Dark Shadows Year One

 So, Dynamite Comics has announced a new series titled DARK SHADOWS YEAR ONE. The artwork looks good, and I'll be happy to see the book getting back to some kind of status quo after that brutally offensive DARK SHADOWS/VAMPIRELLA crossover. At this point, though, it might be too little, too late ... for me, at least.

 Last night I wrote a long, rambling, butt-hurt essay about the horrid state of mainstream comicbooks, but opted to delete it. There's enough fanboy whining on the Internet without my contributing to the pollution. Besides, these things tend to ebb and flow. Making comics is hard, and the corporate nature of the Big Two (Marvel and DC) just makes it that much more difficult to get anything interesting to the public. Maybe things will pick up again, but homogenization, dwindling circulation and rising cover prices have probably conspired to killed the monthly "pamphlet" format for good.


 During the last few months I accidentally let my subscriptions lapse, and found out this last weekend that my books had been put on the shelves because I hadn't been in the store in four months. Instead of disappointment, I felt relief ... because I really, really didn't want to shill out more money for those wretched books. (THE SHADOW from Dynamite was pretty good, but that was the only title I regretted missing.)


As I was saying at the start of this post, Dynamite has announced a DARK SHADOWS: YEAR ONE series. The artwork looks pretty good (artist Guiu Vilanova has posted some sample pages at his blog) but I'm sure the colorist will turn it into a murky mess. Also, I don't see the reason why we need to return again to the "origin," but whatever. For a while I was buying these books out of an obligation to this blog. I'm hopeful that the books will become vital before Dynamite alienates ALL of their readers and loses the license, but that's no longer my problem. I'm done with the book, and have been for several months. It's just that I'm only now realizing it.