Some say the current craze for anything vampirish began with the Twilight series of books. But long before that there was Bram Stoker”s Dracula, Anne Rice‘s Lestat and Harriet Posnak Lesser‘s Cracked Magazine articles. Yup, that’s how it bloody well began. Here, Harriet Posnak Lesser’s take on the bloodsuckers.
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Wake up America! In case you haven’t noticed, we are undergoing a major pop culture revolution. The super heroes of our youth are disappearing. Look up at the skies on a clear starlit night and what do you see? Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Nah, and it sure ain’t Superman. It’s a bat, a great big bat with pale skin and the kind of canines an orthodontist would give his eye teeth to work on.
I’m talking vampires of course. We have opened our hearts (and our veins?) with an outpouring of affection that will not be staunched. Time to face up to the facts of life in the 21st century. Superman and company are history. They have been replaced by a gang of bloodthirsty monsters conjured up by a nightmare-plagued pack of writers and TV producers.
But before you get the wrong idea, I am here to praise vampires, not to bury them. I know there are people who think vampires suck and I have two words for them. “Bite me!” I owe a lot to vampires. They were there for me at a bad time in my life. Set adrift by my agent in a cruel world not of my making, abandoned and abused, I had nowhere to turn. Or so it seemed.
With an “aw, what the heck attitude,” I answered an ad for writers placed by Cracked magazine. I knew that Cracked was the tweeny plus version of Mad, and totally beyond my current frames of reference — but I really wanted the job. The first step was deciding on something to write about. After checking out a couple of Cracked issues, I came up with vampires. Dracula was one of my all time favorite films and I loved Bela Lugosi. Stoker-ed by Bram’s iconic novel, and inspired by old movies, I decided to bring vampires into modern times.
I began with a sitcom titled All in the Belfry. I wrote copy for imaginary albums by the Grateful Un-Dead, Deathrow Tull and Linda Ronstdead featuring her hit song, It May be Blue By You, but it’s Red by Me. I included bad jokes by popular comedians past and present. My favorite was based on a Henny Youngman classic: “A vampire was walking down the street. A bum walked up to him and said, ‘Can I have a dime? I haven’t had a bite all day.’ So the vampire bit him and bit him and bit him …” Terrible stuff, but the editors must have liked it because they bought the idea.
A full time job put a premature end to my comic book career, but looking back, I can say with pride that I did my ‘bit’ to make vampires the pop culture hit they’ve become.
Bram, Bela and me. We were there at the beginning. So let’s all drink to Vlad the Impaler, the guy who started it all. You can make mine O negative.
Copyright 2014 Harriet Posnak Lesser
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Harriet Posnak Lesser is an award-winning journalist and social satirist whose articles have appeared in Long Island’s The South Shore Record and Nassau Herald, The New York Times, Cracked Magazine and others.