullets that can vaporize vampires. He blows the vampires away before they can drain Summer dry. With her kidnappers destroyed, Hannibal takes the girl back to her family.
After collecting his cheque, Hannibal returns to his office when he is visited by a woman named Tatjana Stiles. Hannibal is instantly attracted to her and when she says she is in need of his services, he invites her in to talk. Tatjana wants to hire Hannibal to find her husband’s killers for her. She explains that she and her spouse, Andrew, were coming home from the theater the night before when they were suddenly attacked by a group of motorcycle riding vampires. When they tried to get away, the vampires jumped onto their car and smashed through the windshield. They then yanked Andrew out of the car and flew away with him. lunging over to the drivers side to regain control of their speeding car, Tatjana ended up crashing into a tree. She survived the crash relatively uninjured and came looking for Hannibal King to avenger her husband’s death. Finding the story intriguing, Hannibal agrees to take the case.
He then goes down to the accident site to look for clues. Sure enough he finds the Stiles sports car smashed into a tree just like she said. However, judging from the crash site, parts of Tatjana’s story don’t line up. Particularly the part about Andrew being yanked out of the car without getting cut to ribbons by the windshield and that she was able to survive the crash without any visible injuries. Moreover, he finds it odd that a bunch of male vampires would take a male victim as vampires usually tend to go after the opposite sex. Getting information from the motorcycle’s inspection stickers, Hannibal goes to the garage that serviced them the following evening to look for more clues.
He gains access to the garage by transforming into mist and getting inside. From the computers he is able to look up ownership records for the motorcycles. As he leaves, a guard dog tries to attack him, but he uses his hypnotic gaze to make the canine flee from him in terror.
With this lead, Hannibal goes to a part of Harlem called Hope Center. After a brief scuffle with some local hoods, Hannibal finds the address — an abandoned apartment building. Inside, he finds two vampires vegging out in front of the television. Although he gets the drop on the two vampires, they are prepared for them as their boss — a vampire named Navarro — told them to be ready for King’s involvement. One of the vampires breaths fire at King and as he screams in pain, his opponent turns into mist and enters his open mouth, intending to turn back into human form inside Hannibal and rip him to shreds. Desperate to get his opponent out, Hannibal uses his barehand to rip open an make-shift tracheotomy to expel the intruder from his body. This allows the other vampire to ram a stake through his chest. However, they don’t kill King then and there, but instead bring him back to Navarro’s hideout.
When Hannibal wakes up later he finds himself locked in a room with a homeless man. Navarro addresses him over the intercom and tells him that he has been without fresh blood for two nights and will need to drink soon. The homeless man has been put in the room in order to force Hannibal to break his vow never to drink blood from a living human. Hannibal resists the urge to drink even though he is sick and dying. By the sixth night, Navarro gets bored of waiting and send his men in to cut up and drink from the homeless man, leaving him a bloody mess on the floor. Afraid of becoming a vampire himself, the homeless man pleads with Hannibal to kill him. With no other choice, Hannibal tastes human blood for the first time.
Recurring Characters
Hannibal King, Navarro, Tatjana Stiles
Continuity Notes
When Hannibal was turned into a vampire in Tomb of Dracula #25, how vowed to never drink blood from a living person. To date, he has managed to maintain this vow.
Topical References
Hannibal is depicted listening Carl Perkins on a portable tape player, identified as a Sony Walkman. This should be considered a topical reference as Walkman’s and tape players in general were phased out of use by about 2010 and are now considered an obsolete technology. King listening to Carl Perkins is not necessarily a topical reference since he makes a point of saying he’s listening to classic rock from the 1950s.
The computers in this story are depicted as having CRT monitors. This should be considered topical as this is another obsolete technology.
When describing the apartment buildings in Hope Center, Hannibal states that they were built in the 1960s and that they were decapitated tenements from day one. This description could be considered topical given the fact that Harlem has undergone a great deal of gentrification since this story was published and it is no longer the slum it was known to be.
The TV in the vampire’s apartment is depicted as a CRT with antenna to pick up signals. This is of course more obsolete technology. Its stated here that they are watching an old rerun of Yogi Bear on the Cartoon Network. While a rerun itself would not be considered topical, Cartoon Network would as this is a real life television station.
