Thursday, July 31, 2014
Dark Shadows Comic Strip 5.3: Maggie Evans Must Die!
If you're tuning in on Thursday night or Friday morning and you're wondering about the giant skip in story, fear not: I'm on vacation until Tuesday night, so I posted Friday-Tuesday's Dark Shadows comic strips. Just scroll down to 4.6 and you should be all good. Enjoy!
Dark Shadows Comic Strip 5.2: A Mysterious Portrait!
Still vacationing (hello from the future!), so you're getting DS comic strip-y goodness (Monday's, actually) a few days early. Enjoy!
Dark Shadows Comic Strip 5.1: The Experiment Begins!
By Sunday, we'll still be on vacation, so enjoy Sunday's helping of the DS comic strip on a Thursday night.
Dark Shadows Comic Strip 4.6: Surprise!
Since I'll be out of town for the next few days, and like the Luddite I am, I shall be laptopless (I'm okay with this, really). Therefore, I thought I'd post the next five comic strips in one tidy bundle. Enjoy!
Farewell, Dick Smith (1922-2014)
Anyone who follows this blog knows I'm fairly obsessed with the old age makeup on Dark Shadows, but with Dick Smith's work in particular. As Danny Horn points out frequently in his blog, Dark Shadows Every Day, one of the charms of the series is how often, as a viewer, you find yourself saying, "I can't believe they just did that!" or "Didn't see that one coming." (I should take this moment to mention that I am hopelessly addicted to Mr. Horn's blog; the days he doesn't post, I die a little, for serious.)
Enjoy some examples of the fabulousness of Dick Smith:
Enjoy some examples of the fabulousness of Dick Smith:
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Monday, July 28, 2014
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Interview with Nacho Tenorio of Dynamite's Dark Shadows Comic Series
If, like me, you had mixed feelings about Dynamite Comics' Dark Shadows series, now sadly deceased, but search for any kind of DS-related crumb, no matter how strange or unlike the series as we knew it (Marilyn Ross and Gold Key production staff, I'm looking at you), you probably miss it, maybe even just a little. Or maybe you just want a glimpse into the artistic process. Enjoy, then, this little nugget I discovered from last September: an interview with artist Nacho Tenorio, the man who illustrated most of the series.
Shadows on the Wall Chapter 120
CHAPTER 120: Purification
by Nicky
Voiceover by Terry Crawford: “Collinwood
in the year 1840, a time of terror and intrigue for all who dwell on the great
estate … because those travelers from a future year know well the impact that
their existence in this foreign time may have on their own world. But the warlock Nicholas Blair has discovered
Julia Hoffman’s secret … and on this night, his actions may destroy everyone at
Collinwood, past and present.”
1
“I’ve
never been so terrified,” Edith Collins gasped, her hand on her heart, her
blonde hair snaked out of the coils she ordinarily kept, now frizzing about her
face wildly. Sheriff Danforth put out a
comforting hand and laid it on her shoulder; her eyes, jade, he thought amazed,
had utterly captured his, and held him.
Behind him, Jonathan Corwin, his deputy and best friend, stood at a
desk, his fat fingers splayed out on the wood, his face a mask of horror and
disbelief. “Oh Sheriff Corwin, his face
… his eyes. They … they just changed! You should’ve seen them. They turned black as night, black as pitch!”
“But
there’s no such thing as witches,” Corwin said stupidly, and Danforth whipped
around, glaring at him.
“Shut
your mouth,” he snapped. “You are in the
presence of a great lady, Jonny, and one thing you never do to a Collins is talk back!”
Edith
did not allow herself the pleasure of a tiny, feline smile.
Corwin
blinked, opened his mouth, thought better, and closed it. But his eyes retained that puppy-like
confusion. Danforth was his best friend,
or so he thought, and he had never spoken to Corwin in that way, not ever.
Witchcraft, he thought darkly, warlocks.
Nonsense.
But
Danforth had already turned back to Edith.
“It’s been a long time,” he said kindly, and took her hand, “since we
had a witchcraft trial in Collinsport.”
“My
father-in-law talks about it to this day,” Edith sniffled. She brushed at her eyes with a delicate white
lace handkerchief that had once belonged, though she was not aware of this
fact, to Josette Collins. “The trial of
Phyllis Wicke, his governess. But he
never believed she was a witch. The real witch was Angelique Collins!”
“I
was too young to attend Wicke’s trial,” Danforth said grimly, “but my father
knew the Reverend Trask, and would tell us on dark nights how he vanished from
Collinwood while questioning witches.
Perhaps there was more than one witch at Collinwood.”
“And
perhaps there’s more than one there now!” Edith gasped. “Oh Sheriff Danforth, please tell me you’ll
help me! Nicholas Blair terrifies me
so! His eyes … they turned black, like the fires of hell, black!”
“Calm
yourself, Mrs. Collins,” Danforth said, and touched her cheek with the back of
his hand. Corwin saw this and gasped,
but Danforth didn’t hear him. His eyes
were locked on Edith’s. Jade, he thought
dreamily, jade pools, jade wade bade … pools, water, green and endless fathoms
…
“He
must be burned,” Edith whispered, and Danforth nodded. “You know that, don’t you, darling. The warlock must be burned.”
“The
warlock,” Danforth whispered right back, “the warlock must be burned.”
“Fire
cleanses, don’t you think?”
“It
… cleanses.”
“Purity. Purifying.”
“Oh,
yes!”
“Tonight,”
Edith said, and now she allowed herself the pure pleasure of her largest,
widest grin. “Nicholas Blair will be
burned … tonight.”
2
“Angelique!”
Barnabas roared, and Julia, reacting, felt the floor fall out from under her;
she glanced down, and saw that her lower legs were utterly gone.
That
can’t be good, she thought.
The
flames continued to flicker on the tips of Nicholas Blair’s gloved fingers, but
the rest of the holocaust he summoned continued to engulf the body of Valerie
Collins, occupied currently by the spirit of Angelique, 1969 vintage.
“Keep
your temper, Mr. Collins,” Nicholas called cheerfully. “Roaring requires energy, and I guarantee
that you will need all your strength when your
turn comes!”
I
want to help, Julia thought, I want to stop this, but I can’t, I can’t …
“Poor
Angelique,” Nicholas said, tutting, as Valerie collapsed to the ground, a
blackened, shriveled mummy. “One would
think she had learned this lesson by now.
It takes fire to destroy a witch, particularly a witch of such little
strength as she –”
His
words faded to nothing; Barnabas gasped; Julia closed her eyes and thought hard
until her legs returned, but no one noticed, for Valerie was standing now, in
the blink of an eye, and as she waved her hands, Blair’s flames flickered and
went out, and she was standing before them triumphantly, whole and
beautiful. Her eyes flashed, and her
lips curled into that familiar, poisonous smile. “Fire is difficult, Nicholas, but not
impossible,” she said. “Particularly for
a witch of such obviously little strength as I possess.”
“Impossible,”
Nicholas snarled. “You don’t have that
kind of power! I know! I brought you to the Dark One; it was I who
–”
“The
power is inside me and has always been inside me,” Angelique declared, and
raised a hand, and Nicholas was slammed backward as if by an enormous, invisible
fist. “That’s what you have never
understood about me, and why you fail time after time in every pathetic quest
you undertake. The Master chooses me because my power gives him form. I am the flame to which he is drawn. My
lifeforce, my imagination, my power
sustains him. You are just the wick after
the flame is snuffed out.”
“Ignorant
bitch,” Nicholas snarled again, and
threw out his hand. Angelique froze,
wide-eyed, as the skin of her hands, her face, every visible inch, turned a
dead, leaden gray. She was becoming
petrified before their eyes, and, horrified, Julia realized the witch was
turning to stone. Even her eyes were
glassed over, hard and unseeing.
Nicholas smiled, satisfied, but the smile was short lived, for
Angelique’s eyes blinked, glowed, and the stone surrounding her shivered, cracked,
and fell away into dust as she shook herself gently.
“Anything
else?” she asked politely.
Nicholas
screamed like a panther and threw himself at her.
3
Gabriel
Collins retreated from the drawing room and rolled his wheelchair backward,
praying the wheels wouldn’t squeak and give him away. Though, he reasoned, it was unlikely that
anyone would hear him. So, he thought,
Nicholas Blair, a friend of Quentin’s and a respected lawyer in town, sits at
the right hand of Lucifer. And my own
stepmother, a bitch of darkness. He was
overwhelmed; his gorge rose in his throat; he had seen the red eyes and fangs
that hung in the mouth of “Cousin” Barnabas, and he thought with a kind of
righteous wildness, He is no cousin, he is no family of mine; then, The Secret, he recalled, the Secret that Father always
spoke of but refused to yield. Barnabas
Collins never went to England, never founded an English branch of the family! He’s been here, all along! He
is the Secret!
Vampire!
“Monsters,”
Gabriel muttered, and wheeled himself into the shadows that led to the
servant’s quarters. “Witches, warlocks,
demons.”
I must rid this house of all of them.
Yes. Yes, he would. With God’s purifying flame. If he had to burn down all of Collinwood, by
heaven, that’s what he would do.
And,
he thought as the front doors of Collinwood began to open, Jesus help anyone
who tried to stand in my way.
4
One
moment she was watching the witches’ battle before her; the next, and she
simply … wasn’t.
Julia
Hoffman had ceased to exist.
It
wasn’t that she now found herself in another place, a different world, or a
vast empty plain filled with gray smoke and clouds. There just wasn’t … anything anymore.
But
I’m aware, Julia thought, I’m awake, I can hear, I can feel. She knew this to be
true, because she was cold. So
dreadfully cold.
“Is
someone there?”
Julia
started (or tried to start; with no body and no physical mass of which to
speak, “starting” at all was reduced to a concept, a theory which, bodiless,
she could now not embody). A voice, she
thought, a voice out there.
There is no there.
“Hello?”
she called, relieved that, somewhere, her body existed in some kind of form,
enough, at least, to produce sound.
“Who
is that? I don’t recognize your voice!”
“Carolyn?”
Julia called hesitantly. But it couldn’t
be Carolyn. Not with that accent.
“Carolyn
… Stoddard?” the voice quavered. “Are
you looking for Carolyn Stoddard? Because
I’m looking for her too!”
“Who
are you?” Julia asked, but she thought she knew, and felt a spark of excitement
ignite inside her. Perhaps, she thought,
perhaps all is not lost after all …
The
nothingness parted then as a light began to glow, dull at first, then brighter,
a tiny star, glowing, glowing …
…
and by its light, Julia could make out a beautiful young woman with long blonde
hair, and she could be the very twin of Carolyn, Julia marveled, and she moved
through the darkness, the light glowing in her eyes and off the tips of her
fingers and her very lips, and she said in her lilting accent, “My name is
Leticia Faye. Have you come to take me
home?”
5
“There!”
Edith screamed hysterically, and leveled a trembling finger at the mustachioed
man in the center of the drawing room.
His fingers were still crooked at strange angles, his hands continuing
to make mystic passes through the air.
And all assembled – Sheriff Danforth, Corwin behind him, and a score of
other Collinsport citizens they gathered on their way up the hill to the great
house, torches blazing in their hands – all assembled could see the
serpent-green witchfire that fell in streams and fitful sparks from those same
hands, sizzling when they struck the carpet.
“There!” she screamed
again. “Do you see? There is the monster! There is the warlock!”
Barnabas,
looking for Julia, unnoticed by the crowd, willed more than he had ever willed
before his fangs to withdraw. But he
couldn’t find her. “Julia?” he
whispered.
Angelique
whirled around and ran straight into Edith’s arms. “Help me!” she gasped. “Oh please, you must! You must!
He’s the very devil! He tried to
kill us both!”
Outside,
Gabriel wheeled his chair into the foyer, and watched with slitted eyes the
drama that played out in the drawing room only feet away.
Blair’s
eyes ranged over the assembled Collinsport mob, and they sparked and darkened and
turned an inky, inhuman black. The mob
gasped collectively. Nicholas leveled a
finger at them. “You will not take me,”
he said in a voice like the cracking of earthen plates. “Not you, not mortal dogs!” The witchfire began to flicker and spark
again as he began his incantation. “Hear
me, Lucifer! Diabolum: et interficiam eos
obscenaeque canes importunaeque!”
“Hold
him,” Angelique whispered into Edith’s ear.
“If you value your life, you will hold him now.”
“I
don’t know who or what you really are,” Edith whispered back, “but I’m going to
destroy you when this is over. I swear
it.” Unnoticed by the others, she gently
snapped her fingers.
Nicholas’
black eyes flashed. “As I will it, so
mote it –”
And
then he froze, the words choked back in his throat. His eyes bulged with his effort to move, to speak.
Angelique
relaxed, smiling. Beside her, Edith did
the same.
“Get
him!” Danforth roared, and the mob charged, swinging their torches. One struck Blair upside the head, and he
collapsed. In that moment they were on
him, and Barnabas, Angelique, and Edith drew back so the townspeople could drag
him from the house. Silently, they
trailed behind and stopped at the front doors of the great house so they could
watch as the mob, shouting, cajoling, celebrating, disappeared in the direction
of the beach.
“It’s
what is meant to be,” Angelique whispered, and slid her hand into
Barnabas’. “I remember this. Nicholas will be burned on the beach and his
ashes scattered out over the ocean.”
“But
even that won’t stop him,” Barnabas replied grimly.
“No,”
Angelique said, troubled. “No, it won’t. Nothing stops him for long.”
“I
was right,” Edith said triumphantly, and they turned to face her, shocked. “You are from the future. You needn’t deny it; I know it is true.”
“You
know nothing, Edith Collins,” Angelique said and tossed her head. “Leave us now if you know what’s good for
you.” Her eyes narrowed, and she allowed
them to darken, so Edith could see her power.
“Or I will destroy you myself.”
“You
dare not,” Edith cackled. “You don’t
want to change your precious history.
Well, I’ll tell you something.
You have already changed it!
Nicholas is different because of you; so am I; so is dear Valerie! What will happen to her when you finally
leave her body … Angelique?” Angelique recoiled, and Edith crowed. “Or … if,
I should say. If you leave her body. I am
only a novice witch to be sure, but Nicholas schooled me well. You have possessed her body, how I know not,
but it is no simple process to exorcise a spirit from its host. Even the spirit knows difficulty sometimes.”
“Be
quiet,” Angelique snapped. “You don’t
know what you speak of, Edith Collins. I
am older and wiser than you; when we meet again –”
“And
you just can’t stop, can you?” Edith chuckled.
“Oh, my poor, dear Angelique.
Don’t you see what you do? Now I
know we will see each other again.” She
rubbed her hands together briskly, eagerly.
“When? How? You must tell me! I need to know!”
“Tego,” Angelique growled, and Edith flew
backward and landed in a heap in the foyer.
“Julia,”
Barnabas said desperately. He tugged at
Angelique’s sleeve. “She’s gone,
Angelique! We need to find what’s become
of her! I fear –”
She
took his hand in hers. “We’ll find her,
Barnabas,” she said, searching his face.
“I promise you that. Come.” And she pulled him out into the darkness.
Edith
sat up slowly, painfully. Her teeth were
bared; her eyes flashed with hatred.
“You are right, Angelique,” she hissed.
“You will see my face again. And
when you do … when you do, I swear –”
She
never finished the sentence. Behind her,
looming over her, her husband dropped his hands over her throat. The thumbs pressed against her larynx and
choked off any indignant spell she might have uttered. Her eyes bulged; the flow of air was cut off
immediately; her hands waved futilely in the air, then settled on his hands,
but they were strong, those fingers, those arms, muscles bunched with effort
and grown strong with years of wheeling, wheeling, wheeling around Collinwood;
the thumbs held for a moment, then they pressed
–
“Gagh,”
Edith Collins said. “Gagh?” There were spots floating in front of her,
floating and circling, and they were red; no, now black, floating and circling,
floating and circling –
“Witch!”
Gabriel Collins hissed from between clenched teeth. Freshets of white foam flew from his lips and
landed on her cheek, but she was beyond feeling them. Her tongue protruded from between her lips as
they lost their color and grew blue. Her
face began to turn black. “Die, witch,”
he said, panting, “die, die, die!”
She
didn’t hear him. She was swept up in a
great tide of blackness, and she didn’t feel the floor against her cheek as he
dropped her lifeless body so that her head struck the carpeted floor and
bounced once. Her sightless eyes glared
furiously into nothing.
6
Edith
took in a great ragged breath and sucked in noxious, sulfuric fumes into her
lungs. Her face burned where it lay
against the floor of an immense stone cavern.
The only light came from torches that lined the walls and gave off
greasy black trails of smoke. She
glanced down at her body and saw that she was naked. White lice streamed over her flesh, and she
screamed and began to strike at them over and over.
The
rolling, thunderous laughter of something that must be quite enormous indeed
greeted her ears, and she froze in her ministrations and looked up. And up.
And up.
Something
with eyes the size of carriage wheels glared down at her, and they were red,
those eyes, bright red, as red as the flames that were everywhere in this
dreadful place.
“Edith
Collins,” this monster said, and she could almost believe that its voice
contained mirth, “would you care to make a deal?”
7
Quentin
finally rolled off her nearly a full three minutes after the shivers and the power in the energy of his orgasm
subsided, and then flopped over onto his back, enjoying the feeling of the
sweat that sprang from his forehead and chest and back during the intensity of
their coupling. He clasped his hands
together and rested his head on them. He
found he was smiling in the darkness.
“Daphne,” he said, “Mrs. Collins … you are amazing.”
Daphne,
in the darkness at his side, made a purring sound of contentment.
“I
don’t care what they’re going to say,” Quentin said. “Any of them.
Not Father, not Valerie, not even Gabriel. This is right; we both know it; we knew it
the moment you came to Collinwood.”
“I
knew it,” Daphne said in the darkness.
Her voice was sated, feline. Just
the sound of it started him again.
“It
won’t fade, our love,” Quentin said.
“Don’t you feel that, darling?
Don’t you think that’s true?”
“I
do,” she said.
“We
will love for eternity,” Quentin said dreamily.
“Collinwood will be our home. It
will be our legacy. A testament to our
love.”
“Eternal,”
Daphne said. “Never ending.”
“You
are mine,” Quentin said, and lifted himself off the bed, supporting his weight
with his elbow. He reached out to her in
the dark, but saw only the barest white outline of her shoulder. Her face was swathed in shadows. “You are my bride; no one can deny that
now. Collinwood is ours.”
“Ours,”
Daphne exhaled, a prayer, an invocation.
“Darling,”
Quentin said, and leaned down to press his lips to hers.
Lightning
flashed outside, just in time to illuminate the room, to send the shadows away,
to show Quentin the true face of his bride.
He
screamed then, and recoiled, and tried to move away, but her skeletal arms, the
flesh black and rotting, snaked out and wrapped around him, and there was
strength in them yet, and they pulled him, shrieking and struggling, down,
down, down. Her face, fleshless, a bare
skull, but with fire flickering far back in the empty sockets, reached up for
him. The mouth opened, and a rotted
tongue emerged. It lapped hungrily at
the air.
“Kiss
me,” the horror said.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
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