DC Comics has just announced DC vs Vampires, a new maxiseries coming this Fall which will see the Justice League battling the classic blood-sucking creatures of the night just in time for Halloween. However, it happens to coincide with all the set-up Marvel Comics' Avengers and X-Men have had in the last year, teasing a massive war with Dracula and his vampire nation that will come to fruition around the same time. As a result, Marvel and DC will seemingly be going head to head with respective vampire narratives, and it's going to be interesting to see how each publisher respectively tackles their narratives.
In recent Avengers and X-Men comics, Count Dracula has been making some major moves, planning something quite big for the coming months. Not only has he convinced the United Nations to officially recognize his country of vampires based in the irradiated region of Chernobyl, but he's also been sending his forces to bite and completely takeover small northern towns that the rest of America has forgotten, adding them to his vampire army by the hundreds. While the Avengers are well aware that Dracula is planning something, having sent Blade to monitor the ongoing situation, the X-Men are concerned as well. Dracula has discovered that Wolverine's blood allows him and his vampires to day-walk, as it makes them impervious to their traditional weaknesses like sunlight. As such, the X-Men have been preparing for the inevitable war that's to come.
However, it looks as though DC Comics will be following suit with DC vs Vampires, a 12-issue maxiseries coming from writers Matthew Rosenberg and James Tynion with art by Otto Schmidt. According to the announcement from DC Comics the series will "pit the Justice League against a secret army of vampires, leaving our heroes unsure of who they can trust." Similar to Tom Taylor's DCeased titles featuring the Justice League combating infected versions of their fellow heroes as zombies, it looks as though certain heroes will get bitten, creating mass paranoia and distrust amongst each other as the vampires begin to take over the world.
While it's certainly interesting that both publishers will be releasing major vampire narratives at the end of this year, it's doubtful that they'll be all that similar to one another. First off, the Avengers and X-Men's coming battle with Dracula will be taking place in the primary Marvel Universe's canon, while DC vs Vampires will reportedly be a standalone story along the lines of DCeased, effectively an Elseworlds narrative. Additionally, the Avengers and X-Men will most likely remain united against the vampires, while DC's heroes will apparently be put in the position where they'll be fighting amongst themselves beyond just the vampiric hordes.
Regardless, just as many fans like to compare DCeased with Marvel Zombies, the same will no doubt hold true for these upcoming vampire stories, and it will be interesting to see which publisher "wins" with their respective attempts. In any case, both narratives from Marvel and DC Comics should be pretty fun and quite fitting for the Halloween season all the same.