A Couple of Dick Wood Titles at Gold Key

Dick Wood wrote mainly (although not exclusively) for Gold Key in the Sixties. Having found his work on longer-running series like Star Trek, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and Man from UNCLE, as well as the mystery books like Boris Karloff and Twilight Zone, as I go farther afield among the companie's titles I find a few more of his scripts.

Wood's extravagant expressions give him away; I'll lay a bet that "Great galloping Selenites" never figured in the shooting script of First Men in the Moon. There's the same sort of expression in the Lancer tier shown here.

Movie Comic is a title of convenience that never appears in the indicia and in fact on First Men doesn't even appear on the cover. That's an adaptation of the Ray Harryhausen movie of the H.G. Wells novel; Lancer presents original stories of the TV western with a ranch-and-family setup reminiscent of Bonanza.

Movie Comic

Mar/65

First Men in the Moon

w: Dick Wood  a: Fred Fredericks

Lancer

Feb/69	#1	Circumstantial Evidence	w: Wood  a: Luis Dominguez
June/	#2	The Diamond-Studded Steer	w: Wood  a: Dominguez
Sept/	#3	The Water Rustlers	w: Wood  a: Dominguez

Leo Dorfman, Total Warlord of M.A.R.S.

Leo Dorfman wrote the entire run of Gold Key's Total War/M.A.R.S. Patrol Total War. (M.A.R.S. is the Marine Attack Rescue Service, a four-man team vital in the fight against invaders on America soil).

Wally Wood has gotten the attribution for writing the first three issues, just as Jack Cole has for all his Plastic Man stories, but with no better reason than that he wrote some of his own work elsewhere. Could Wood have brought the concept and plots to Gold Key? Very possible, but who can say? The "new writer" finally identifies the invaders as extraterrestrials, which supposedly proves a point, but he doesn't do it in issue 4, the first with the new artists; he works his way up to confirming the fact in #5.

Here are tiers from issues 3, 4, and 9. Do you notice a similarity in writing style? There's also Dorfman's use of captions beginning with "As" quite a bit, and at least one siren going "Howeee."

I'm not sure exactly how the Wood/Adkins art was broken down: if one did layouts, one complete pencils, one complete inks; or more likely nothing so clearcut. And of course others may have helped. The inks on the remaining issues seem to me to match up with Mike Peppe's on, say, Mike Sekowsky's pencils on Man from U.N.C.L.E. Most often Roy and Peppe worked as a team, like Andru and Esposito—but the only signature in the series, on the splash page of #10, is Roy's alone.

Total War written by Leo Dorfman

July/65	1	Target: America	a: Wally Wood & Dan Adkins
Oct/	2	Sneak Attack	a: Wood & Adkins
		Breakthrough	a: Wood & Adkins

M.A.R.S. Patrol Total War written by Dorfman

Sept/66	3	Operation Copperhead	a: Wood & Adkins
Oct/67	4	Operation Deep-Freeze	p: Mike Roy  i: Mike Peppe
May/68	5	Mystery Beachhead	p: Roy  i: Peppe
Aug/	6	Operation Snake-in-the-Brass	p: Roy  i: Peppe
Nov/	7	The Death Wind	p: Roy  i: Peppe
Feb/69	8	Tomorrow Is Doomsday	p: Roy  i: Peppe
May/	9	City under Fire	p: Roy  i: Peppe
Aug/	10	The Dragon's Teeth	p: Roy  i: Peppe?

Time Tunnel and Land of the Giants

On these two titles from Gold Key—tie-ins to science fiction TV shows produced by Irwin Allen—the writer credits are as straightforward as on Girl from UNCLE: one writer on each.

Art on both titles came from Tom Gill. I can't tell how much was contributed by John Verpoorten, who's known to have assisted Gill on Time Tunnel; Ted Galindo pencilled for Gill on Land of the Giants. The Time Tunnel covers were paintings by George Wilson; Giants used photo covers.

The Time Tunnel

Feb/67	#1	The Assassins	Paul S. Newman
		The Lion or the Volcano?	Newman
		Mars Countdown	Newman
July/	#2	The Conquerors	Newman
		The Captives	Newman

Land of the Giants

Apr/68	#1	The Mini-Criminals	Dick Wood
Jan/69	#2	Countdown to Escape	Wood
Mar/	#3	Giant Damsel in Distress	Wood
June/	#4	Safari in Giantland	Wood
Sep/	#5	Operation Mini-Surgeon	Wood

UNCLE Act II

With Gold Key's comic of the spin-off UNCLE series, and the back-ups, there are no surprises among the writers.

I can see Bill Lignante's art on Girl from UNCLE 3-5, but I don't see the same art as on the Phantom. Since Sparky Moore says he ghost-pencilled for Lignante, on at least some of the Phantom and on Secret Agent 1, those don't make a good example of full art by Lignante. On these panels from Girl 3 I wonder if I see Mike Peppe inks—for want of a better guess—on at least some faces.

Girl from UNCLE Written by Paul S. Newman

Oct/66	#1	The Fatal Accidents Affair	a: Alden McWilliams
Apr/67	#2	The Kid Commandos' Caper	a: McWilliams
June/67	#3	The Captain Kidd Affair	a?: Bill Lignante
Aug/67	#4	The One-Way Tourist Affair	a?: Lignante
Oct/67	#5	The Harem-Scarem Affair	a?: Lignante

Leopold Swift—Courier in Girl from UNCLE Written by Newman

Oct/67

#5

Bubble-Trouble

a: Joe Certa

Jet Dream and Her Stunt Girl Counterspies in Man from UNCLE
Written by Dick Wood

July/66	#7	The Spy in the Sky	p: Mike Sekowsky  i: Mike Peppe
Sept/66	#8	The Spider and the Spy	p: Sekowsky  i: Peppe
Nov/66	#9	The Super-Tiger of Targan	p: Sekowsky  i: Peppe
Jan/67	#10	Ting-a-Ling—Enemy Agent	p: Sekowsky  i: ?
Mar/67	#11	Death Plunge	a: Jack Sparling
May/67	#12	The Powder-Puff Derby Caper	a: Certa
July/67	#13	The Achilles Heel	p: Sekowsky  i: Peppe
Sept/67	#14	Splash-Down to Death	a: Certa
Nov/67	#15	The Set-Up Sultan	a: Certa
Jan/68	#16	Day of Infamy	a: Certa
Mar/68	#17	The Farmer Brown Fiasco	a: Certa
May/68	#18	The Captive Jet	a: Certa
July/68	#19	Fall to Freedom	a: Certa
Oct/68	#20	Menace of the Feathered Warrriors	a: Certa
Apr/69	#22	The Demon Dogfight	a: Certa

Jet Dream Written by Wood

June/68

#1

D-Day for the Generalissimo

a: Certa

The Man from UNCLE Affair

Above is a panel from Gold Key's The Man from UNCLE 3, pencilled by George Tuska.

Following up on Mark Evanier's comment about likenesses: although in some cases the license holders insisted on extra work for that fidelity, in other cases the contracts forbade comic books from using likenesses. After the comic book's first two issues, the powers-that-were recognized the popularity of David McCallum's character Illya Kuryakin, and so he and Leo G. Carroll's Alexander Waverly became recognizable in the comics. In those first issues, only Napoleon Solo's face was reinked or redrawn, for the sake of Robert Vaughn's likeness—as in the Tuska panels below, from #2.

On the entire series, it looks to me as if Mike Peppe inked more than the Sekowsky issues attributed to him previously; I'm not sure if #1-2, apart from the Solo faces, were inked by someone other than pencillers Heck and Tuska respectively. (Update: read Mark's comment on this post.)

If Marshall McClintock wrote the Man from UNCLE for Gold Key as the Who's Who says, he didn't do final scripts; they're all by Paul S. Newman or Dick Wood. Wood's are filled with his trademark exclamations such as "Great suffering Hannah." Wood errs in his first script, as many have, by referring to UNCLE as the United Network Command for Law Enforcement—it's the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement.

Man from UNCLE Written by Paul S. Newman

May/65	#1	The Explosive Affair	p: Don Heck  i: ?
Oct/65	#2	The Fortune Cookie Affair	p: George Tuska  i: ?

Written by Dick Wood, Inked by Mike Peppe

Nov/65	#3	The Deadly Devices Affair	p: pg. 1-26 Tuska, pg. 27-32 Heck
Jan/66	#4	The Rip Van Solo Affair	p: Werner Roth
Mar/66	#5	The Ten Little Uncles Affair	p: Heck
May/66	#6	The Three Blind Mice Affair	p: Mike Sekowsky
July/66	#7	The Pixilated Puzzle Affair	p: Sekowsky
Sept/66	#8	The Floating People Affair	p: Sekowsky
Nov/66	#9	The Spirit of St. Louis Affair	p: Sekowsky
Jan/67	#10	The Trojan Horse Affair	p: Sekowsky
Mar/67	#11	The Three-Story Giant Affair	p: Sekowsky
May/67	#12	The Dead Man's Diary Affair	p: Sekowsky
July/67	#13	The Flying Clowns Affair	p: Sekowsky
Sept/67	#14	The Brain Drain Affair	p: Sekowsky
Nov/67	#15	The Animal Agents Affair	p: Tom Gill
Jan/68	#16	The Instant Disaster Affair	p: Gill
Mar/68	#17	The Deadly Visions Affair	p: Mike Roy
May/68	#18	The Alien Affair	p: Roy
July/68	#19	The Knight in Shining Armor Affair	p: Roy
Oct/68	#20	The Deep Freeze Affair	p: Roy

The Man from UNCLE stories in #21 and 22 were reprints. #5-8 were reprinted in the British Man from UNCLE World Adventure Library in late 1966.

Adam-12 Writers

The two writers on Gold Key's TV tie-in Adam-12 are easy to tell apart by something that's used in almost every story about a police patrol car: sirens. Paul S. Newman's sirens go "Areeeee," John Warner's go "Whee-eeee." (How many times the letter e appears is changeable; I've seen "Areeee" as well from Newman. He wasn't counting as he hit the typewriter key, I'm sure.) There's also a certain amount of wheels skidding in a police-car series; Newman's go "Screech," Warner's "Scree-ee-ee." These siren panels are from each story in #2:

Art is by Jack Sparling except for the first issue, which is by Mike Roy. All issues have photo covers, and after #1 they incorporate pencil-and-ink images by Sparling taken from the stories.

Adam-12 Writers

Oct/73	#1	The Wild Wheelers	Paul S. Newman
		False Alarm	Newman
Feb/74	#2	Assassin's Target	Newman
		The Lady and the Landlord	John David Warner
May/74	#3	Reason to Live	Warner
		The Experiment	Warner
Aug/74	#4	Gang War	Warner
		Heat Wave	Warner
Nov/74	#5	But Not in Real Life	Newman
		Satan's Children	Newman
Mar/75	#6	Finger Man	Newman
		Behind the Mask	Newman
May/75	#7	The Old Guard	Newman
		Trouble in Tow	Newman
Aug/75	#8	The Carnival	Warner
		Help, Murder	Newman
Nov/75	#9	The Torch	Newman
		Smart Alec	Newman
Feb/76	#10	A Double Life	Newman
		One Wild Night	Newman

Twilight Zone 11-15 Writers

"Way Out West—On Mars" in Gold Key's Twilight Zone 13 lifts the plot of Ray Bradbury's short story "Mars Is Heaven!"

The art attributions are on the Grand Comics Database. I don't see myself how Reed Crandall's art looks any different on "Way Out West" than on any other story he inked himself; naming Alden McWilliams as inker strikes me as way out of left field. And "Moment of Decision," as I said last week, is pencilled by Jerry Grandenetti, inked by Bill Draut and Joe Orlando.

"TZ 3" is a writer who will show up in later TZ issues and in Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery on more four-page "strange but true" stories.

The Twilight Zone 11-15 Writers

May/65	#11	The Gremlins	Dick Wood
		The Island Vision	Wood
		The Wanted One *	Wood
		(Wanted...Alive!) Doomsday in Dusterville	Wood
		Ghost Ship of the Skies	Wood
		The Vision *	Wood
Aug/65	#12	The Shadow with Claws	Leo Dorfman
		The Revolt of the Machines	Dorfman
		The Voice in the Mist *	Dorfman
		They Dwell among Us	Dorfman
Nov/65	#13	The Man Who Could Read the Future	Wood
		The Man with My Face	Wood
		Way Out West—On Mars	Wood
Feb/66	#14	The Day That Vanished	Wood
		The Death Car	"TZ 3"
		The Lost Genius	Wood
		The Lost Oasis	Dorfman
		A Nightmare Tale *	?
May/66	#15	Moment of Decision	Wood
		Wipe Out the Future	Paul S. Newman
		The Wheel of Light *	Dorfman
		Perfect Preservation	Wood
		The Vision of Mystir	Dorfman
		The Prophet *	?
		(* single-page stories)

Leo Dorfman names a character Mystir at least one more time: in "The Voodoo Doom of Superman" in Action Comics 413 (June/72)--a story for which he was credited only in the letter column in 417.

Explorers in the Unknown

This Gold Key series about the spaceship Hunter I, the back-up in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, serves as a dress rehearsal for the company's Star Trek for writer Dick Wood, artists Alberto Giolitti and company, Nevio Zecarra, and José Delbo. Star Trek 1 was cover-dated the month after Voyage 9.

Delbo's work here went unrecognized for a few decades. Here's a panel from his story.

Only the Explorers back-up story is new in issue 15; the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea story is a reprint.

Explorers in the Unknown—written by Dick Wood—in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

Nov/66	#6	Manhunt in Space	Giolitti Studio
Feb/67	#7	The Demons of the Deep Space	Nevio Zeccara
May/67	#8	The Hostile Asteroid	Zeccara
Aug/67	#9	The Graveyard of Space	Zeccara
Nov/67	#10	Mystery of the Magnetized Planet Chapter II	Zeccara
Feb/68	#11	Mystery of the Magnetized Planet Chapter III: Uncertain Lift-Off	Zeccara
May/68	#12	Prisoners of the "Jelly" Planet	Zeccara
Aug/68	#13	Chapter II: Prisoners of the "Jelly" Planet	Zeccara
Nov/68	#14	Prisoners of the Jelly Planet—Chapter 3	Zeccara
June/69	#15	Runaway Asteroid	José Delbo

Twilight Zone 1-10 writers

This list indexes the writers of the first ten Gold Key issues of The Twilight Zone. There were four earlier issues, which I've yet to see, published by Dell in 1961-62; Gold Key restarted the numbering with #1.

Those cited by the Who's Who as writing mystery stories in the early Sixties for Western (which would include the Dell TZs, then Boris Karloff as well as TZ, at Gold Key) include Leo Cheney, Royal Cole, and Marshall McClintock. There are no specific stories they're known to have done, so I can't match up the unknown writers' styles with particular authors.

Technically one story in each issue is not a Twilight Zone; there's no logo, no appearance by Rod Serling, and the copyright owner is Western rather than the TV production company, Cayuga.

A stat of Rod Serling's head was used in any number of stories beginning with the third issue. Above, on the left, is the head's first appearance, in a Mike Sekowsky story—and I don't think the head itself is by Sekowsky—then, on the right, it's definitely a stat in an Alex Toth story. Below are two examples from Frank Thorne stories; in earlier ones, he got to draw Serling.

The art attributions are on the Grand Comics Database.

The Twilight Zone Writers

Nov/62	#1	Perilous Journey	"TZ 1"
		Do Not Touch Exhibit	"TZ 1"
		Voyage to Nowhere	Leo Dorfman
Feb/63	#2	The Lost Colonie	"TZ 2"
		Journey into Jeopardy	Dorfman
		The Ray of Phobos	Dorfman
May/63	#3	The Last Battle	"TZ 2"
		Birds of a Feather	"TZ 2"
		The Queen Is Dead—Long Live the Queen	"TZ 2"
Aug/63	#4	The Secret of the Key	"TZ 2"
		Experiment in Purple	"TZ 2"
		The Captive	"TZ 2"
		The Ordeal of Bluebird 3	"TZ 2"
Nov/63	#5	The Legacy of Hans Burkel	Dorfman
		Poor Little Sylvester	Dorfman
		The Shadow of Fate	Dorfman
		The Fortune Hunters	Dorfman
Feb/64	#6	Captives of the Mirage	Dick Wood
		The Night People of London	Wood
		The Last Sixty Seconds	Wood
May/64	#7	The Shield of Medusa	Wood
		The Menace from Out There	Wood
		The Man Who Haunted Himself	Wood
Aug/64	#8	Hamilton's Creature	Wood
		The Night Striker of Paris	Wood
		Iron Man No. 1	"TZ 2"
Nov/64	#9	The Street Where Evil Dwelt	Wood
		The Doom Days	?
		Creatures on Canvas	Wood
Feb/65	#10	The Bewitching Window	Wood
		Lost Acre	Wood
		The Patient Workers *	Wood
		The Demon Light	Wood
		The Mystic Book	Wood
		The Midas Wheel *	Wood
		(* single-page stories)

Gold Key Star Trek Writers

In the second issue of The Monster Times (Feb/72), Len Wein listed his writing credits on Gold Key's Star Trek, mentioning that the writer before him was Dick Wood. The list included all the stories Wein had submitted, even if some hadn't been published yet; all soon were. Wood wrote #1-8, Wein #9-16. Gold Key started running credits with #47. This list gives the writers of #17-46, going by their styles.

The Comic Reader 96 (Apr/73) says that John Warner "...reports doing...some Star Trek stories with some rather familiar people cameoing." Two crewmen in ST 21 are named Levitz and Asherman, after Paul Levitz, then the publisher of TCR, and Allan Asherman, new to DC's editorial staff (and later author of The Star Trek Compendium).

To repeat the gist of an earlier post, #22's "Siege in Superspace" is a sequel to two credited Boudreau science fiction war back-ups in DC's Star Spangled War Stories. The panel above, with 23rd century starship captain Kirk ignorant of black holes (standing in for the 1974 reader about to get some exposition), is from that story.

Gold Key Star Trek Writers

Mar/73	#17	The Cosmic Cavemen	Arnold Drake
May/73	#18	The Hijacked Planet	Drake
July/73	#19	The Haunted Asteroid	Drake
Sep/73	#20	A World Gone Mad	Drake
Nov/73	#21	The Mummies of Heitius VII	John David Warner
Jan/74	#22	Siege in Superspace	Gerry Boudreau
Mar/74	#23	Child's Play	Boudreau
May/74	#24	The Trial of Captain Kirk	Drake
July/74	#25	Dwarf Planet	Drake
Sep/74	#26	The Perfect Dream	Warner
Nov/74	#27	Ice Journey	Warner
Jan/75	#28	The Mimicking Menace	George Kashdan
Mar/75	#29	[reprints #1]	[Dick Wood]
May/75	#30	Death of a Star	Allan Moniz
July/75	#31	The Final Truth	Warner
Aug/75	#32	The Animal People	Drake
Sep/75	#33	The Choice	Moniz
Oct/75	#34	The PsychoCrystals	Drake
Nov/75	#35	[reprints #4]	[Wood]
Mar/76	#36	A Bomb in Time	Drake
May/76	#37	[reprints #5]	[Wood]
July/76	#38	One of Our Captains Is Missing	Drake
Aug/76	#39	Prophet of Peace	Drake
Sep/76	#40	Furlough to Fury	Drake
Nov/76	#41	The Evictors	Drake
Jan/77	#42	World against Time	Drake
Feb/77	#43	The World beneath the Waves	Drake
May/77	#44	Prince Traitor	Drake
July/77	#45	[reprints #7]	[Wood]
Aug/77	#46	Mr. Oracle	Drake

Drake, Kashdan, and Warner continued writing, with credit lines, from #47 to 61. The Gold Key run lasted, by cover date, from July/67 to Mar/79.

Dark Shadows Writers: Full Update

Updating my earlier post, here's a writers' index of the entire run of Gold Key's Dark Shadows; thanks go to darkmark for my seeing the issues filling in the first half of the list. The artist was Joe Certa.



D. J. Arneson had an uninterrupted 17-issue tenure on the feature (and then one more issue). This article by Jeff Thompson quotes editor Wallace Green on  how, after finishing the first issue's script, Arneson had to hustle with six more pages—they went with an epilogue instead of a second story—when it was decided to publish the issue with no ads.

Arneson is probably best known for graphic novels (as they had yet to be labeled in the Sixties) like The Great Society Comic Book, bylined along with artist Tony Tallarico. With Bill Fraccio's and Tallarico's art at Dell, he wrote the monster superheroes, Frankenstein, Dracula, and Werewolf; I misattributed those books' uncredited scripting some time ago to Don Segall.

To touch very briefly upon writers' styles here, when the scream "Augh" appears for the first time in the series in issue 18, I know that John Warner has come aboard; he's the only one of these four early-70s Gold Key writers to use that particular exclamation (although not in his every issue).

The issue numbers in boldface indicate the ones new to this update.

Dark Shadows Writers

Mar/69	#1	The Vampire's Prey	D. J. Arneson
Aug/69	#2	The Fires of Darkness	Arneson
Nov/69	#3	Return for Revenge	Arneson
Feb/70	#4	The Man Who Could Not Die	Arneson
May/70	#5	The Curse of Collins Isle	Arneson
Aug/70	#6	Awake to Evil	Arneson
Nov/70	#7	Wings of Fear	Arneson
Feb/71	#8	The Vampire Trap	Arneson
May/71	#9	Creatures in Torment	Arneson
Aug/71	#10	Souls in Bondage	Arneson
Nov/71	#11	The Thirteenth Star	Arneson
Feb/72	#12	The Glove	Arneson
Apr/72	#13	Hellfire	Arneson
Jun/72	#14	The Mystic Painting	Arneson
Aug/72	#15	The Night Children	Arneson
Oct/72	#16	The Scarab	Arneson
Dec/72	#17	The Bride of Barnabas Collins	Arneson
Feb/73	#18	Guest in the House	John David Warner
Apr/73	#19	Island of Eternal Life	Arneson
Jun/73	#20	Quentin the Vampire	Warner
Aug/73	#21	The Crimson Carnival	Gerry Boudreau
Oct/73	#22	Seed of Evil	Arnold Drake
Dec/73	#23	The Cult of the Dasni	Warner
Feb/74	#24	On Borrowed Blood	Drake
Apr/74	#25	The Immortal	Warner
Jun/74	#26	The Witch Dolls	Drake
Aug/74	#27	My Blood or Yours	Drake
Oct/74	#28	The Visitor	Warner
Dec74	#29	Stolen Centuries	Warner
Feb/75	#30	The Weekend Witch Hunters	Drake
May/75	#31	The Doom of Helgi Kolnisson	Warner
Jun/75	#32	The Secret of the Lighthouse	Warner
Aug/75	#33	King of the Wolves	Drake
Nov/75	#34	Collinwood Possessed	Warner
Feb/76	#35	The Missing Manuscript	Warner

Mighty Samson 1970s Index

The original run of Mighty Samson, from 1964 to 1969, was written entirely by Otto Binder—both Samson and backup Tom Morrow stories. Frank Thorne drew issues 1-7's Samson stories, Jack Sparling the Samson and Tom Morrow in issues 8-20; Mike Sekowsky pencilled and Mike Peppe inked the first Tom Morrow story in 7. Mo Gollub (among others?) painted the covers of issues 1-4, and George Wilson those of 5-20.

21, 22, and 32 were reprint issues.

1970s Mighty Samson Revival Writers and Artists

Mar/74	#23	In the Country of the Blind	w: Gerry Boudreau
			a: José Delbo
Jun/74	#24	The Manchu of C'nal Street	w: Boudreau
			a: Delbo & Jack Abel
Sep/74	#25	The Fugitives	w: Boudreau
			a: Delbo & Abel
Dec/74	#26	The Pollution People	w: Boudreau
			a: Delbo & Abel
Mar/75	#27	Noah's Ark	w: Allan Moniz
			a: Delbo & Abel
Jun/75	#28	Samson's Masters	w: Paul S. Newman
			a: Abel
Sep/75	#29	Journey into the Past	w: John David Warner
			a: Abel
Dec/75	#30	The Balloon Gods	w: Arnold Drake
			a: Abel
Mar/76	#31	The Attack of the Lepidop-Terror	w: Drake
			a: Abel

in Gold Key Champion

May/78	#2	The Night Glowers	w: Drake
			a: Don Heck

The covers of 23, 24, and GK Champion 2 were painted by George Wilson; those of 25-31 by Luis Dominguez.

The Comic Reader 96 (Apr/73) said "...Mighty Samson is returning to the stands in a new title by Gerry Boudreau and José Delbo...", meaning 23. Issues 28-30 contain writer and artist credits. The rest of the credits here are my IDs of the respective styles.

The Grand Comics Database credits Abel with writing 23, nobody with pencilling, and Delbo with inking.  The GCD says that art experts see Delbo ghost-pencilling for Abel on 28, but 24-27 (a page from 25 is shown here) are the ones where I see Abel's inks, and they let a lot of Delbo's pencils show through. Abel's style overwhelms 28, if there's anybody but himself to overwhelm.

Doctor Strange-Dark Shadows Crossover

In the first issue of Doctor Strange's own title, an anti-sorcery zealot, Silver Dagger, stabs the Master of the Mystic Arts near-fatally. Stephen Strange is pulled into the Orb of Agamotto and a world of unreality between life and death, where the first thing he meets is a sarcastic caterpillar atop a mushroom. After Strange dies but gets better, he returns to his Greenwich Village sanctum. There, in Doctor Strange 5, December 1974, he confronts Silver Dagger with the Eye of Agamotto, counterpart to the Orb. (Story, Steve Englehart; pencils, Frank Brunner; inks, Dick Giordano; publisher: Marvel Comics.)

The vampire Barnabas Collins fought the Viking wizard Morath in the past in Dark Shadows 31. At the end, when "the force of his once good nature" was released from his familiar, Morath was left "now and forever locked in combat with himself, and senseless to the world." In issue 34, November 1975, it's revealed that the contact with his materialized good side "flung his spirit into a dimension of unreality, a limbo between life and death." (Story, John David Warner; pencils: Joe Certa; inks: Frank Bolle?; publisher: Gold Key.)

We never see "Stephen." The scene shifts abruptly on the next page as Morath leaves to seek out Barnabas in the present; "The startled woman received no explanation!" the caption notes.

Reading this story when it came out a year after the Doctor Strange one, I recognized the flip-talking caterpillar, and Clea despite miscolored hair. It wasn't until I just now looked at the stories together that I realized the mustached man playing chess with the caterpillar would be Silver Dagger. Obviously Warner didn't explain the in-joke in the script, let alone send Doctor Strange pages as references, for fear of the editors' cutting it.

Dark Shadows Writers

Aug/69	#2	The Fires of Darkness	D. J. Arneson
May/70	#5	The Curse of Collins Isle	Arneson
Aug/70	#6	Awake to Evil	Arneson
Nov/70	#7	Wings of Fear	Arneson
Feb/72	#12	The Glove	Arneson
Aug/72	#15	The Night Children	Arneson
Apr/73	#19	Island of Eternal Life	Arneson
Jun/73	#20	Quentin the Vampire	John David Warner
Aug/73	#21	The Crimson Carnival	Gerry Boudreau
Oct/73	#22	Seed of Evil	Arnold Drake
Dec/73	#23	The Cult of the Dasni	Warner
Feb/74	#24	On Borrowed Blood	Drake
Apr/74	#25	The Immortal	Warner
Jun/74	#26	The Witch Dolls	Drake
Aug/74	#27	My Blood or Yours	Drake
Oct/74	#28	The Visitor	Warner
Dec74	#29	Stolen Centuries	Warner
Feb/75	#30	The Weekend Witch Hunters	Drake
May/75	#31	The Doom of Helgi Kolnisson	Warner
Jun/75	#32	The Secret of the Lighthouse	Warner
Aug/75	#33	King of the Wolves	Drake
Nov/75	#34	Collinwood Possessed	Warner
Feb/76	#35	The Missing Manuscript	Warner

I started collecting the title with #19 and filled in only six earlier issues; I don't expect to get any more at TV collectible prices now. This sampling suggests that Arneson (who wrote the DS Story Digest) might have started as the sole writer on the title.

The Comic Reader 96 (Apr/73) said that "Gerry Boudreau has a few Dark Shadows coming up, including a Rutland story in #24," but there is no DS Rutland story. Gold Key didn't publish a story set at the Vermont super-heroes parade until Don Glut wrote one for Dr. Spektor.

To quickly point out a few clues to the writers: #22, 24, 26, and 30 contain the scream "Ayeee" in various spellings, something used only by Drake among the writers working for Gold Key at the time. #27 and 33 use his "Owwff." On the other hand, "Augh" in #23, 25, and 29 is used by John Warner. #23, speaking of in-jokes, presents the magic spells "Hama-Ka-lu-ta" and "In-a-gada-de-vida."

The entire series was pencilled by Joe Certa. The first seven issues' covers are photos of the TV series star, Jonathan Frid. The covers I have from then on are paintings by George Wilson, who does them through #28 and 30. #29 and 31-35 have line-art covers by Certa.

It looks to me as if Joe Certa does not generally ink himself here, as he did on Martian Manhunter at DC and so forth. I see Frank Bolle inks on some issues and George Roussos inks on others.