Customer Reviews

The Darkness Ultimate Collection

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This collection contains "The Darkness vol. 1 issues 1 - 6 & 40, along with The Darkness vol. 2 issues 1 - 6. The two arcs collected here are known as "Coming of Age" and "Ressurrection" respectively.

The first arc is written by Garth Ennis and drawn by Marc Silvestri, while the second is handled by Paul Jenkins and Dale Keown.

Overall, I found the Ennis/Silvestri stories to be superior, however, the second arc was interesting as well.

I thought this collection was a good value at less than $10. and is a good place to start if you've never read The Darkness before.

It covers the very beginning of the series and the story arc that the game was based off of. The only thing I didn't like was that it goes from issue 6 to 40 in volume 1 and skips all the stuff in-between. If you are new to the series, it's better to buy a different product if you don't want to jump ahead in the story.

Overall, this is a really great book. It provides a summary of the darkness and gives you enough information for you to start reading the ongoing series vol. 3 (incase you didn't know, vol.3 of the darkness just started). If you really liked the videogame, and you don't wanna read the darkness:levels (since it's just a graphic novel version of the videogame), then this is the perfect book to buy. It includes two different story arcs, coming of age and ressurection, which are the beginnings to vol.1 of the darkness and vol.2. Coming of Age is very good but the other 30 some issues of volume 1 are for the most part very bad. Ressurection is very good also, along with the rest of volume 2. In coming of age, the story is much more "comic booky" and is not serious at all. Ressurection, which i found better, is more serious and character driven. Also, the way the darkness is displayed in Ressurection is much better because in coming of age jackie estacado wears a costume and the darklings are always making jokes and dressing up, while in ressurection, jakie doesn't wear a costume and the darklings are much more grim.

Being a big fan of Marc Silvestri's work I went on to Amazon looking for something else that he had penciled and I came across The Darkness. Most of the other graphic novels that you buy are in sequence. The Darkness Ultimate Collection is not. The Darkness Ultimate Collection is the first six issues, then issues 50 through 54, with the first half being penciled by Marc Silvestri. The first half was exactly what I was looking for, being about a guy who discovers that on his 21st birthday he gains supernatural powers as well as a group of super powered people trying to kill him. These first six issues are well written, engrossing, and beautiful to look at. The second half however is somewhat disappointing. Somewhere between the first half and the second half the super powered enemies as well as Jackie's ability to control the darkness have disappeared. The second half of this book concerns itself completely with Jackie's ties to the mob family that he used to belong to and how it changes when a new player comes into town. Given the abilities that Jackie learned to use in the first half of the book, the issues that he faces in the second half should be trivial. I'm sure that I missed something in the 44 issues in between that would've made this change makes sense, but with the second half being so completely different than the first half I quickly lost interest in the story.

Now, i played before i knew about the comic series and the game is what turned me to the comic series and to my surprise, it was produced by Top Cow which is my favourite production company.
The story is interesting and illustrations are good. Cursed mobster is an excellent idea and i think the story should be put into a movie.

I just finished reading this great collection of stories about The Darkness. Complimenting the fantastic artwork with a compelling story has brought many of us former collectors back. Seeing the world through the eyes of a criminal is definitely not what typically defines a superhero. The Darkness is more like a vigilante, like The Punisher who hands out his own type of justice. A victim of his heritage and wielding an incredible weapon of sorcery, he is only held in check by his conscious. Most of our heroes are usually seen in the light of day, but what about the darkness?!