Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Gold Key's Dark Shadows Issue #6

Today's Monster Memories are of:
Gold Key's Dark Shadows comic Issue #6
(Click on images to view Giant-Mummy-Sized)

In August of 1970, when this comic was published, I was 11 years old and living in Parkersburg, West Virginia. We rented our house from the owner of a convenience store which we lived behind, and I would sweep his store and parking lot to earn some extra money, which quickly went back to the store for candy, soda and comic books. This was one of those I bought there, and stands out in my memories of that time. I mean, really; vampires, werewolves, mummies; what wasn't there to like about it?

The photo cover was cool, although I thought as a kid that the boy in the picture had a pointed ear, and must be a mini-werewolf like Eddie Munster. But I realised years later in looking at it, the it's only a leaf in the way. I remember holing up in my hideout, which I had cleared out under an overgrown thicket of wild bushes covering a small gully, and reading it while I nursed a cinnamon Square-Shooter sucker and a peach Nehi.



In the story, a downright hefty and obviously well-fed mummy ends up in Collinsport. Barnabas, turning into a detective, only needed to don a deerstalker cap and smoke a pipe, while wielding a magnifying glass to be Sherlock Holmes. There's a lot of running, and finger-pointing, and Barnabas is suspected; while he blames poor lycanthropic Quentin for the mummy's misdeeds. Ol' Barney, being the good guy that he is, prepares to poison his pal to help him out. After all, what are friends for, if not to show tough love? Quentin has a killer hangover and just wants to be left alone. As for the mummy's murderous ways, there's never any reason for the bandaged one to attack those random people, but I guess it's just what he does, being a mummy and all. Maybe his weight causes him to be insecure and the killing is just a way of compensating.

Anyway, here's the first part, scanned in and formatted for your maximum viewing pleasure; a story I call "The Case of the Howling Mummy!"





Now, that's what I call a mix-up... switching the bodies of the old man and an Egyptian mummy! How does something like that happen? The overweight mummy would had to have been removed from his sarcophagus (by several strong men) and put in the modern coffin, and the dead American placed in the ancient tomb. Somebody would have HAD to have done it on purpose. But why?

And look at the body of Capt. Collins; nearly a hundred years after death and not a sign of decomposition! Why? Or am I thinking too much about it? Surely, if I can swallow a vampiric hero and a living mummy I can overlook a slight plot hole or two.

To Be Continued next time... same Monster-time, same Monster-channel!

6 comments:

The Headless Werewolf said...

Thanks for the recent DARK SHADOWS posts! I love seeing those old comic panels, and the images from the film are spectacular.

Frederick said...

Headless,

Thanks for the comment, glad you are enjoying them! I'm having fun revisiting the DS universe. I went through my stuff to gather material, and found several paperback novels, and several more of the comics. I'll be posting more in the future! And as you know, future events such as these will affect you in the future...

Anonymous said...

Frederick,

My friend, you did it again!
You pulled something out of your collection that that ties into my own "monster Kid" past in someway. In this case, with that particular issue of the DARK SHADOWS comic being the first issue I ever spotted on the comic book "spinners" at my favorite drugstore back in the day.
Of course I bought it along with the rest of my comics that week & loved every page, every panel of it.

As I recall though, it would be a while before I found another issue of the title, as for some reason it wasn't as regularly available as all the other Gold Keys that I collected at the time like RIPLEY'S BELIEVE IT OR NOT, BORIS KARLOFF, TUROK, STAR TREK & the rest.

Again, big kudos for bringing such fond old memories back to me so vividly.

Peace.
- Jim

Frederick said...

Jim,

it is neat how our monster memories coincide, isn't it?

That was the first of only three issues I ever found; for some reason they were hard to find for me as well. I'll post the other two at some point.

Aside from Star Trek, which I bought every time I found an issue, I also liked Magnus: Robot Fighter a lot. I wish they'd adapt that into a big-budget movie; with CGI they could finally do it justice.

Mr. Karswell said...

This is one of my favorite DS comic covers... and the story is awesome too. Wish I'd kept the huge run of these I had as a kid, but alas I trade most of them in for the pre-code stuff.

Cool post Fred!

Frederick said...

Karswell,

Thanks for commenting! I too regret some of the trades I made as a kid. But I never made many... I loved what I had too much to part with them.

I too think this was an outstanding cover for the series. The arrangement of the title logo was unusual also.