I finally got my tablet. It’s been a long and difficult wait. Waiting for the money, narrowing down the candidates, working myself up to that final fever-pitch of unbridled desire enabling me to physically go and purchase the tablet, but I did it.

RCA 11.5 Maven Pro, that’s what I got. The final and most determinant factor was that 11 inches, which comes closest in size to a standard American comic book. I don’t like iTunes, so I was never going to buy an iPad, also it’s too small. Ditto for Microsoft’s Slate, which also suffers from Windows 8, an abomination in my mind because I’m an old fuddy-duddy who still misses Windows XP, even though I’ve been using Windows 7 for years now. Plus, price tag, so, Maven it is. Android is also a plus. My first smart-phone was Android, and I’ve missed not having it.

I won’t say that reading comic was the sole reason I wanted a tablet, but it was an easy 98% of the reason I wanted a tablet. I have eight long-boxes mouldering away in my garage, and I like all of the comics in all of those boxes, but I’m just lazy enough that working my way through a stack of comics, un-poly-bagging and re-poly-bagging each individual  is a nightmare. Now everything is an easy CBR read and I couldn’t be happier. Superman, Legion of Superheroes, Silver Surfer, Micronauts, Jack Kirby’s Fourth World, brilliant stuff that I’m finally experiencing again, since I don’t really like any of the books DC is putting out today. (It pains me to no end to say this, but Marvel’s new Surfer book is tops and I love it and I feel like I’m betraying my very soul by reading it.)

A completely unexpected benefit is Marvel Unlimited (damn you DC for sucking at everything.) My Brother and I share the account, and a vast (not all, but VAST) selection of Marvel’s entire comics library is available for reading whenever I want. Silver Surfer (the new one I said was tops and kills me a little each time I read it) was my first stop. Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo’s Fantastic Four was my second, and then casually browsing through all the available content, there was ‘Tomb of Dracula.’

I love Gene Colan, and have fond memories of an old ToD reprint I had as a child. Finding all 70 issues was amazing. If I believed in them, I would have fully expected a heavenly choir to shower sweet music and golden radiance on my head. Which might be odd considering the comic, but still. If I had known before hand that ToD would be a reading option, I would have worked up that fever pitch just a little bit sooner. Maybe not a full month, but definitely a week, maybe even two.

It’s been a week now since I found ToD. I’m limiting myself to five issues a day. It’s the best comic I’ve read, it is from the seventies. Some inkers for sure work amazingly well with Colan, and some are terrible, but right now, it’s everything I want in a comic.