Varnae

Varnae is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by Steve Perry and Steve Bissette, the character first appeared in Bizarre Adventures #33 (December 1982). Varnae is a villainous vampire who has been an adversary of several of Marvel's supernatural and fantasy-related heroes, and is a major character in Marvel's Dracula mythos. He is named after Dracula's literary predecessor, Varney the Vampire. Varnae first appeared in Bizarre Adventures #33 (December 1982), and was created by Steve Perry and Steve Bissette. Varnae's involvement with Dracula's origin was a retcon to the original Marvel version of Dracula's origin. According to the origin given in Dracula Lives! #2 & 3, Dracula became the Lord of the Vampires by killing Nimrod, who held the title before him. When revisiting the characters in the black and white magazine Bizarre Adventures, Steve Bissette and John Totleben decided to go further back and create a worthy sire for Dracula, and inserted Varnae into a darker version of the story from Dracula Lives!. Much later, writer Roy Thomas revisited the character of Varnae while writing Conan the Barbarian and Doctor Strange in the early 1990s. Thomas added the history of the character as an Atlantean and a foe of Conan and Red Sonja in the former, and revived the character in modernity in the "Vampiric Verses" storyline in the latter.