Cassandra Collins a la Gold Key

During the winter of my senior year of high school, my mother and I, perusing antique shops in Williston, North Dakota, stumbled upon a mint condition copy of the first issue of Gold Key's Dark Shadows comic, which we dickered down to a reasonable price.  (Funny story:  less than a year later, another copy, in similar condition, turned up in a box of old comics Mom bought at an Eastern Montana farm auction; the comics, the owner told her, were discovered in the farm house's cluttered attic.  Okay, maybe not funny, but what are the odds?  The spooky, run-down, Montana gothic odds?)

Those of you who follow this blog are most likely aware that I'm totally Team Angelique, and even more than that, I am fervently Team Cassandra.  I've always had a marked appreciation slash fascination with that bizarro 60s phenomenon of slapping a dark wig on a blonde actress and trolling her around as an evil twin/cousin/all-purpose doppelganger.  Therefore, you can imagine my surprise, delight, and weird-outedness when I opened that issue (gingerly, of course) to find that Cassandra was an integral character in the Gold Key pantheon of monsters.  Cassandra appeared in a purple dress and long red hair, ably disguising her so no one recognized her in her Angelique incarnation, where she existed with ... a purple dress.  And long red hair.

Last night, while zipping around the information superhighway, I discovered pages from the review copy of the first volume of the Gold Key series, published by Hermes Press.  Here she is, then, Gold Key's take on Cassandra Collins, that sly devil.

Barnabas Collins is a windy old bore.  Tee hee.