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 #14 - "The Mystic Painting"
Barnabas and Elizabeth find a framed painting of Tobias Collins, and underneath it is a painting of Collingreen, a 200-year-old family esate outside of London. In a flashback, Barnabas remembers his visit to his uncle, Lord Balsham, at Collingreen in the year 1743, at which time Barnabas thought to himself, "Since visiting Collingreen last, my travels took me to the West Indies! Now, I return with the dread mark of the bat!"
The enchanted painting hurls Barnabas back to 1743, where he must put to rest the spirits of Sara Collins, Lord Balsham's daughter; and Owen Roberts, her lover and the painter of the mystic picture. Owen believes that Barnabas killed Sara, but Barnabas finds the real killer. "It was Angélique who killed you, Sara!" he explains. "To have me blamed so my spirit would be eternally doomed!" When the mystery is solved, the ghosts are reunited inside the mystic painting.
ISSUE #15 - "The Night Children"
Demons battle Barnabas and Quentin, both at Collinwood and in the netherworld.
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ISSUE #16 - "The Scarab"
This story begins in medias res as Potiphar, an immortal Egyptian sorcerer, tells an enslaved Barnabas Collins, "I have lived more than 4000 years! You a mere 200! But today our time in eternity has come! Today I will become master of the sun and lord of all the earth!" After six action-packed pages, the unnamed writer's story goes back "only one short month ago" and reveals how Potiphar comes to Collinwood; hypnotizes Quentin, Elizabeth, Roger, Julia and Stokes; and robs Barnabas of his will.
Poriphar orders the helpless vampire to steal the Double-Headed Crown of Senem and the Golden Girdle of Ibex. They are the only artifacts that remain to be acquired before the entire lost Treasure of the First Kingdom is restored. Once all of the enchanted riches are in Potiphar's possession, he will be infused with enough energy to rule the sun and the earth forever!" The world's only hope is that "the good in [Barnabas's] nature" will break Potiphar's unholy control of him. For this issue, Joe Certa draws pyramids, scarabs, sarcophagi, tanks and jeeps.
If this was a Marvel book, the Serpent Crown would be involved somehow.
ISSUE #17 - "The Bride of Barnabas Collins"
In one of the best stories of the seires, Barnabas slips through "the foggy mists of time" and emerges in "that dreaded somewhere which is nowhere... the place which has no past and no future... the place of eternal present" -- Limbo. In this strange place out of time, Barnabas meets Hope Forsythe, a dark-haired beauty who is being forced into marriage by the corrupt Tibourne. It is love at first sight for Hope and Barnabas, and they pledge themselves to each other immediately.
Barnabas defeats Tibourne with the help of Ward Forsythe, Hope's brother, who is also in Limbo. Barnabas tells Hope, "[Now] we can return safely to the real world together!" However, he and his beloved are of two different worlds that will never meet again, and "once he passes through the fog of time, [he and Hope] will be separated forever."
Suddenly, Barnabas finds himself back at Collinwood -- and Hope is gone. In the last panel, Barnabas whispers to the wind, "I will never forget you, Hope! You have shown me that the dream of happiness I long for may one day come true! Good-bye, my love -- my Hope!" (Despite the catchy title of the story, Hope weds neither Tibourne nor Barnabas.)
ISSUE #18 - "Guest in the House"
This change-of-pace crime drama is another one of the best stories in the comic book series. Erik Mica, New York's underworld kingpin, hides out at Collinwood and (as realtor "Erik Michaels") courts Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. He realizes Barnabas's secret when he does not see Barnabas's reflection in his cigarette case. Mica threatens to expose Barnabas as a vampire unless Barnabas joins forces with him in crime.
Both men are taken by surprise when Paul Robbor, Mica's arch enemy, follows Mica to Collinwood and passes himself off as Erik's "business partner." By the end of "Guest in the House," one criminal has fallen to his death from Widows' Hill, and the other has died, become a vampire, and perished at sunrise. Joe Certa's splash page of urban mob warfare -- "the violence of underworld wars" -- is impressive. Meanwhile, cover artist George Wilson's painting for the cover of Dark Shadows #18 is especially striking at it depicts Mica, Robbor, Collinwood -- and Barnabas's transformation into a bat ready to attack one of the mobsters.
ISSUE #19 - "Island of Eternal Life"
Aboard a phantom pirate ship, Barnabas meets a woman named Lani, a Polynesian ghost.
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ISSUE #20 - "Quentin the Vampire"
Dr. Julia Hoffman injects the vampire Barnabas Collins with a blood serum which "only balances [his] system temporarily." She is unaware that her patient Quentin Collins also suffers from an unspeakable curse. When Quentin transforms into a werewolf in front of Julia, she stabs him with the closest weapon, a hypodermic filled with Barnabas's "blood serum." Now, Quentin becomes a vampire under a full moon!
"I have an idea," Julia tells Barnabas, and flies to Canada in an unresolved plot point that perhaps foreshadows the events of Dark Shadows #33 two years later. Ignorant of the true nature of Quentin's problem, Roger sends Quentin "to New York City to see a specialist in brain disease," and Barnabas chases his cousin all the way to New York's Chinatown (in the last four pages of the story) before he can inject Quentin with Julia's serum which ends Quentin's vampirism but not his werewolfism. "His curse is as it was in the beginning," Julia later tells Barnabas, "but we know there is a cure somewhere." Barnabas, retiring to his coffin, holds out hope for both his cousin and himself.
"I have an idea," Julia tells Barnabas
Uh-oh.
"Victoria, I think this is one of those instances where discretion is the better part of valor: Julia has an idea."
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