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"There are vampires. There are werewolves.
Such things…do exist."
-------(Orson Welles)
The monsters...
The descendants of Quincey Morris...
The Bannerworth Institute of Occult Research...
Any monster is welcome in CREATURE FEATURE. Vampires, werewolves, ghosts, golems, gremlins, missing links, aliens, other-dimensional beings, dinosaurs, dragons…you name ‘em, CREATURE FEATURE wants ‘em.
Contesting these monsters are the descendants of Quincey Morris, the American cowboy from Bram Stoker’s masterpiece, Dracula, who was killed while destroying Count Dracula alongside Jonathan Harker. Morris never mentions he was a widower in Dracula, and never knew his twin girls, Honor and Sidney Frost, survived childbirth.
Aiding Morris’ orphaned descendants is the Bannerworth Institute of Occult Research, housed in ancient Bannerworth Hall in West Sussex, England. The institute has been investigating the unexplained and supernatural since 1780, when it was founded by Sir Francis Varney, and continues today with this descendant, Frank Varney (VIII). (What most people do not know, however, is that Sir Francis Varney, Frank Varney, and all the Varneys in between are the same man…er, vampire, i.e., the titular character from Thomas Preskett Prest’s classic penny-dreadful, Varney the Vampire.)
Along with these three elements are two important technical components.
First, the stories in most issues of CREATURE FEATURE will be divided into two or more chapters, with at least one chapter set in the past. This will allow CREATURE FEATURE to showcase a classic monster in both his/her/its original setting as well as in an updated incarnation. (Universal 1932 The Mummy provides an example of this structure. Most of The Mummy’s story takes place in the present starring an "updated" mummy [Ardath Bey], but he is really Im-Ho-Tep, and we see his origin in pharanoic Egypt via a lengthy flashback sequence. The film also gives us a brief appearance of a more tradition mummy dressed in bandages and clay in the recent past [1921] during its unparalleled prologue.)
Having this access to the past provides CREATURE FEATURE tremendous storytelling freedom. A story featuring the Frankenstein Monster or Count Dracula can venture back to 1816 Switzerland or 15th-century Wallachia; however, new and unique monsters in the "classic" tradition can be created for CREATURE FEATURE as well. (e.g., an Aztec mummy brought back from the New World terrorizes 16th-century Spain, or a werewolf hunts the streets of ancient Alexandria), events that can spur an adventure or solve a mystery set in the present.
Dovetailing with this storytelling freedom is CREATURE FEATURE’S second technical component. This storyline’s in this series will be patterned after the "soap opera" format, wherein a complex sub-plot develops during the course of a series of simpler one and two-part adventures (any of which may or may not be related to the sub-plot), growing like a rolling snowball in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, gradually but irrevocably influencing the protagonists’ lives until it must be resolved in its own major story.
For instance, CREATURE FEATURE’S first major sub-plot kicks off in "My Night in Dracula’s Castle." In 1923 Honor Frost is trapped by a cave-in beneath Castle Dracula by the Count’s ghost when she comes to Transylvania to return her father’s body to America. Dracula uses Morris’ exhumed corpse to return to his undead "life", and leaves Honor in a Rip Van Winkle trance until she is inadvertently rescued in 2002, not another day older (or deeper in debt). This sub-plot builds during CREATURE FEATURE’S first few adventures as Honor, determined to rescue her father from Dracula’s possession, accepts this aid of, as well as a "research" position with, Varney. Meanwhile, the Vampire King has been busy laying the groundwork for a second attempt to spread the nosferatu plague throughout civilization; a plot that Honor realizes definitely involves her when her reflection begins to fade in the mirror.