Hallowe’en Countdown VII, Day 23

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« I didn’t say she was dead, I said I killed her. » — Barnabas Collins

… and speaking of that tormented bloodsucker, Mr. Barnabas Collins — mentioned in passing just yesterday — here’s a look at the short-lived (fifty-two contracted-for weeks, just like Daniel Pinkwater and Tony Auth’s Norb) syndicated strip that appeared at the tail end of Dan Curtis‘ preeminent supernatural soap opera‘s run (1966-71). The strip was likely scripted — at least in part — by Little Abner creator Al Capp‘s prolific brother Elliot Caplin (who also had a hand in the creation of Russell Myers’ Broom Hilda around the same time!)

Dark Shadows, the comic strip, was illustrated by veteran cartoonist Kenneth Bald (1920-2019), who’d worked for Fawcett, ACG and Atlas before judiciously decamping to the more rewarding and respectable milieu of syndicated newspaper strips, first with Judd Saxon (1957-1963) and then with Doctor Kildare (1962-1984).

The March 28, 1971 strip. While I’m not inclined towards photo-aided realism in comics, Bald was such a master of the mise-en-scène — that is to say layout and pacing, that he rarely failed to draw me in, as opposed to, say, more acclaimed photo reference addicts such as Al Williamson or Gray Morrow.
April 25, 1971.
June 6, 1971.
July 11, 1971.
August 29, 1971.

December 12, 1971. Richard Howell explains: « The Dark Shadows strip also invoked a very unusual use of coloring techniques (for the Sunday instalment), which eschewed a realistic look in favor of underscoring the strip’s mood (including a meaningful experimentation with color knock-outs done in harmonious gradations in the same color families). The first two Sundays were colored by Bald himself, who gave it up due to dissatisfaction after seeing the printed versions, and the extensive amount of time it took him to achieve the color effects he wanted. »

Here’s a trio of examples as they showed up in (news)print.

May 2, 1971.
September 26, 1971.
October 24, 1971.
In 1996, the strip was collected in more than satisfactory fashion by Pomegranate Press — colour might have been financially prohibitive — in no small part thanks to superb documentary material provided by Ken Bald and cartoonist and longtime DS fan Richard Howell. An actual fan, unlike, say, Tim Burton*.

-RG

*despite getting a free pass to see it, the abomination that was Burton and Depp’s franchise-murdering Dark Shadows (2012) made me want to scream for a refund. Or the perpetrators’ heads on spikes.

2 thoughts on “Hallowe’en Countdown VII, Day 23”

  1. Connor Cochran's avatar Connor Cochran October 23, 2023 / 04:48

    This was a fun one. It brought back memories of writing for the DARK SHADOWS comic book at Gold Key, where John Warner and I did something the company had aggressively avoided for the book’s entire run — we actually snuck in some plot continuity! Only once, mind you, but continuity nevertheless. For the record, I wrote “Stolen Centuries” (December ’74) and “The Doom of Hellgi Kolnisson” (April ’75), then John and I co-wrote “Collinwood Possessed” (November ’75), the next-to-last issue in the Gold Key run. That last was the one where we snuck in the continuity, plus a passing reference to some interdimensional stuff going on in Marvel Comics at the time.

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