Since there's no historical prologue in this issue, protagonists Harlan Draka and Emil Kurjak enter the story a few pages earlier than usual:
“Viterbo, Belcolle Hospital.” (Viterbo is a town in central Italy, population 68,000. Also the name of the province of which it is the capital, just northwest of Rome. In American terms, the seat of a rural county near a big metro area. So this is probably the only full-service hospital in the province.)
“Professor Palmieri's room is on the second floor on the right. Neurology department.”
“Thanks, Ma'am.” (To Kurjak) “We needed special permission to meet him. He has been in a coma for almost a year, and his condition is still serious. He can’t receive many visitors.”
“So, don’t we risk catching someone’s eye?”
“He has managed to pass us off as foreign researchers and his dearest friends. After all, he has no relatives.”
“Me? Do I look like a scholar? And if someone asks me where I teach?”
“Start mumbling in Serbo-Croatian and shake your head. I'll take care of the rest. After almost a year in a coma, the first thing Palmieri did was contact his friend Hans Milius.” (Milius is a recurring character, a German academic who often puts the heroes on the trail of some historically-based problem. Palmieri is a new character.)
“And not because he was in a hurry to tell him about the latest Etruscan or Roman stone he had dug up, right?” (Viterbo was the center of the ancient Etruscan kingdom until Rome swallowed it.)
“Yeah. He wanted to tell him about the terrible events that led to his accident.”
“And good old Milius passed us the hot potato. Are bloodsuckers involved? So far you haven't told me much.”
“In truth, I still don't know in detail what happened to the professor. But all this urgency makes me think that the danger could still be real.”
“In your opinion, does Milius only happen to have strange friends by accident, or does he curate them carefully?”
“Are you referring to me too, by any chance?”
Whenever I see a crowd scene like the halls of this hospital, I wonder whether the people are friends of the artist, photo references, or products of the imagination. Harlan's head in the second panel is a paste-up correction. Gotta get his first appearance right! This was Del Campo's second issue of Dampyr, after #159.
