Dark Shadows: Analog news from 1985

Way back in the 1980s, when the world was going crazy for ghostbusting, Spock searching and kid karateing (?) it took a lot more work to keep the Dark Shadows flame alive. Above is a news column from The Parallel Times, probably my favorite of the Dark Shadows fanzines. While twittering yesterday, writer Will McKinley mentioned he used to contribute a column to the fanzine and I've posted one of those columns above. It's from the winter 1985 issue, which admittedly makes my references to 1984 movies a little off the mark. But I couldn't figure out how to work in jokes about Witness, The Color Purple and Kiss of the Spider Woman without gettting ... inappropriate.

Dark Shadows fan comic

Robert Nieves is no stranger to Dark Shadows fandom. As part of the The Alternate Shadows he created a comicbook that was serialized within the pages of The Parallel Times fanzine (which is one of my favorites.) He once had bigger plans for the comic, which he explains below:

"This was an idea for a Dark Shadows Graphic Novel that I did back in 1999. It was presented to Katy Scott in the hopes of producing a series of Graphic Novels for Pomegranate Press that would cover the 5 year run of the show. She forwarded my work to Jim Pierson and upon communication with him he expressed that Dan Curtis Productions was not interested in pursuing the idea at the time, so this sits in their vaults."

I've posted three of the pages from that proposed comic above.  Head on over to The Dark Shadows Blog to see them all.

The Parallel Times

Finally! Something about Dark Shadows Fandom! Isn't that what this site is supposed to be about?

No two Dark Shadows fanzines are alike. Oh, they might have a few similarities in content, but each publication took great pains to distinguish itself. The Parallel Times was one of the more art-intensive fanzines and featured a serialized comicstrip set in the years after the end of the television show. Illustrated by Robert Nieves, it's one of my favorite pieces of Dark Shadows fanfic and I'd love to read the storyline in its entirety (assuming it was completed.)

Above is a segment from an issue of The Parallel Times from the winter of 1985, which also included an interview with Donna Wandrey, want ads, an editorial, episode summaries and lots of original art.

The magazine (and I own only a single issue of this fanzine) was published out of Queens, N.Y., by a group called The Alternate Shadows. If anyone has any information about this fanzine, feel free to share in the comments section below.