Today, Craig Hurd-McKenney talks about how an old soap opera, Dark Shadows, breathed new life, and a new ending, into a relationship long gone. As a side note, I couldn’t back this kickstarter fast enough. I love me some Dark Shadows.
During the pandemic, I was in a comics writing group. I was convinced we’d all be dead and there would be no more conventions. Conversations turned, as they inevitably do, to the franchises we’d love to take a crack at. I have always encouraged creators to focus on their own ideas more so than other IP, so I dreaded the conversation getting to my turn. And when it did, I began to answer (shocking myself even): it was Dark Shadows.
You see, I’d also been rewatching Dark Shadows (the entire 1225 episode catalogue) during the pandemic. If it was all going to be over, what better family to go out with than the Collins family of Collinsport, Maine? So as I began to answer the IP question, the idea for the story sprang, fully formed, into my mind. That very rarely happens for me as a writer.
No spoilers here, but thematically, inspiration can be found in WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE by Shirley Jackson.
There’s Truman Capote and Harper Lee and William Faulkner all in there, too, but all good Dark Shadows storylines were based on some classic fiction. So my approach would be Southern Gothic, channeling my own lived experience and my fractured family ties into a story about the Collins family. Why Southern Gothic? It’s hallmarks: dilapidated mansions, deeply flawed humans usually entrapped in a generations-long family feud, and the sinister events which arise from all of the above. If you know Dark Shadows, then you can see the connections.
I do feel connected to Dark Shadows. My mother would race home from school to watch when the show was originally airing. I haven’t spoken to her in almost 15 years, thus this project was an incredibly healing one. I found the resolution I won’t find in this life. I’m at peace with that. We never discussed Dark Shadows when I was a child. I knew she liked it. While we shared a love of the show, what could have perhaps made us closer never did. But in watching the show in its entirety, I felt that I was able to make a relationship with it (the show) separate from her, and also resolve some of our conflict for myself in writing this new chapter of the show.
So here we are, almost three years later from the comics Discord discussion, and the book is coming out soon. There’s a short and sweet story behind my entrance into the officially licensed world of Dark Shadows, but I’ll save that one for another dark and stormy night.
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Craig Hurd-McKenney is a Xeric grant recipient and Ignatz-nominated comic book writer living in Seattle, WA. He has been making comics since 2000. For more information about Craig, please visit: https://www.hspcomix.com/
