Dark Valentine was a quarterly e-zine that published five issues from Summer 2010 to Summer 2011. Its name is a bit of a misnomer; the e-zine did not focus on romance stories, and instead focused on stories with "dark" tones, generally featuring macabre themes, twisted plots, otherworldly creatures, and tragic endings. While a majority of the stories were high fantasy or horror, as suggested by the various cover arts and title, a surprisingly large variety of genres were present in Dark Valentine's pages, including urban fantasy, science fiction, and even one Western (Edward A. Grainger's Justice Served in Issue 3). The illustrations found for each story also featured a number of different styles from numerous artists, each helping to tell the respective tale. I read all five issues of Dark Valentine as they released while I was in high school, and I hoped that one day I'd find my own name on its pages, especially after the shuttering of the similarly-themed Talebones in 2009.
Dark Valentine's website has unfortunately been defunct for over a decade now (an archived mirror can be found here, circa 2011), and while the magazine's publishing house, Dark Valentine Press, still has a website, it has disappointingly little information about the magazine itself. While its final issue made promise of keeping archives of all five issues up and accessible, no mirrors of Dark Valentine exist anywhere on the Internet right now, and plans to produce a print compendium for its stories also apparently fell through, so I've decided to give this old e-zine a home of its own. Dark Valentine was published with the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 license, so uploading it online for a new audience doesn't fall foul of any copyright laws.
I elected to pack all five issues of Dark Valentine into one compressed folder, alongside download links for the individual issues if so desired.
Issue 1
Issue 2
Issue 3
Issue 4
Issue 5
The above image was taken directly from Dark Valentine's first issue, and was drawn by Joanne Renaud, whose online portfolio can be found here and personal blog can be found here. Renaud also drew the cover art for Dark Valentine's fourth issue, and she also acted as its art director throughout its existence.
