Dark
Shadows helped acquaint or reacquaint audiences
of the 1960s with traditional vampirism, from its coffins,
bats, and stakes to the bite marks which the fanged Barnabas
inflicted upon the other characters and to Barnabas' battles
with other, more sinister vampires. Although vampire Tom
Jennings may have been the show’s most frightening
vampire and Angelique or Roxanne the most sensual, it was
Barnabas Collins who set the 1960s standard for the mainstream
vampire on television. It was not long before Barnabas and
Dark Shadows invaded another pop culture
medium - comic books.
The
first issue of Gold Key Comics’ Dark Shadows
series was dated December 1968, and the 35th (and final)
issue bore a February 1976 date. The comic magazine began
as a quarterly publication but with issue 13 (April 1972)
was stepped up to bi-monthly status. 26 of the 35 issues
were published after the ABC-TV series was cancelled.
All
35 issues were edited and/or supervised by Wallace
I. Green, managing editor. Among the uncredited
script writers of the Dark Shadows comic
book were Donald J. Arneson and Arnold
Drake. Arneson wrote issue 1 amongst other issues,
the one-shot Dark Shadows Story Digest Magazine
(June 1970), and stories for Gold Key’s
Boris Karloff’s Tales of Mystery, The Twilight Zone
and The Governor. J.J. Arnold Drake
wrote issues 22, 24, 30, and about 10 other issues.
Drake
is one of the most respected names from the Silver Age of
Comics. "I wrote something like 2000 stories during
my comic-book period," Drake declared in a 1986 interview.
Arnold Drake created Deadman and the Doom Patrol
for DC Comics. At DC and elsewhere, Drake scripted the four-color
adventures of Batman, Bugs Bunny, Bullwinkle, Challengers
of the Unknown, Heckle and Jeckle, Little Lulu, and
Barnabas Collins.
As
for the art direction of the Dark Shadows
comic book, "Everybody who has seen all of the magazines
has seen every piece of reference we ever got from Dan Curtis
Productions," Wallace I. Green recalled in a 1986 interview.
"We used all of their photographs on front covers and
inside covers," a source which lasted the course of
the first seven issues. "Eventually, of course, we
ran out of photographs. That’s when we went to the
painted covers. The artist was George Wilson,
who did a lot of painted covers for us. I think for several
years he may have been the only artist we had painting covers.
George eventually went on to do [covers for] a lot of paperback
novels. How we were able to keep him as long as we did at
the prices we paid him, I’ll never know! Joe
Certa did [the artwork for] all of the insides;
he did every single issue of Dark Shadows."
From
1940 to 1943, Joe Certa was one of the
illustrators of Street and Smith’s 20-issue Doc
Savage comic book. The 1950s found Certa penciling
the adventures of Robotman, the Martian Manhunter
and other DC Comics superheroes. In the newspapers, Certa
collaborated with John Belfi and Ray Gardner on the Western
comic strip Straight Arrow. After the Dark
Shadows line was cancelled in late 1975, Joe Certa
drew stories for Gold Key’s Ripley’s Believe
It or Not, Twilight Zone, and Grimm’s Ghost
Stories magazines.
The
comic book rights to Dark Shadows went
to Western Publishing Company (Gold Key
Comics) in the first place because Dan Curtis Productions
was unable to sell the license to either Marvel or DC, the
two major comics companies at the time. Neither company
could legally produce a Dark Shadows-type
series in 1968 because of their voluntary, long-time observation
of the strict tenets of the Comics Code Authority. In the
late 1960s, most comic books were still governed by the
original guidelines established by the Comics Code Authority
on 26 October 1954. One passage of the restrictive Comics
Code read, “Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated
with, walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls,
cannibalism, and werewolfism are prohibited.”
In
October 1971 that the Code was revised and the above passage
was changed to read, "Scenes dealing with, or instruments
associated with, walking dead or torture shall not be used.
Vampires, ghouls, and werewolves shall be permitted to be
used when handled in the classic tradition, such as Frankenstein,
Dracula, and other high-calibre literary works written by
Edgar Allan Poe, Saki (H.H. Munro), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
and other respected authors whose works are read in schools
throughout the world."
Marvel
and DC Comics then were able to feature vampires and werewolves
in their magazines—too late, however, for Dan Curtis
Productions. Gold Key comic books had never been governed
by the Comics Code Authority, reportedly because of some
fast talking by publisher George Delacorte in 1954. With
their newly increased creative freedom, Marvel and DC immediately
launched two of the greatest post-EC supernatural-horror
titles in the history of comics: Tomb of Dracula
and Swamp Thing.
Meanwhile,
Gold Key had been producing the highly supernatural Dark
Shadows comic book for almost four years. With
lurid titles such as Creatures in Torment, Souls in
Bondage and My Blood or Yours, the stories
in Dark Shadows recalled the height of
EC Comics horror of the 1950s. Dark Shadows
nevertheless zealously pitted Barnabas and Quentin against
other vampires and werewolves, zombies - still technically
taboo elsewhere, a golem, a mummy, winged 'zozoes,' and
even a headless horseman. Most of the stories took place
in and around the Collinwood estate, although our heroes
occasionally traveled to the Netherworld, Limbo, Eskimo
Point, the Island of Eternal Youth, amongst other locales.
Barnabas also often indulged in time trave, using various
methods to visit the 17th, 18th, 19th, and - in issue 11
- the 21st century.
Although
Barnabas occasionally behaved more like a super-hero than
a vampire, editor Wally Green and writer Arnold Drake tried
to remain faithful to their basic concept of the character
as a romantic hero. According to Green, "We thought
of him as a sympathetic character with a lot of problems.
That’s the way we saw him. He had to be a hero despite
the evil part of him which he was constantly fighting."
Green
continued, "We were very circumspect with any comic
book we did which was based on a licensed property to see
that the material went to the licenser and we got a written
approval on it before we went to press. However, I don’t
remember that we ever did that with Dark Shadows!
Actually, Dan Curtis Productions had zero input. Every story
was original with its author."
Although
such unsupervised originality was a dream come true for
the writers, the readers often suffered through drastic
inconsistencies and deviations from the television series.
Even more disconcerting was the fact that many of the stories
themselves did not even agree with each other. Confusion
abounded over which of the regular characters knew Barnabas’s
secret, whether or not Quentin could speak while in werewolf
form, and even whether Elizabeth Collins Stoddard and Roger
Collins were indeed brother and sister or - as portrayed
in issue 28 - husband and wife!
Arnold
Drake admitted that he did not watch the television series
regularly. "I saw a few episodes of Dark Shadows;
It wasn’t one of my favorite shows. I saw several
of them because I knew that Dan Curtis was turning out a
good, low-budget package, and as a man who had written and
produced for the screen, I was interested in the techniques
that were being used to knock those things out at the bottom
dollar they were doing them for. I read a number of the
stories that had been written," he admits, referring
the the paperback novels, "one or two of the theatrical
scripts, and some of these comic books which had been written
before I started. And I gained the basic flavor of it: the
language, the somewhat ‘purple prose’ which
makes something like that work, and I’m not knocking
it at all. And then I just took off on my own. I would get
outside the ‘house cast’ [of Barnabas, Elizabeth,
Quentin, Julia, Roger, Angelique, and Stokes] and search
for other themes. One of the things I tried to do with most
of my comics was to bring in as much of the real world as
I could: to try to write out of the headlines and out of
what was happening.
"My
goal was to write a good story. Fans are interested beyond
the normal interest in a story. Their interest becomes almost
like a religion or something bordering on it. So they are
interested ritualistically: they want everything to be 'observed'
in a particular kind of way. The writer is not interested
in the 'ritual' of Dark Shadows. He is
interested in the people, yes; in the characters, of course;
and in the best darn stories that he can get out of them,
but not in whether he observes precisely what Jonathan Frid
should do under these precise conditions so that it will
be in agreement with 20 other stories that came before.
If the writer involves himself that much in the 'ritual',
he isn’t going to get a decent story. He’s going
to be restricted—bound—too much by what has
been done.”
Despite
some fallacies and low points within the run, excellence
shone through many other times. Quite a few issues of Dark
Shadows presented exciting, thought-provoking stories
which were true to the TV characters and their backgrounds
and were good comic-book stories in their own right. Nevertheless,
Dark Shadows fans still seek out the comic
books and pay top dollar for them. A near-mint copy of even
the least valuable issue is worth more than $60.00—and
a near-mint Dark Shadows issue 1, with
the pull-out poster of Barnabas still attached, is worth
more than $410.00.
The
comics' explanation of Barnabas' vampire origins were left
vague at best, and contradictory at worst. Issue 1 (December
1968) revealed that "in the late eighteenth century…
a real witch, more evil than death, cast the curse which
doomed Barnabas to eternal existence as a vampire."
The witch was Angelique, who appeared in 11 issues of the
comic book to torment, and occasionally aid, her beloved
Barnabas. However, in issue 14's The Mystic Painting
(June 1972), Barnabas mused, “My travels took me to
the West Indies! Now, I return with the dread mark of the
bat!” suggesting that Barnabas was cursed in the West
Indies in about 1740.
The
writers handled with caution the matter of the actual bite.
Although Joe Certa often prominently drew Barnabas’s
fangs in his mouth, Barnabas was rarely seen biting anyone.
Sometimes, Barnabas’s attempt at biting was foiled
by a cross or some other distraction; at other times, the
bite was suggested more than shown. Barnabas actually fed
in only a handful of issues.
Most
curious of all was the fact that Barnabas Collins was not
a vampire in issues 3 to 7. The writers gave no explanation
for this startling move other than Barnabas’s casual
line about "the day Angelique’s curse dissolved."
For these stories, as well as the Dark Shadows Story
Digest Magazine, Barnabas lived in fear of the
curse’s reactivation as he was “forced to walk
the thin line between worlds.” Then, on the splash
page of issue 8 (February 1971), vampire Barnabas was seen
once again lamenting his “unholy affliction.”
Without explanation, he was a vampire again for the remainder
of the series.
Despite
some failings, Drake and other creative forces behind Gold
Key’s Dark Shadows comic book led
the magazine to quite a few creative pinnacles before it
was cancelled in late 1975. For children of the time, the
series provided consistent thrills and enjoyment, but one
senses that Dark Shadows' fully-fledged
realisation in comic form is yet to come.
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