Dracula #12
In "Spectre sans sépulcre," Vic Dowling and Bob Stuart bring to life the chilling tale of Francis Tourneau, the executioner to King Louis XVI in 1769, as he grapples with the grim weight of his duty and the unsettling rise of a new method of execution. With Gil Kane’s striking cover and Tom Palmer’s precise inks, this 1976 issue captures a moment of historical dread, where innovation meets revolution—and the blade is turned on its maker.
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Francis Tourneau is an executioner to King Louis XVI of France in the year 1769. He labors to find a more efficient means of executing prisoners. A physician named Joseph-Ignace Guillotin provides him designs for a mechanized decapitation device. The device (dubbed the guillotine) is put into use, but a revolution takes place and the prisoners storm the Bastille. They capture Tourneau who subsequently becomes the guillotine's first victim.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).