DARK SHADOWS Gold Key Comics 1-35 BARNABAS Collection 7

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You get 7 different dark shadows comics - this group of comics guides for approx $140.00You get issues #6 7 8 10 13 19 27 = issues 13 and 19 are really high grade beautiful!! I am happy to take installment payments over time if that will help you be able to afford this wonderful set of valuable comic books Dark Shadows based on Dan Curtis gothic tv soap-opera. 35 issues were published from 1969-1976. Condition will vary from NM down to GD as these are all 35 year old books however the majority are around FINE. One of the most phenomenal television series of the 1960s was ABC-TV's Dark Shadows , the daytime serial which ran from 1966 to 1971. Originally a mildly mysterious romantic serial reminiscent of the Gothic novels popular at the time, Dark Shadows became completely supernatural with the 1967 introduction of Barnabas Collins, a tortured, guilt-ridden vampire, freed from his chained coffin after 171 years of maddening imprisonment. The unprecedented character of Barnabas, as portrayed by Shakespearean actor Jonathan Frid, so captivated the daytime-television audience--especially children and teenagers--that Dark Shadows soon was one of the highest-rated programs in all of daytime TV. The serial's ratings increased steadily from 1967 to 1969, and its ratings were still respectable when the show was cancelled in early 1971. 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's 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 post-Lugosi/Lee standard for the popular-culture vampire. It was not long before Barnabas and Dark Shadows invaded another popular-culture medium : comic books.The first issue of Gold Key Comics' Dark Shadows series was dated December 1968, and the thirty-fifth (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. Twenty-six of the thirty-five issues were published after the ABC-TV series was cancelled. All thirty-five issues were edited and/or supervised by Wallace I. Green, managing editor. Among the uncredited scriptwriters of the Dark Shadows comic book were Donald J. Arneson and Arnold Drake. Arneson wrote Dark Shadows #1 and 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 and J.J. Arnold Drake wrote Dark Shadows #22, #24, #30, and about ten 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 elsew, 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 Dark Shadows [comic] 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 the photographs [which came from Dan Curtis Productions] on front covers and inside covers [of the first seven comic books]. Eventually, of course, we ran out of photographs. That's when we went to the painted covers. The artist was a man named 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 [for Gold Key comics], so almost everything you saw that had a painted cover was done by George Wilson. George eventually went on to do [covers for] a lot of paperback novels. How we were able to keep him as long a... read more

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