In #1109, broadcast and set in 1970, mad scientist Julia Hoffman and her friend, vampire Barnabas Collins, were trapped in the great house of Collinwood while a group of zombies were destroying it and attacking them. Julia escaped by means of an anomaly in space and time that takes the form of a staircase. She found herself in the year 1840.
Since #1063, the show had been building up the ghost of Gerard Stiles as its next supernatural Big Bad. It was at the ghost’s bidding that the zombies destroyed Collinwood. Gerard is alive in 1840, so when Julia realizes what year she has come to she believes that she is about to confront her greatest enemy. But the living Gerard has fizzled completely as a villain. The other day, he was evicted from his body and replaced by the spirit of a dead warlock. James Storm is now playing Judah Zachery, who is impersonating Gerard. The 1840 segment does show more signs of advance planning than do most parts of Dark Shadows, particularly in the costuming, set design, and casting. So it is possible they always meant to do this. But it still feels like Mr Storm was given a new part because the writers couldn’t make Gerard work.
The key witness in the 1692 trial that resulted in the beheading of Judah’s original body is still alive and apparently the same age as she was then. She is wicked witch Angelique Collins, whom Judah knew in 1692 as Miranda DuVal and who is now using the alias Valerie Collins. Judah is not quite certain Angelique is really Miranda, so he causes the ghost of magistrate Amadeus Collins to appear and make the same speech he made to her before she gave her testimony. She recognizes Amadeus, calls him by name, and sends him away. This proves her identity to Judah. He takes satisfaction in the fact that he knows who she is while she does not know who he is.
Angelique is busy with a project of her own. Barnabas managed to follow Julia back to 1840. Angelique was married to Barnabas for a little while in the 1790s, and when their relationship didn’t work out she turned him into a vampire. She wants him back now, and sees Julia as an obstacle to that goal.
Angelique was an enemy to Barnabas and Julia in 1968 and an ally of theirs in 1897 and 1970, but she does not remember any of those times. She is not a time-traveler at this point. It was only yesterday that she learned Julia and Barnabas had come from the future, and she was candid with Julia about how amazing she found it that she and Barnabas had transcended time. Strangely, Julia’s own candor in response to Angelique’s discovery of her origin extended only to the time when they were enemies, not to those when they were friendly.
Angelique sicced vampire Roxanne Drew on Julia. Now, Julia is in an old lighthouse, dying of the wounds Roxanne inflicted on her. Angelique tells Julia today that she is going to let her die and rise as a vampire. Barnabas knows that this is going on, and so he divides his time between searching for Julia and quarreling with Angelique.
As a kid in the 1970s and 1980s, I spent a lot of time reading Mad Magazine. It really is too bad Mad never satirized Dark Shadows;* James Storm and Lara Parker both had the kinds of faces Jack Davis loved to draw, and today each of them uses facial expressions he could have tipped into hilarity by the slightest exaggeration.
*The first issue of Marvel Comics’ Spoof did do a satire of the show in 1970; the whole feature can be found on Danny Horn’s great blog Dark Shadows Every Day. It’s pretty funny, and writer Roy Thomas makes clever use of so much of the show’s deep lore that he must have been a devoted fan. But, talented as artist Marie Severin was, she was no Jack Davis. Not only was Davis a master of subtle caricature, but he also had a gift for drawing crowded scenes that didn’t look busy. It was a stylistic decision to draw Barnacle Crawlins and the rest of the “Darn Shadows” gang in the very broadly cartoonish manner typical of Spoof, Crazy, and Marvel’s other attempts to compete with Mad. Had Davis been on the job, he would have had to draw them that way as well. But the big scenes with lots of characters are cluttered in a way that Davis’ scenes never were.
