A grand convocation of all the vampire sects is held in Greece. Janus Tepes sits silently in attendance as his father Dracula speaks about their aims for consolidating power. Dracula's other son, Xarus, shocks everyone when he impales his father with a wooden stake and cuts off his head. Xarus quickly establishes control, anointing himself as the new leader of vampire-kind. He admonishes the old world traditions of older vampires, and promises to lead the sects into a prosperous new future where they will hold dominance over humanity.
From the start, Xarus struggles to keep all of the sects in line, and manipulates events in order to weed out those who won't support his initiative, even to the point at putting several sects at crossed swords with another.
Taking Janus aside, he shows him the "way of the future". He has special pendants of highly sophisticated technology that bends light around the wearer, rendering a vampire immune to the effects of the sun.
Dracula was created by Irish author Bram Stoker. He is the titular antagonist of Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, which was inspired by an actual Wallachian nobleman known as Vlad II, aka Vlad the Impaler. The character has since been imagined as a powerful vampire count in various forms of media and has been played by many notable actors such as Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, Frank Langella, Gary Oldman, and even Leslie Nielsen.
The standard first printing cover includes "The Heroic Age" trade dress.
This issue went to second printing. The second printing edition has a darker background and does not include "The Heroic Age" trade dress.
This issue is reprinted in the Death of Dracula trade paperback collection, released in May, 2011.
This issue is tied into the "Curse of the Mutants" storyline and continues from events chronicled in X-Men, Volume 3 #1.
All of the characters that appear in this issue are vampires. There are no human characters.
