Customer Reviews

The HANGMAN (DARKMAN 1): THE HANGMAN

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Being a fan of Randall Boyll's novelization of "Darkman," I picked up his first expanded universe title, "The Hangman," at a used bookstore. It's a mediocre effort.

2 years after the events of the first film, Darkman comes to the aid of a recently orphaned inner city kid, who's been recruited as a petty thief by local hoodlums.

The main problem with the book is that Darkman is relegated to a supporting role. He hasn't carved out much of a life for himself after the events of the film, but he does seem to be developing schizophrenia as a side-effect of his self-imposed solitude.

Naturally, Darkman uses his synthetic skin, which still dissolves after 99 minutes, to create masks and assume the identites of others over the course of the story. These scenes, however, are largely unremarkable and don't expand on anything that we've already seen.

Boyll is a gifted writer in terms of crafting visuals. His story sense and pacing are the only sticking points. The ending is absurdly rushed. It reads as though the deadline was looming. Still, I'm curious how the expanded universe books continue. Perhaps "The Hangman" is simply a sophomore slump.

The first of a series of Darkman books, The Hangman is pretty ordinary. A significant amount of time has passed since the events of the movie, and Westlake is still working on this skin technology, and it still has the same limitations and problems, so he isn't getting very far, and it is affecting him psychologically.

He does use it and his abilities to help get some local kids out of trouble, though.