Entire Dark Shadows Comic Collection - $400

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Dark Shadows Comic Collection - $400

"Looking to sell my entire collection. Will not split uo. Pictures of everything included."

This may be the seller's entire collection, but it's not the entire collection of Gold Key comics. Well, from the photos, it doesn't look like it is. But anyone interested would probably be better off contacting to seller to ask...

[Gerard]

I had quite a few of those (the covers bring back memories).  Many, if not most, are now long gone, some remainders in a box or drawer somewhere.  As much as I enjoyed them as a kid because it gave us our DS "fix" (especially after it went off the air, like the MR novels), they were always simply dreadful.  From stories to writing to illustration, they were, shall we say, "below par."  Still, we got our fix.  Even if the seller has the full series, no one will pay $400 for it - $100 maybe, for investors who hope to sell them one-at-a-time to those hoping to complete their collection, but that's about it.  Let's face it - the Gold Key adaptation was not gold.

Gerard

[Uncle Roger]

Fool's Gold perhaps.

[Gothick]

There are people out there who have a cult for Joe Certa, the artist who did these.  And of course, there are other people who have to collect everything connected with DARK SHADOWS. 

I still think that's a high price.  The only possibility is that a young, or new collector with lots of bucks to spare will grab it if they buy the line that it's complete--too bad it may not actually be all they published.

G.

[Gerard]

Fool's Gold perhaps.

I'm surprised, Uncle Roger, that Gold Key didn't so something more qualitative.  I imagine they could've made the most money by supplying the least customers and that was their thinking.  The stories and illustrations were so absolutely awful.  Most of the characters were never present.  Part One  with, depending upon the story, with Barnabas (who always wore his 20th century clothing whenever he traveled in the past, and never, ever took off his coat in the present), Liz with her beehive; Julia with her rat's-nest; Eliot with his Charles-Nelson-Reilly-no-rug, and Angelique on occasion with more hair than Lady Godiva; Quentin with chops a lamb would salivate over, and there you have it.  No Roger; no Caroline; no David; no Vicki; no Maggie; no Mrs. Johnson; heck, not even a Harry.  No one else resided at Collinwood.  Some voluptuous thing would come to Collinwood, Elizabeth would scream, Julia would anguish, Eliot would figure it out, Quentin would turn into a werewolf for no particular reason, Barnabas would travel to some time or place, problem solved.  On to the next one.  And still we bought them.

Gerard

[Uncle Roger]

I remember reading in one of the fanzines, Dark Shadows Fan Clan, that Warren Publications was interested in doing a DS book but couldn't obtain the rights. This was maybe around 1975/76, if I remember correctly. Warren would have been a better fit for a horror book than Gold Key.

[Gothick]

As a kind of footnote, I was interested last night to see that Joe Certa worked on a title called Tomb of Terror for Harvey Comics in the early 1950s:

http://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=21050

The above site is an incredible repository of comics from all eras.  I've visited it intermittently to catch up with the horror comics of the early 1950s.  My favorite thus far is a groovy little book called Chamber of Chills.  I'd never heard of any of these.

After reading a couple of issues of Tomb of Terror, I looked at still another title, (True Stories of) Black Magic (you search it under the short title, Black Magic).  That one features some really early work by the legendary Jack Kirby.

My very fleeting impression from Tomb of Terror is that Joe Certa did work of fairly decent quality back then. I do not know what had happened to him by the time he worked on the Gold Key DS stuff.  His work for that was at such a crude, ugly level.  I'm sure there are websites and no doubt, a Wikipedia entry which might explain what was going on.

It may be that neither he nor his editor cared so he just churned out the lowest grade of work for these.  As Gerard said, we still bought the books though I gave up on it after issue 15 or thereabouts, I think.  I honestly can't recall why I stopped reading.  One reason I do remember was that it got really difficult to find the book. I was surprised to learn years ago that so many issues had been published.  I think I just stopped seeing it at the local newsstand at some point.

G.