Showing posts with label gothic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gothic. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Reading Room SIR LEO "Thing from the Lake"

For Halloween, we're presenting the 1970s adventures of...
...a Victorian monster-hunter done in a wild, semi-psychedelic style by Jose Bea (The pen-name for writer/illustrator Jose Maria Bea Font).
You'll find out if a lead projectile will stop the creature (and if it doesn't...what will?) in our next exciting entry!
This first part of a two-part tale from Dracula #1 (1971) was co-written by Luis Vigil.
The Sir Leo series was published irregularly in Dracula (1971), a 12-issue partworks magazine* by Great Britain's New English Library, the first two Sir Leo tales made their American debut in Warren Publishing's HTF Dracula TPB in 1972 which reprinted #1-#6 of the British Dracula's run.
The remaining tales from #7-#12 have never been published in the US.
*Partworks magazines are a limited series issued from weekly, fortnightly, or monthly.
They usually run 12-24 issues for each volume.
When the final issue in a volume is published, the publishers offer a wraparound cover to make the complete set into a hardbound book. 
The buyer is offered the option to bind the magazines themselves or send the set to the publisher who professionally-binds the mags and sends the bound volume back to the customer.
This concept is extremely popular in Europe, but has never caught on in America, despite numerous attempts.

Friday, July 13, 2012

RetroBlog Marathons: True Love Comics Tales and War: Past, Present & Future!

We hope you're enjoying our RetroBlog™ summer marathons...
This Week
True Love Comics Tales™ presented a full-length Gothic romance, "Kiss of the Serpent"...
...with evocative art by the late Tony DeZuniga.
Plus a bonus gothic romance prose tale!

Next Week
War: Past, Present and Future™ returns to the future...
...with five tales of Atomic War and World War III!
Now that's entertainment!

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

YouTube Wednesday: Dark Shadows Past and Present

With a new film debuting on Friday, let's look at Dark Shadows...
The freaky-kool Japanese poster for House of Dark Shadows (1970)
...starting with Barnabas Collins' first appearance in 1967 on the already-year-old series...
Next, the trailer for the first Dark Shadows movie, House of Dark Shadows, done in 1970 while the show was still airing on ABC daily, and featuring the tv series' cast!
It's not a continuation, but a condensed adaptation of the first Barnabas plotline with a bigger budget (no cardboard tombstones!), location shooting, and more Hammer-style blood than daytime tv would allow!
Right after the show ended, a second feature, Night of Dark Shadows came out...

...but was nowhere near the quality of the first film.
When reruns in the 1980s and the release of the series on videotape brought a whole new audience to the show (including a young Johnny Depp), a prime-time revival was ordered in January 1991...

...but constant pre-empting due to the first Gulf War kept the ratings down, and it only lasted half a year!
The videos, however, kept selling, and a devoted audience kept growing.
A new pilot was commissioned by the WB in 2004, but didn't go to series.
(Ironically, the year before, the WB did a Lone Ranger pilot that didn't sell.
Now, Johnny Depp is filming a Lone Ranger movie...as Tonto!)
Depp, who loved the original tv series, acquired the film rights for his production company, contacted Tim Burton, and, this Friday, you'll see the results...
Take it in the same spirit as the JJ Abrams 2009 Star Trek reboot, and you'll have a great time!

Trivia: Show co-creator/story editor/writer Art Wallace also wrote episodes of the original Star Trek, Space: 1999, Planet of the Apes (TV), The Invaders, and Tom Corbett: Space Cadet!
He later served as story consultant on All My Children.
And, every version of Dark Shadows since has used his characters and concepts...