Review time! with ‘Curse of Dark Shadows’

“You say you don’t feel safe alone tonight, ’cause you feel the pressure building in your head”

Hermes Press has brought us a new graphic novel, Curse of Dark Shadows, which is by Craig Hurd-McKenney (the writer), Jok and Gervasio (the artists), Jok and Mey (the colorists), Lucas Gattoni (the letterer), and Shonell Bacon (the editor). It costs $19.99, and it’s 146 pages long. Let’s check it out!

I have never seen any iteration of Dark Shadows, and I still can’t believe it aired as a soap opera in the 1960s — that just makes my head spin. I know some of the lore, mainly thanks to Greg Hatcher’s interest in it, but I don’t know much about it. I got this book because it was a standalone story (or is it?) and because I like Jok’s art (there are some places where I’m pretty sure it’s the other artist, who seems to be aping Jok’s style so that the book looks consistent, but I can’t be sure), so I thought it would be fun. And it is, for the most part.

One thing Hurd-McKenney does is incorporate the history of the Collins family without being too inside baseball. Barnabas is a character, but the driving force of the plot is Carolyn Stoddard-Hawkes, who is trying to bring Victoria Winters back from the … dead? I mean, people talk about being dead and coming back, but there’s a hint that Victoria is trapped somewhere in a different dimension and isn’t exactly dead, but she’s, you know, dead-like. Carolyn enlists three students — Jack, Hamzah, and Claire — to help her and David Collins to get Victoria, but at some point, she realizes she needs Barnabas, so he returns to his ancestral home after an absence of some years. He brings problems with him.

As I wrote, I don’t know much about the shows or movie. I know Barnabas is a vampire, but not much else. Hurt-McKenney does a decent job explaining it all — who Victoria is, why she’s important, what’s been going on with the Collins family for centuries — without getting bogged down in the muck of it all, and while Barnabas isn’t the main character and we don’t get too much with him, it’s interesting how Hurd-McKenney makes him menacing without working too hard at it. Barnabas just has a menacing aspect to him that seems like it would be easier to do with live acting rather than static drawings, but both Hurd-McKenney and Jok/Gervasio make it work. There’s not a lot of internal narration in the book, so what we do learn comes from dialogue and the art, but Hurd-McKenney does manage to show us how the students react to this very strange situation they find themselves in and how they cope with it. Everyone has secrets, and some of them come out in the course of the book, and Hurd-McKenney does a good job being judicious about the reveals. Even if you’re not invested in the characters — and unless you watched the show or are very familiar with the characters, it seems like you probably won’t be too invested in them — just the way they move through the plot makes them compelling. Hurd-McKenney doesn’t do a great job making them too deep, but he does a good job with their interactions, so the machinations of the plot make the characters a bit more interesting. He also does a clever thing where he references old episodes of the show in “snapshot” panels that show something that happened, with a narrative box telling us what episode it was, and while it’s a bit strange, it’s decent shorthand to make sure we know he’s tying things into the show and also giving us a bit of context. Even if you never watched the show, the device is helpful. There are two semi-big problems with the book. First, Hurd-McKenney clearly sets up a sequel, which isn’t the worst thing in the world, but it does leave some things unresolved which it would have been nice to get resolved. I don’t know, either, if Hermes — which is notoriously bad about getting things out in a timely fashion — will want or be able to do a sequel. Second, Barnabas is set up to be something of a threat, but he really isn’t, and it seems like Hurd-McKenney could have done a bit more with the tension in the house over his reappearance and his vampirism, as it’s part of the Collins curse. I’m glad that Barnabas isn’t the main character, but it does seem like Hurd-McKenney wanted him to be more of a threat, and he just isn’t. It’s a weird unresolved theme, and if Hurd-McKenney gets to do a sequel, perhaps we’ll get some closure on that front.

Jok seems like a strange choice for a moody horror story, but his cartoonish style actually works quite well with it, especially when the horror aspects are a tiny bit over-the-top. His jagged lines and thick hatching give his work a bit of a Mignola-lite vibe, and because of its jaggedness, everything in his comics looks like it can hurt you, even the people. He creates a very cool Collinsport, an ancient-feeling town with dark corners and creaky buildings, perched on a churning sea that, like George Constanza says, was angry that day. He populates the town with oddball characters, making it much stranger than your average American small town. His Barnabas is done well — he’s a charming rogue, and Jok gives him just enough “good” qualities to hide his darker tendencies, which emerge at dramatic times. His spot blacks are very effective, especially as he often puts shadows cast by nothing in panels, resembling wings or lightning bolts or other such portentous symbols. It’s cleverly done. The coloring is good, too, as the flashbacks and scenes set in the past tend to be colored redder, making them stand out and also highlighting the violence and bloodiness that often comes along with them. It’s a cool-looking comic, which, of course, helps the story.

You don’t need to know much about the show to enjoy this comic — it probably helps a little, but not too much — and it is enjoyable. I like that Hurd-McKenney didn’t go a straight horror route, nor did he make jokes about it all, which I guess the Depp movie did a little bit. It’s a creepy book to a degree, but not necessarily a scary one, but Hurd-McKenney does a good job setting up an interesting plot and following it through, even if he stumbles a bit. If you’re a fan of the show, you’ll probably like this, and if you’re not … well, I liked it, so take what you want from that!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆