The early eighties was a time of renewal for The Mighty Avenger, with creators pushing Thor into more esoteric mystical territory than ever before, making him fight Celestials and all-over weird parts of Cosmic Marvel (which would eventually, sadly, culminate in that Thanos story so awful that everybody made sure to bury it and pretend it never happened). Either the pinnacle or nadir, depending on your point of view, of that time is when Thor fought Dracula. Yes, the actual vampire king from the Bram Stoker novel, who has been a longtime member of the Marvel Universe as both the arch nemesis of Blade and an on-again, off-again adversary of the X-Men. He even fell in love with Storm briefly. Hes tangled with Thor a number of times as well, scrapping with him during the recent Fear Itself and fighting in space during an episode of Avengers Assemble, but their first battle came in the two-parter The Blood Of A Goddess and Like A Bat Out Of Heaven!, where he managed to sink his fangs into Lady Sif and turn her into a vampire for a spell.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
