I thought I heard the movie surpassed 170 mil worldwide days ago? This is a flop? I have no evidence but I personally don't believe the budget was as big as has been reported. I think it's probably been in the black for awhile. To the outside world that doesn't care about the source material this would be a pretty typical Burton movie, whimsical, weird, visually cartoonish. I don't see where people would be especially confused.

I saw it three times over three weeks in mostly full houses with very engaged audiences. Various Facebook pages have people posting constantly about how much they love it. Bad word of mouth? Burton has his haters which eviscerate pretty much everything he does. The love it or hate it aspect of the movie might actually work in it's favor. In any case I never thought a sequel for this particular enterprise was a given. Burton doesn't do many sequels ( I can only think of Batman) and nether does Depp. Pirates, sure, but that's a Disney cash cow. Dark Shadows is more like a small art film with a big budget. I think the movie will definitely find it's legs on people's TVs for years to come (where it was big in the first place!).

With Dark Shadows remakes currently arriving 20 years apart (Not counting 2004's abortion. I saw the snippet on Alec Newman's web site. Was that The Barnabas Diaries?) I may not be around for the next one but I'm hoping for a series mash-up of classic Marilyn Ross and Gold Key comics plots which put a new spin on Barnabas, his master-of -disguises cousin Quentin, and Hare, Barnabas's faithful manservant. Ok, not really.

I'd love to see a sequel. The end of this film went so far off the reservation I can't even imagine what a sequel would be like. They would have one insane blasphemous mess to get out of for sure! This is a very interesting and imaginative version of DS, loaded with homages to the source material. If I had a dvd of the movie, I'd be watching it again right now. It can't be everything to everybody and who cares if the script wobbles a bit?  It has the Burton whimsical vibe, which was always going to be the defining tone. It does make one wonder what another creative team might have done. The new film is short on actual horror and scares. By contrast the original two films actually are legitimately creepy and horrifying. We can only imagine how another director might have used those films as inspiration to amp of the fear factor. There's a million ways you can reinterpret a classic. To each his own!

A side note about romance in the DS comics, quite a few of them feature romantic elements. There's one book in the not yet released Hermes volume three that I'm looking forward to seeing digitally remastered. It concerns Barnabas trapped in an other worldly dimension where he falls in love with a dead ringer for Josette/ Victoria.

Michael--I'd be hard pressed to really disagree with anything you say. I'd just add it's a perception thing. You could say the same about the tv series, and people do, it's silly and juvenile, the acting is bad, the writing is worse, ect, ect. Well sure, sometimes, but if you stop there you miss a lot.

I have little interest in the romantic aspects of DS. I don't care if I ever hear Josette's name again.  My favorite plots would probably be 1897 and the first half of Leviathans.  Different strokes!

interesting thoughts about carolyn and maggie. some other strange "ingenue" always seems to show up for each self-contained story to fill the gap.

That Cheshire Collins story was actually a very good one. I never thought of the Roger Davis connection. Carolyn had a clone in Constance Collins. She was a dead ringer for Carolyn but Liz's cousin instead of daughter. She showed up at a dinner party Liz was throwing ( But wait!!Liz never threw dinner parties on tv! Wrong!). Trouble is, The Gold Key Collins had hardly any friends (or family) so usually nobody showed up at these parties (who didn't already live in the house) but Julia and Stokes. Barnabas tried to kill Connie, then save her when she acccidently got thrown into hell. Don't tell me that's not a great comic! Some beautiful drawings of Hell in that book.

They brought back Connie in probably the worst drawn book of the series. I don't know what the problem was, but poor old Certa did not bring his A-game!

i can't determine who's actually living at collinwood in these stories. liz, roger, quentin and julia? and barnabas at the old house? or is there not an old house?
...
i actually prefer the cover paintings to the art inside.

The cover paintings were by someone named George Wilson who also painted tons of covers for other Gold Key books, Twilight Zone, Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery and others. Yes, he was very good.

Liz, Roger, Quentin and Barnabas lived at Collinwood. There was no Old House. In issue one, Willie Loomis is seen heading toward a house that COULD be the Old House. It's a house mostly obscured by a word balloon and it's a very different depiction from any of the other shots of Collinwood. He knocks on a door which is answered by Barnabas. After briefly helping Barnabas with problem he's never seen again. Perhaps the producers thought the relationship was too complicated for a kids' comic and decided to close that can of worms. Julia lived in a small wood frame house in Collinsport. Barnabas's coffin room was in a cellar at Collinwood which was often shown with an open barred window. You would think someone  outside could be passing by and look down and  see the coffin. In one bizarre scene, Quentin must fly off in a plane on some mission and Barnabas is seen looking out his cellar window and can actually see the jet plane flying through the sky.

A lot of comic fans know the Gold Key series. People that aren't DS purists or even fans of the show.  I've heard people say they don't like the tv series--consider it boring-- but love the Gold Key series. Since the reprints have been coming out, I've seen a few reviews here and there from people who even consider the writing to be in some ways superior to the tv show.
I'll say one thing about the writing on the new comic, I really appreciate Stuart's economy with words. Most comic writers nowadays are egomaniacs and write, write, write and the books are very cluttered and tedious to actually try and read. Stuart strikes exactly the right balance between words and pictures, which is what it's all about with comics.

I bought all the Gold Key books when I was a kid as well. It got worse as the years went on. For the most part, the stories never really jumped the the shark but the art surely did. I got fed up with it as well, but kept buying them. I hoped they would replace Certa at a certain point but they never did. He was about 50 when he started the series and in the last decade of his career. The two volumes of the Hermes series out now represent the book's "golden age." You should check them out. They look much, MUCH better than the old newsprint pamplets. There is still some more good stuff coming up, but it's more hit and miss.

I know which panel you refer to about Julia. I read in one of Aaron's interviews that he shoots his own photos in some cases. I'm sort of on the fence about his Barnabas so far. It's kind of an idealized Frid but doesn't have the swing and bounce and drama of Certa at his best! Oh well, these things aren't really competing with each other.

michael--Angelique (and briefly, Cassandra--I think only in issue 1) was also featured in the Gold Key comics.  Or rather, some garish shrieking thing that was called Angelique because Joe Certa couldn't draw real people to save his soul...

Aaron Campbell's rendition of Angeligue in the dream sequence in the new book is actually worse. Far uglier than anything Certa drew of Angelique. His inking style too, is a bit off putting, sometimes he seems to be using tooth picks or match heads.  Overall I like the art in the new book, my favorite panel being Julia approaching the old house. Usually I don't like comics that rely heavily on photos and trying to capture actors' likenesses. It seems cheesy and a betrayal of the comics medium's strengths. In this case however, I'm going along with it because I'm such a fan of the source material.