"The Darkhold Saga"

 

            The following is a review of the Marvel Comics Event “The Darkhold Saga” as presented on Marvel Unlimited.

            The Darkhold is a cursed book. Its origins are pretty gruesome, but it has held the elder-God Chthon in Other-Realm for centuries. Its magic is corruptive. Reading from the Darkhold will drive any reader insane.

Victor Von Doom/Doctor Doom has been searching for the Darkhold for many years, and has finally unearthed it. He has sent his herald Victorious to Abysmia to retrieve it. In the meantime, Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch has a haunting dream of chaos caused by Chthon as a warning that he will soon be released. Arriving in Abysmia, Wanda finds that Doctor Doom has already read from the book, believing himself above the standards of “normal men.” Wanda discovers that Chthon had been sealed into the Darkhold by a group of five heroes called the Darkhold Defenders. They all had specific roles in the creation of the seal. Wanda decides to build her own team of Darkhold Defenders: Tony Stark/Iron Man-The Dreamer, Eric Brooks/Blade-The Hunter, Janet Van Dyne/Wasp-The Artist, Blackagar Boltagon/Black Bolt-The Stoic, and Peter Parker/Spider-Man-The Fool. To reinforce the seal, the heroes are to read from the Darkhold, but only enough so as not to be driven insane. The heroes, however, read too far, and their histories are now changed.

Tony Stark created the Iron Man armor as a defense to escape from captivity after being abducted on a routine weapons test. He had to create an electromagnet to save his life. He worked on an update of the armor to use to heal its wearer. Unfortunately, the plan failed and the armor became his skin with no way to safely remove it.

Eric Brooks is Blade, a unique vampire also called the Daywalker due to his immunity to sunlight. He is also a vampire hunter. Unfortunately, a vampire plague has been released, and now almost everyone on earth is now a vampire. Blade must now struggle to keep himself and his friends alive in this new world.

Janet Van Dyne is married to scientist Hank Pym. Their marriage is rather complicated, almost completely one-sided. Hank is more married to his lab work than Jan. He often ignores her and stays in his lab for days at a time. When Hank does pay attention to her, he is verbally abusive to Jan. Finally, Jan has had enough being ignored.

Black Bolt is the King of the Inhuman race. His brother Maximus the Mad has tried to stage several coups over the years to dethrone Black Bolt, and has now had an Inhuman scientist create a device that can make him look like anyone else. Black Bolt must now try to find the wolf in the fold.

Peter Parker is Spider-Man. A plague called the unravelling has struck the world, destabilizing everything. Spider-Man does as much webbing as he can to hold people, animals, and structures together, but it is nowhere near enough.

After all the former heroes escape the Darkhold, they are not the Darkhold Defenders, but the Darkhold Defiled. Doom has been defeated by Chthon, and now it rests solely upon Wanda to stop Chthon’s escape and save the world.

Looking at this event as a whole, I found it relatively interesting. The different histories of the Darkhold Defiled entertained me. And all the issues had a surprise twist ending, and that made me feel the story was worthwhile. However, I must complain about the gruesomeness contained in this event that I can’t talk about on this blog, especially the endings of Iron Man and Spider-Man. Blade’s story, however, was relatively cliché, a vampire apocalypse. I did feel that Wasp’s story got a bit stale in the middle, but I figured out how it would end relatively early on. Black Bolt’s story was my favorite. But in all honestly, I can’t say much about the stories to prevent spoilers. Despite all of it, though, I wasn’t disappointed. I enjoyed the read, and the event didn’t feel overextended like some comic events can be. The seven issues felt just right to me. The focus on all the new histories were interesting, but in all honesty, there were only two issues of importance, the other five just making it an event, but all being one-shots sufficed it for me, especially since it felt like expanding on each character’s story would be unnecessary and even possibly ruin the enjoyment of the story. Plus, hitting the end of each one-shot solidified the story just fine.

Now, again, looking at this as a whole, I must give a numeric score to enforce just how I felt about the story. I score on a scale of one to ten. One is the lowest, ten is the highest. Prior readers will know I’m very hard to please when it comes to reviewing books, so a high score probably means it’s good, but this is just all my opinion. So, let’s not mince words here, get right to the score. Again, as I said, the event as a whole, all cards in, I give it a seven. Despite the gruesome endings of Iron Man and Spider-Man, the endings of Wasp and Black Bolt were good twists, but the Blade issue was mediocre. But the main two issues felt like good bookends. Fortunately, the ending of the last issue didn’t disappoint me. Some events’ finales can be very disappointing, making me feel like reading the whole thing was a waste of time. “The Darkhold Saga” had a conclusive ending that made sense and I didn’t feel like it was forced upon me. I actually read it twice, as each was originally posted on Marvel Unlimited and then as a binge of the event, and reading it twice wasn’t a chore.

Okay, so, let’s talk about if I recommend it. I do. I found this event to be very much self-contained. If you’ve never read a Marvel comic book before, I think this will be intriguing, there could definitely be worse starts. If you’re into the supernatural, and want a supernatural comic storyline, I’d recommend it to you, Marvel veteran or not. I didn’t think it was too off-putting in the gruesomeness, but if you have a weak stomach, this isn’t one to read. Still, I recommend it to you, regular comic reader or newbie reader, pretty much to everyone. And it is very rare that I give an almost completely unconditional recommendation, so you might want to read it for yourself.

Now, to wrap up, I’ll tell you this blog has many reviews on it, mostly Marvel, but I also write essays, editorials, short stories and poetry, so if you like this post, feel free to keep looking at this blog. I post frequently, so you don’t have to wait too long for new posts. And until next time, I say to you, Tim Cubbin… out!