Interesting to learn that Alexandra Moltke's husband had to arrive at the studio with a court order, in order for Alex to be released from her work on the show. I'd always wondered if she'd just left one day and telephoned to tell the front office she wasn't coming back.

Ron does say here that it was a conflict with Dan that led to his own departure from the writing staff.

This is a fascinating tape. Thank you again, Doctor and K-9, for sharing it!

G.

Regarding the professional use of "cover dates," see the section on comic books here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_date

Interesting that the practice goes way back to the 1930s. And of course, Marvel has abandoned it altogether. Just to be different, no doubt.

G.

Aren't comic books routinely post-dated? It seems to be a thing within the business, and I think that's been the case for many decades.

Thank you again for all your work on this project. It was interesting to have such a detailed look at this comic book.

Best, G.

Interesting concept. I did not care at all for the excerpt, however.

The most interesting Dracula pastiche I have read in recent years was in French, and began with the proposition that the SECRET journals of Jonathan Harker revealed the true story of the Count as the eternally rampant High Priest of a gay vampire cult. It was outrageous, but great fun, and told with great vigor.

G.

Dear fans,

Last night, I watched a couple of episodes of Strange Paradise written by Ron Sproat in 1970 after he had left DS.  I think the one I saw last night may have been the last script he wrote for Paradise--it was a well written script but had a huge continuity gaffe, I think because the show had no script editor (which was, I believe, also a problem on DS).

Anyhow I looked at Sproat's Wikipedia entry hoping to see which soap he went on to write for after he finished up at Paradise. A foolish place to check, as there was no attempt to provide any detailed chronology for his career. Though they did mention Love of Life, which also became a home for Paradise veteran Tudi Wiggins (an excellent actress nobody really remembers any longer). We are told (footnoting an article by Ann Wilson in one of the PomPress books) that Ron left DS in January of 1969. In another source, he stated that he departed due to conflicts with boss Dan Curtis.

The big surprise in the entry provided for the online encyclopaedia was the bald statement that Sproat "created the vampire character Barnabas Collins."

I am trying to remember now just HOW MANY of the writers--or other personnel--at DS have claimed, or been said, to have created Barnabas. I remember in one of the books Bob Costello said he came up with that name, but so did Art Wallace in an interview somewhere. A year or two ago we had articles posted here where Malcolm Marmorstein said he did the work of actually creating the personality of Barnabas, eternally craving to be reunited with his lost Josette (a character who originally had a completely different backstory on the show).

I wonder if Joe Caldwell (who may have been the best writer of them all until Violet Welles stepped onboard) has claimed to have created Barnabas somewhere??

Regardless of who did the work, I think only Dan Curtis actually made any real money off the character.

cheers, G.

I am not seeing any artifacting in the smaller scan here. I'm running some outdated version of Windows here and an outdated Mac OS X at home.  Looking via Chrome in both places.

Since Julia's own family members were among the "living dead" (or whatever), this begs the question as to why she was so obsessive in her initial pursuit of Barnabas. I can't recall if the script for the 1991 initial confrontation when Julia reveals her "research interest" to Barnabas includes the dialogue about her long search for someone who could span the worlds of the dead and the living.

That Barretttown storyline (one wonders if the town name is an odd tip of the cape to Nancy Barrett?) really slithered way down the cliff very quickly from what I recall of the issues I did see way back when.

G.

I did a google search after Gerard posted and I saw something called a "universal typewriter ribbon" on sale. I don't know how that would work since different machines had different gears and/or gauges. There were also the more traditional ribbons that we used to have so apparently, the ribbons are still produced. But you'd almost certainly have to order one online.

We really are in alterna-verse land with where the book is going now. I always thought the 1991 Julia was British since if she had been American, I'm sure Barbara would have done an accent. Also, there were no Witch trials of the type described in 18th century Maine (which was of course a part of Massachusetts back then--as all DS fans know!).

G.

It seems as if we're only a few pages into the first issue and already there have been several moments that, even with my really limited knowledge of the 1991 series, just do not fit at all with the story and characters as established in the canon of the actual episodes.

I mean compared to some of these dialogue exchanges, the visual gaffes you've cited have been really trivial.

Enjoying this series for what it is rather than what it could have been, nevertheless.  Thanks MB for all your effort with this.

G.