Mina Murray: Helsing

Mina Murray: Helsing The first time Mina Murray meets Liesel Van Helsing, Liesel has broken into her school and started going through things she has spent a week organizing. Mina is understandably not thrilled. She has pepper spray, she wants an explanation, and the woman in the ridiculous hat isn't making the situation any less suspicious. Then the lights go out, and the explanation gets a lot worse. I liked Mina immediately in The Darkness and the Light. She's a teacher who gets dragged into a vampire hunt because her school happens to sit where Liesel's childhood home used to be. She doesn't know the history. She hasn't volunteered for any of it. She's dealing with the situation in front of her with what she has. The pepper spray works on Renfield's giant fly. It doesn't solve the vampire problem. When she and Jonathan Harker get cornered, she kicks their attacker, and Jonathan eventually stakes it with a broken broom handle. They help each other through something neither of them was equipped for, and the relationship starts there. By Van Helsing vs. Dracula, they're engaged. They've made it out of that first nightmare and are trying to build a life together. Then, while they're telling his parents about the wedding, Mina bites his mother and collapses. Something is wrong with her that ordinary explanations aren't going to cover. The distinction the comic makes is important: she isn't simply a newly turned vampire. She's still alive. Dracula has a hold over her, and the story gets into these beings called Sleepers, people bound to him through his blood rather than the usual completed vampiric transformation. Looking monstrous doesn't tell Liesel everything she needs to know about what has happened to Mina, or whether she can be helped. Renfield leads her into Dracula's house and feeds her blood while Jonathan is trying to reach her. Later she attacks Jonathan herself. That is a horrible thing to put him through, but it's also a horrible thing to do to her. Dracula has taken a woman with a future, friends and a wedding to plan, and turned her into a way of hurting other people. Mina does get a future beyond this. The ending brings her back to Jonathan and his family. She apologizes to his mother for what she did. His mother accepts the apology, and they're talking about the wedding again. I was glad the story gave them that. We'd already watched what Dracula did to the Van Helsing family. Having Mina survive means Jonathan's determination to get her back doesn't end as another version of Abraham losing Elizabeth. And I don't want to lose the schoolteacher from the beginning when talking about the supernatural part of her story. Before Dracula got hold of her, she was the woman who stood her ground, kicked a vampire, and wanted to know why these strangers were tearing up her workplace. There was a person there worth getting back. Sources: Helsing: The Darkness and the Light #1–4; Van Helsing vs. Dracula #1–5.