The Innovation comics are the only Dark Shadows comics that have never been reprinted in trade paperback form. I wonder why.
I don't honestly recall what the ultimate fate of the trade paperback was/is. But if you are correct that these comics have never been reprinted that way (and I have no reason to doubt you), it's going to be fascinating to eventually discover in SG why that is. The info I'll be sharing in an upcoming post certainly made the trade paperback sound like it was going to be quite interesting...
I think that it was always understood that Lara's notes for the potential comic book formed the basis for what eventually became Angelique's Descent. But which Angelique was she supposed to have been writing about: the original version or the NBC incarnation.
It was going to be about the Angelique of the '91 Series - and it was going to be told through the eyes of her mother, who Book 1 strongly hinted is Julia's Aunt Lara (the only good thing to come out of that awful Barrettstown story). But alas...
I thought that Innovation didn't have the rights to the original series. Plus, there's the publishing schedule. If the books were actually published on a timely basis (a big if, at that), it was going to be quite some time before they addressed and resolved the NBC cliffhanger. If they ever actually planned to do so.
You are correct in that Innovation didn't have the rights to the original series.
They did plan to resolve the cliffhanger and to begin new story partly based on the plans the '91 Series' writers had for a second season (see:
SHADOWS IN THE '90S: The Dark Shadows Concordance 1991). Though in one way they did plan to depart radically from what the writers had planned. I don't think that's come up yet in anything I've shared from SG, but it will...