Dynamite's Dark Shadows: Year One condenses the 19-week television storyline into six issues and, I must admit, does a pretty good job of it, eliminating most of the meandering soap opera storytelling. It is not, however, canon. What writer Marc Andreyko and artist Guiu Vilanova have done is to take the same characters from the 1795 storyline and reshuffle them into an almost entirely new alternate vampire origin story, one that doesn't take a full 48 hours to experience in its entirety. [Similary, MPI Home Video has also condensed those same 19 weeks into a 210-minute "movie" (titled The Vampire Curse) by eliminating all sub-plots except the main one. Still, three and a half hours of unrelenting vampire plot is a lot. I watched the whole thing straight through once, but I probably never will again.] The difference between the Dark Shadows: Year One comic book and the soap opera is similar to the difference between The Walking Dead comic book and TV show (except in that case, the televised version came first). In other words, in either case, even if one is familiar with the original version, one can still experience the alternate and still be surprised.
Dark Shadows: Years One ends with Willie Loomis releasing Barnanabs Collins from his coffin in the "present day"...
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ISSUE #9 - "Creatures in Torment"
Barnabas and Quentin are targeted by Hans Silber, a zealous vigilante who hunts down supernatural creatures and destroys them with silver bullets. Travelling, somewhat reluctantly, with Silber is Desdemona, a dead woman whose spirit still inhabits her body. Hans explains, "I need you, Desdemona, to fulfil my destiny on earth!" I have been chosen to send the walking dead to their graves! I must bring them peace, eternal rest! You are my eyes in the world of darkness! Only you can see those among us who are undead! I must keep you with me! There is still much work to be done!" Joe Certa's aertwork reveals that like Barnabas, Desdemona does not cast a reflection in a mirror.
"Creatures in Torment," penned by an unnamed writer, is a study in irony. Hans wounds Quentin when he means to shoot Barnabas, and he destroys Desdemona when he thinks that he is shooting at Quentin. Hans, once the hunter of creatures of the night, becomes like his own prey after Quentin's bite transforms him into a werewolf. Finally, Silber dies by his own gun in a struggle with Barnabas and quentin, Hans and Desdemona have been freed from their torment, but Barnabas and Quentin are left behind "to work out our own destinies."
ISSUE #10 - "Souls in Bondage"
This grisly tale spotlight Quentin Collins and dr. Julia Hoffman while hero Barnabas dies on page two! At dawn, Barnabas races toward his coffin in the cellar of Collinwood, but the rising sun'd rays strike him while he is still on the lawn outseide the great house. The vampire perishes and whithers away! The unknown writer quotes a passage from The Book of Vampires: "Should dawn's light strike one of those afflicted before reachinf the sancuary od his coffin, his fleash will vanish, and his condemned spirit will be at the mercy of the forces of evil."
Quentin and Julia are horrified to learn that Barnabas' soul has been stolen by the wicked Termina, priestess over an army of zombies on St. Lucifer Island, and that the vampire's soul now languishes in Termina's Caribbean fortress. Quentin and Julia journey to St. Lucifer, retreive Barnabs' essence and free Termina's zombies. In mid-1971, the Comic code, unchanged since 1954 but never applied to Gold Key Comics, did not allow DC and Marvel to feature zombies in their comic books until October, a few months after the release of Dark Shadows #10. This issue also was the first one to be released after the April, 1971 cancellation of ABC-TV's Dark Shadows.
ISSUE #11 - "The Thirteenth Star"
Barnabas must ravel to the year 2071 to put to rest a Golem, awakened in 1971 by the Collins Comet.
Dark Shadows Every Day 1074
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