The Darkness #79

I have been a fan of The Darkness since I first saw the character back in Witchblade during the 90’s and my love of the book hasn’t faded throughout all volumes that have came out.

The current series has been written by Phil Hester who has breathed a new life into the character. We have seen Jackie go from running his own island to loosing control of his Darkness power to now starting from scratch, to take down The Sovereign.

The Sovereign had almost convinced Jackie that his soul was trapped in hell and he had to do what The Sovereign wanted him to so he could get it back. As the story led up to this issue we found out that The Sovereign was just playing Jackie and now Jackie is preparing to pay him back.

Jacke is getting a crew together. If you know his history he has done a lot of jobs in his time but his main career has been a hitman for the mob. He’s taking everything that he has learn there and turning it into a business.

As he stats in the book, he’s not going to make a family he’s going to give everyone what they want… Money.

We get to see how Jackie finds everyone for his crew and gives them an offer they can’t refuse. As I stated before Phil has been blowing me away with the writing. He is adding the substance that at one point was lost along the way.

Phil is setting a tone for it and giving a good backing cast so it’s not just about Jackie sending the Darklings in to do his bidding but seeing how it runs it all as a business.

As I’ve stated I’m loving the writing on the book. This issue has Jorge Lucas doing the art duties. The art is a little grittier than what we have had on the book that isn’t a bad thing. Jorge does a good interpretation of the characters in the book but I could help feeling that there is a bit of photo reference going on.

One of Jackie’s new crew, Vike, is the strong arm of the group. But when you first see him in the book he gave a feeling that I was looking at a early 80’s photo of James Hetfield and as we get to his introduction to Jessie you can see that the reference is of Triple H from the WWE.

Now I don’t mind if you do base your characters on real people but wouldn’t you use the same person each time so you didn’t come up with inconsistencies like that?

Other than that one gripe I really enjoyed the book. The story and the art work together to show the dark work that this new crew are getting into and it’s a comic that has substance and doesn’t leave you feeling that you can breeze through it in 10 minutes.

The only feeling I get at the end is a longing for the next months issue.

Rating 5/7

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