XPost: alt.tv.dark.shadows, alt.tv.dark_shadows, rec.arts.tv

“I must throw them off the track! The secrets which are
mine must remain buried within me! Ahhh… darkness!”

“I know this is going to sound incredible,” Maggie says to Joe, “but
tonight, I saw a ghost!”

Joe says, “Don’t you think you’re letting your imagination play
tricks on you?” because Ron Sproat wrote the script today, and in
Sproat’s world, characters never learn anything, or accumulate
experiences in any way.

It’s a recap-heavy show today, in a way that they haven’t really
done in a while. Maggie and Joe cover the Dream Curse and
Angelique’s portrait, and then we go over to Stokes’ place, where
we get a lengthy recap of Adam’s entire storyline, in the form of a
word association exercise.

So, forget it. If Sproat’s not going to bother writing an actual
episode today, then I’m going to go read the first issue of the
Dark Shadows comic book.

https://darkshadowseveryday.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/529-gold-key-issue-1-cover.jpg?w=604

The Dark Shadows comic was published by Gold Key, an imprint of
Western Publishing, which had a huge slate of licensed comics going
back to 1940. As a comic book publisher, Western is best known for
its partnership with Dell Comics, publishing all of Carl Barks’
Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge work, as well as Walt Disney’s Comics
and Stories, the best-selling comic book of the 1950s.

By the time Western broke with Dell and created the Gold Key imprint
in 1962, they had a lock on pretty much every licensed cartoon
character, including Bugs Bunny, The Flintstones, Popeye,
Bullwinkle, Woody Woodpecker and The Pink Panther.

In the mid-’60s, Gold Key broadened its focus to include teenagers,
and produced a line of comics based on science-fiction and fantasy
TV shows: Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, Land of the Giants, The Man
from UNCLE and The Time Tunnel. They also started to make inroads
on the old EC Comics horror territory, with Ripley’s Believe It or
Not and Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery.

So it was really only a matter of time before Gold Key started a
Dark Shadows comic. The series ran for 35 issues, from 1969 through
1976, which is pretty much right up to the point that Gold Key fell
to pieces as a money-making enterprise.

The first issue, “The Vampire’s Prey,” was written by Don Arneson,
and drawn by Joe Certa. Certa also drew some Martian Manhunter
comics in the ’60s and ’70s, but not any of the ones that people
like. Arneson didn’t really do anything in particular.

Issue #1 has a cover date of March 1969, which means it was probably
on the racks around December 1968. This is a bit further than we’ve
reached on the show, but this is where the story belongs,
chronologically. Angelique is living at Collinwood and calling
herself Cassandra, Julia and Willie are Barnabas’ loyal friends,
and the story kicks off with a description of Barnabas chaining up
Reverend Trask behind a brick wall.

So there’s a big difference between this approach, and the other
spin-off material we’ve looked at so far. Both the House of Dark
Shadows movie and the revival series were remakes of the 1967
storyline, and the Marilyn Ross romance novels created their own
alternate timeline that drifted away from anything happening on the
show.

The comic book is following a different path, keeping more or less
within the continuity of the TV show. This is basically a missing
adventure for Barnabas, Angelique and Julia, taking place during
some quiet moment when Adam and Nicholas are otherwise occupied.
Gold Key knew that teenagers were passionate about Dark Shadows,
and they would expect the comic to feel like an extension of the
show.

But an adaptation of Dark Shadows has its own unique problems,
because it’s based on a soap opera rather than a weekly prime-time
show. Star Trek and Land of the Giants had an essentially static
premise, with a stable group of characters, and an episode structure
that always returned to the status quo. But Dark Shadows, as a daily
serial, would spin wildly away on tangents, so it was a bit of a
moving target if you wanted to stay current with the story.

So the comic is essentially an expression of what the audience
considered to be the core elements of the show in mid-1968. It’s a
sealed environment, where they can figure out what you need to
preserve when you continue this story in a different medium.

Well, for starters, you don’t need the Collins family. The one
contemporary Collins in the issue is Elizabeth, and she only
appears in the epilogue.

Instead, the story introduces two generic college kids named Dave
and Ed, who have sailed to Collinsport for a visit. Dave is the great-great-nephew of Reverend Trask, and he’s writing his thesis
on his ancestor’s mysterious disappearance. I’m not sure which
college is sponsoring a degree program in vanishing witch hunter
studies, but I guess anything’s better than business school.

I can’t say a lot of good things about the art, which looked dated
even in 1968. At the time, John Romita was doing beautiful things on
Amazing Spider-Man, and Neal Adams was just getting started on
Batman and Superman. There was an attention to detail at Marvel and
DC in the late ’60s, raising the baseline quality of comic book art,
and setting a tone that would carry them through the next five
decades.

Meanwhile, the characters in the Dark Shadows comic look flattened
and stiff, posing in front of static backgrounds. The likenesses
change from one panel to another, all of them registering various
iterations of ugly. Overall, there’s a crushing sense of “that’ll
do,” because Gold Key knew that kids would buy a Dark Shadows comic
even if it looked awful.

In the short-term, they were correct, so hooray for low standards,
but in the long-term, this is why we don’t have a Gold Key Cinematic
Universe.

Meanwhile, in the background, the settings look like absolutely
nothing on this Earth. There’s just a random set of objects and
architectural features, arranged haphazardly behind the characters
with no specific plan. There are several panels where you can’t
actually tell whether the characters are supposed to be inside or
outside.

The dialogue’s not winning any prizes, either. It’s functional
rather than decorative, and the characters all say each other’s
names at least once every page. Ed is especially devoted to this
practice. Sample lines include: “Come on, Dave! You make it sound
as if I don’t want to find him… and I do!” and “I’ve got the feeling
it’s going to be weird, Dave… whatever it is!”

Hearing that the boys are at the Blue Whale asking questions about
Reverend Trask, Barnabas rushes downtown to put them off the scent.
He does this rather comprehensively, spending four hours telling
them every lie that he can think of.

After this marathon gab session, Barnabas realizes that dawn is
breaking, and he turns into a bat to fly home. He’s spotted by a
blonde girl on the docks, who says “EEEEEEEE EEEEE.”

Now, the real mystery of this story is who the hell this girl is
supposed to be. Presumably, she’s a resident of Collinsport, but
nobody seems to be responsible for her in any way. The boys find
her passed out on the street, and they basically adopt her, taking
her to their boat to recover from her terrifying bat-witnessing
ordeal. There’s no explanation for what she was doing walking
around on the docks at the crack of dawn.

But this is standard operating procedure for characters in
action/adventure stories; you only give them the characteristics
that they absolutely need in order to get to the next plot point.
Dave and Ed are curious college students who own a boat. Jane is a
pretty girl. There is nothing else that you need to know about them.

We finally get to Angelique, who suddenly turns up in the middle of
a page, saying, “Well, well, Barnabas! How are you, dear Barnabas?”
This is my favorite line in the comic, and I’m planning to use it
as a greeting the next time someone comes over to my house.

There’s no explanation for why the witch is living at Collinwood.
In her first panel, Barnabas refers to her as Cassandra, but she
calls herself Angelique on the next page, and that’s what everybody
calls her from then on. Her face is about thirty percent eyebrow-
related.

The blonde girl — whose name is Jane, not that it matters — has told
the boys that she saw a guy with a cape turn into a bat, which has
the potential to go badly for Barnabas if anyone cares, which on the
whole they don’t.

But Angelique is concerned that Barnabas might be exposed, so she
invites the guys over, and tells them a cockamamie story about
Reverend Trask drowning in a boat accident.

“Then we’ll dive for the sunken ship!” Dave says. “Maybe there are
papers, diaries… anything that might give us a clue!” Nobody points
out that diaries that have been underwater for two hundred years
aren’t usually very helpful. You just can’t talk to some people.

This leads into a six-page scuba-diving sequence, apparently because
the artist wanted to draw somebody scuba-diving.

Dave, Ed and Jane sail their boat out to the spot where Angelique
told them Trask’s ship went down, and we get a little generic “Dave
and Jane are attracted to each other” action. As the third wheel in
the romance subplot, Ed has nothing better to do but strap on his
scuba gear and go looking for treasure.

As it turns out, there actually is a chest under the water, just
where Angelique said it would be. As Ed struggles to pick up the
chest, the lid opens, and —

https://darkshadowseveryday.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/529-dark-shadows-cassandra-eeeeee.jpg?w=604

So this panel is basically the entire explanation for why Gold Key
ran out of steam in the mid-70s.

As far as I can figure, Mr. Arneson and Mr. Certa, two comic book professionals, put their heads together and said, Dark Shadows has
suddenly become a national sensation, thrilling housewives and
teenagers with its unique blend of romance, intrigue and suspense.
What can we, as two comic book professionals, offer to the reading
public that would enhance the audience’s enjoyment of the ongoing
story?

After careful consideration, they came up with the idea that
Angelique would protect Barnabas’ secret by crouching inside an old
box, and then popping out and saying “EEEEE EEEEEEEEEE EEEE.”

I mean, it works. Obviously, it works; it’s a foolproof plan. But
what does it accomplish, exactly?

https://darkshadowseveryday.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/529-dark-shadows-barnabas-julia-perspective.jpg?w=604

Okay, cut to Barnabas and Julia, who are standing around in one of
those rooms that’s basically like a hallway, except it has couches
along the walls, and a fireplace, and wall-to-wall carpeting, and
occasional tables, and a vase, and a clock, and what appears to be
a life-size bronze casting of Li’l Sebastian.

I’ve just spent several minutes looking at this panel, and honestly,
I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s like a window into an
entirely different world. All you have to do is pick any two objects
in the room, and then try to figure out how gravity works. Go ahead,
give it a spin. It’s crazy, right?

Anyway, it turns out that Ed drowned in the scuba-diving scene, and
Dave and Jane were vaguely injured in some way that makes them lie
around in hospital beds and take up space.

Ed’s ghost shows up — totally pissed off about how this all went
down — and he wants revenge on Barnabas, although technically what
happened wasn’t really Barnabas’ fault at all.

Ed’s still in his bathing suit, by the way. Apparently that’s what
happens when you die, you just keep on wearing your bathing suit
forever.

Ed’s vow of revenge kicks off a seven-page sequence where Barnabas
just runs back and forth, and has absolutely no idea what’s going
on.

He knows that he needs to silence Jane, but Ed’s ghost wakes her up,
and sends her down to the docks. It’s not clear whether Jane is
currently injured, or sick, or just sleepy, or whatever. She’s a
pretty girl, so she basically does whatever she’s told.

Then Ed’s ghost embarks on a complicated Ocean’s Eleven scheme. He
leaves a note that says that Jane’s at the boat, and then he calls
the police and tells them that a girl is about to be attacked on the
dock.

Now, you might ask why a ghost has to use a pay phone. You might
also ask why he needs to get Barnabas, Jane and the police down to
the docks at the exact same time, instead of just staging the whole
thing at the hospital, which would be more convenient for everybody.
The answer to both of these questions is that I don’t know.

So Barnabas runs from Collinwood to the hospital, and then to the
docks, while everyone else basically ignores him. Barnabas doesn’t
do a single productive thing in this entire story, which is
remarkably faithful to the source material.

Then Angelique’s spirit enters Jane’s body and takes control. I’m
not one hundred percent sure why she does this. After her first
scene showing the map to Dave and Ed, Angelique only appears in
ghost form for the rest of the story. I’d tell you more about this,
but it makes my head hurt, and I have other things to do.

Now, here’s where things start to get a little complex. Angelique’s
plan is to interfere with Ed’s plan, by inhabiting Jane’s body and
getting strangled by Barnabas just before the police arrive. The
problem that I have, reading-comprehension-wise, is that Angelique’s
plan sounds exactly the same as Ed’s plan.

At one point, Angelique says, “The police! I’ll make sure they’re
NOT close when YOU find me, Barnabas!” which is kind of a hard
concept to get your mind around.

Anyway, Barnabas locates Jane, and says, “I must still her voice,”
and then he just goes ahead and kills her. So that’s in a comic book
now.

The implication is that this is how the audience sees Barnabas’
character at this point in the series. If you’re looking for the
moment when we’re all supposed to think that Barnabas is a
sympathetic character looking out for the best interests of the
Collins family, then clearly that has not kicked in yet.

Jane is picked up by an ambulance, and she’s pronounced dead on the
way to the hospital. But then Angelique’s spirit leaves the girl’s
body, which brings her back to life somehow.

This leaves us exactly where we were ten pages ago, when Julia said
that she could give Jane a shot that would make her forget about
seeing Barnabas. The second half of the issue is basically just a
runaround, keeping everybody moving while they’re waiting for Julia
to show up and save the day.

So Dave and Jane sail away together, leaving the restless spirit of
Ed just standing around in his invisible underwear.

Dave never found out what happened to Reverend Trask — they forgot
all about Trask, halfway through the story — so it’s not clear what
Dave’s going to do about his thesis. But he’s alive, and he’s got a
groovy new chick, and maybe he can get an extension or something.


Footnote:

The Gold Key Dark Shadows comics are available digitally through
the Comixology app — The Complete Series, in very affordable
bundles. At current writing, Volume 1 is $11.99, for the first 7
issues in flawless color. For this post, I was scanning from a print
copy, but as of my post about issue #2 (“Halfway“), I’m reading
these and taking screenshots on the Comixology app for my iPad Mini.
I recommend it very highly.

https://darkshadowseveryday.com/2014/11/23/episode-529/

---
Hillary said Libya was a success. She also said Bill was faithful,
Al Gore was sane, and government is too small.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)