The Darkness Ultimate Collection
The Darkness Ultimate Collection, by Garth Ennis, Paul Jenkins, Marc Silvestri & Dale Keown, Top Cow Productions/Image Comics
JACKI ESTACADO is a hit man for a Mafia hit family. He’s adopted; his real father had the power of the Darkness, as did all his forefathers dating back an awful long time and now Jackie’s got it bad too. The Darkness allows him to wield magic from some dark eldritch dimension and have its creatures do his bidding.
Jacki finds this out unexpectedly when the power manifests itself to protect him one dark and deadly night. It transpires the Brotherhood of Darkness have been waiting for this moment, only this current batch of priests aren’t followers of this umpteenth coming so much as wanting to steal the power from him, especially their head priest Sonatine. And as the Darkness is to the powers of chaos so are the Angelus to law and order so he has to contend with these winged scantily clad warrior women too while all the time trying to find out who shot his uncle Uncle Frank and if there’s a traitor in the family...
There’s lots of blazing guns, posed babes, and some snazzy eldritch pyrotechnics in the origin story – the most obvious way to describe this might be Marvel’s Son of Satan meets The Godfather, but I can also see Valiant Comics’ Archer & Armstrong and Warren’s The Goblin but all given a modern flashy TV edge to it.
Ennis tells a good tale; there’s cynicism without it becoming too obvious, dark comedy that for the most part flows naturally from events and conversations and it’s slickly paced thanks to Silvestri’s art – sure he’s one for posed shots but he can also cut to the fast chase sequentially better than even he’s probably ever been given credit for.
The second story in this book starts off implying something akin to Orpheus’s trip to the underworld come Dante’s Inferno is about to take place and as this collection promotes the fact that these stories are the basis for a video game for The Darkness, a visual roller coaster around Hades to take place. Only it doesn’t. Jenkins’ tale is more a variation on The Sopranos as it mixes psychological emotions, Mafia backstabbings , shoot-outs and hell-fire magic. Keown’s art is taken from his pencilled art, the colourists tend to over model in their digital enhancement and make some pages too dark. The story tends to go on too long, but it's not completely without redemption.
Sponsored by Target Media.
