Abraham Van Helsing

Creation

Abraham Van Helsin was created and written by Bram Stoker in his novel Dracula.

Marvel Version

Origin

Abraham Van Helsing was a Dutch professor who was taught in different universities including Leyden, Trinity, and Oxford. He also specialized in philosophy and an anthropology. While studying religion once in Paris, he read a book about Vampirism written by Augustin Calmet. He married a woman named Elizabeth. Soon after he married, a group of lawyers informed Abraham that he had inherited land from his family in a place called Wallachia. On the way to Romania, Van Helsing stopped to have a meeting with the lawyers in Bistritz. Elizabeth then went ahead to the manor to set it up for the night. One lawyer had a collection of Hun and Magyar artifacts that caught Abraham's attention. As he was studying them, he lost track of time.

Finding Dracula

Later on when he arrived to the manor, Elizabeth was nowhere to be found. As he looked for his wife, he found mutilated bodies with their necks bitten and the marking "XXX" burned into their flesh underneath their bitten necks. With that, Van Helsing took a gun from his brother, Boris, and returned to Bistritz. Van Helsing discovered the existence of the Children of Judas a group of vampires that served Dracula also discovered the location of the grand Sabbath of the vampires, Van Helsing who thought the children of Judas where people that are mentally ill occults, he enter the temple and found Elizabeth in a altar and thirteen Childs of Judas along whit Dracula the lord of the vampires himself.

Armed and enraged Van Helsing opened fire against his foe but the bullets had no effect on them Van Helsing couldn’t believe it and just in time a group of priest and soldiers arrived saving him but not Elizabeth, Van Helsing refuse for his wife to be beheaded or stake as a vampire they eventually allowed him to buried Elizabeth’s body in the manorial vault but they warn him of what would happen in three days.

Standing after three days watching the vault Van Helsing saw he’s beloved wife come back to life as a vampire after killing he’s own wife he sworn revenge against Dracula.

In the year 1862 Dracula was persuaded by Lyza Strang in to killing her own husband Otto Von Bismarck since she had fell in love whit her husband’s enemy, after Dracula killed her husband he also killed her turning her into a vampire under he’s control, Abraham Van Helsing killed Lyza Strang.

In 1890, after Dracula obtained ownership of England’s Carfax Abbey whit the help of Jonathan Harker, Dracula moved to the Abbey and start threatening England killing Lucy Westernra in Whitby the aristocrats. Suitors such as Jack Seward, Arthur Holmwood, and Quincy Morris and Mina Murray, Jonathan Harker’s fiance where his friends. Jack Seward, who was a doctor in a Asylum, contacted Van Helsing about Lucy Westernra’s particular death, Van Helsing recognized the bite marks in Lucy he tried to save Lucy but it was too late after her return as a vampire Val Helsing slew her.

Van Helsing fallowed Dracula back to Transylvania Quincy Morris and Jonathan Harker armed whit knifes stabbed Dracula’s heart and “Killed him” seen his body turn to nothingness they assumed Dracula to be destroyed, but since the knifes weren’t made of wood or silver they didn’t killed Dracula as they thought. It was all a trick from Dracula’s ability to turn into mist after they left he restored his physical form.

Killing Dracula

Later in the future, Van Helsing would traced Dracula back to his castle whit the help of a boy named Carl Von Harbou who used to served Dracula he decided to betrayed his master and take Van Helsing straight to his coffin where Van Helsing using a stake stabbed Dracula’s heart apparently killing him.

Other Media

Dracula (the original novel by Bram Stoker)

Abraham Van Helsing is a Dutch doctor (however his accent is described as that of German) and the arch enemy of Count Dracula. Previous to the story Abraham's son had died which caused his wife to have a mental breakdown which led them to become estranged (however remaining married). He enters the story when he is contacted by his former pupil Dr. John Seward for assistance treating Lucy Westenra, a woman whom Seward had courted but lost out to Arthur Holmwood, Lucy's fiance. Van Helsing, who has a broad range of expertise, suspects that Lucy is the victim of a vampire. When Lucy dies and becomes a vampire herself Van Helsing reveals his suspicions and he and Arthur track Lucy to her coffin and destroy her vampiric form so that her soul can be set free.

When Dracula later attempts to turn Mina Harker into a vampire, Mina is left with the psychic ability to track Dracula which motivates Van Helsing to lead the quest to Dracula's castle in his home land of Transylvania where Dracula is destroyed by Mina's husband Jonathan Harker and Quincey Morris who accomplished the task following Van Helsing's instruction.

After Dracula's death Van Helsing remained a family friend to the Harker family.

Feature Films

A character based on Abraham Van Helsing is featured in the first unofficial film adaption of Dracula, the silent film entitled Nosferatu. In this feature the character is renamed Professor Bulwer, with a number of liberties taken for the characterization and the character's role.

In the 1931 Universal Film entitled Dracula, starring Bella Lugosi, Van Helsing is played by Edward Van Sloan, who reprises the role in the 1936 sequel entitled Dracula's Daughter. A Spanish version of the first film was made simultaneously and featured Eduardo Arozamena in the Van Helsing role.

The actor most associated with the character is Peter Cushing who played Van Helsing in Hammer Films' adaption of the novel, The Horror of Dracula (1958), and later reprised the role in Hammer's spin-off Dracula series of movies (although sometimes as a descendant of the original Van Helsing).

Van Helsing was played by Anthony Hopkins in the 1992 film Bram Stoker's Dracula by director Francis Ford Coppola.

Another of other films have featured the character, some adaptions and others sequels or re-imaginings. Among them the character is portrayed by Nigel Davenport in Dan Curtis' Dracula (1974), Herbert Lom in Count Dracula (1970), Walter Ladengast in Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), Mel Brooks in the comedy parody Dracula Dead and Loving It (1995), and many others.

The Dracula films have had a strong influence in how pop-culture views Dracula and the supporting characters and many of the comic adaptions, "sequels" and re-imaginings, are based as much on the films as they are on the novel itself.

Other Versions

Hellsing (Manga Graphic Novel Series)

In the Hellsing manga Abraham Van Helsing is the patriarch of the Hellsing bloodline, their beginning; he was the one to whom the motley crew of Jack Seward, Arthur Holmwood and Quincey Morris went to in their quest to heal Mina Murray of the insidious taint of the Nosferatu Dracula (Jonathan Harker was mysteriously absent). This Dutch physician helped them defeat the vampire, following the plot of the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, sans Harker, up to the end; instead of outright killing the undead beast, Abraham instead chose to bind the demon to his will and that of his descendants. Whether he knew that this assured Mina would never heal from her vampirism is debatable. However, he went forth and forced the vampire to undergo varied modifications which he oversaw while he lived, modifications that would eventually lead to Dracula being fully bound to the line and becoming their faithful servant against the monsters he once belonged to. In addition to this, Abraham presumably oversaw the inhuman increase in power the vampire received upon his forced servitude, including the massive upgrades in regeneration and shadow control he displayed in his future fights against Millennium.

Abraham Van Helsing, whose descendants would change surname to Hellsing and form the Hellsing Organization, was also presumably the first of the family to be awarded a seat at the Convention of Twelve. Nevertheless, his carelessness, or hubris, cost his family dearly; while Alucard was in effect bound to the bloodline, his survival also allowed Mina Harker to continue struggling through undeath as for as long as the master vampire roamed the night, she would know no eternal rest. Thence, a Nazi lunatic who ended up working for the secret Order 666 Projekt managed to dig up Mina's dessicated corpse, and use her undead systems to create the insane monster SHI, and the genesis of the Millennium Group, who would eventually end up brutally destroying London with their Army of a Thousand Vampires.

Alucard apparently had a deep, grudging respect for Abraham; he would eventually end up partly patterning his own appearance after Abraham's, reflecting how highly he thought of the doctor who had manged to best him in combat and drive a stake through his heart. He also compared the Vatican's greatest Paladin, Alexander Anderson, to him, favorably, believing earnestly Anderson's humanity and his own history with Abraham proved a human with a will powerful enough was capable of destroying monsters such as himself. Abraham was also the ancestor of future Hellsing Organization directors Arthur Hellsing and Integra Hellsing, and of failed Hellsing candidate, Richard Hellsing.