Dark Forces won the World Fantasy award for best anthology/collection in 1981 and is celebrated in an essay by Christopher Golden in Horror: Another 100 Best Books, edited by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman.

It featured the same stories, but it also included signatures from the editor and all of the artists, a new interview of Kirby McCauley conducted by Kealan Patrick Burke, a new cover by Bernie Wrightson, and over twenty-four new color and black and white inner illustrations by Jill Bauman, Glenn Chadbourne, Alan M. Clark, Allen Koszowski, Alex McVey, Keith Minnion, Chad Savage, and Erik Wilson.

McCauley writes in his original introduction, "I set out to offer as many of the subjects and moods and general directions the fantastic tale has tended traditionally to take as I could, but hopefully in imaginative, fresh ways."

Edward Bryant's story "Dark Angel" introduced modern-day witch Angela Black, whose name reflects her moral ambiguity.

Author Christopher Golden has stated that Dark Forces "approached horror as literature with a sturdy defiance, McCauley recruiting Isaac Bashevis Singer and Joyce Carol Oates, among others, to contribute unsettling tales."