Art by Warren Oddsson

Way back when I was a wee young thing, I saved up my allowance and ordered an issue of The World of Dark Shadows (57/58, incidentally, the one with Ben Cross in front of Jonathan Frid's Barnabas portrait), and was, the day it arrived, swept up into the arms of fandom.  Kathy Resch, the editor of TWODS, also published what she called "concordances," illustrated, in-depth episode guides for nearly every storyline on the series (excluding the first year and the intro of Barnabas, and, as far as I know, the second half of 1897).  Eventually I ordered the 1968 Vol. 1 Concordance, and started to collect the rest as I went.

Almost every volume was illustrated by the late Warren Oddsson.  Sometimes Oddsson's artistic choices seemed strange to me -- he had a particular problem with women's hair, especially the ringlets worn by almost every female character in the 18th century -- but now, twenty some years after I found my way into DS fandom, Oddsson's illustrations take me back to that time, when I was just discovering the joy of collecting anything Shadows-related I could get my paws on.

Here's a sampling of Oddsson's work from the various Concordances:

 From 1795.  Note the interesting border that surrounds each of the full page images in the book.

From 1795.  I'm assuming that's Jane Draper as Suki Forbes just beneath Barnabas and to the right; it's infrequent, but there are times with Oddsson when it's hard to tell.

From 1795.

From 1897:  Oddsson experimented with a different style in this volume.  Unfortunately, the illustrations stop about a quarter of the way through the book.

From 1897.

From 1968 Volume 1.  Part of the fun (for me, anyway) is picking out the photographs Oddsson used for his illustrations.  Fans of the Dan "Marilyn" Ross Paperback Library novels will recognize this as a variation of the photograph adorning the final volume, Barnabas, Quentin, and the Vampire Beauty.

From 1897.

From 1968 Volume 1.

From 1795.  An example of a strange hairdo Angelique never wore on the series (as well as a traditional witches' spellcasting hand gesture used by Magda on the series, but never by Angelique).  

The front cover of the 1795 Concordance.

Carl Collins, from the 1897 Concordance.

The front cover of the 1897 Volume 1 Concordance.

From 1897 Volume 1:  Barnabas vs. Quentin.

The front cover from the first volume of the 1968 Concordance.