The Darkness #8 // Review
Jackie's got somebody at gunpoint. He's asking him how to get rid of something that feels like somewhere between a person and an infection. The gentleman he's got at gunpoint isn't exactly a doctor. He is, however, someone who will prior to himself as being this murderous person in the room. And he has offers a simple answer to Jackie: if he doesn’t want the curse he can simply give it away. Of course, they are going to be complications in. The Darkness #8. Writer Marc Silverstri continues his supernatural crime drama with the art team of Giuseppi Caffaro, Stefano Raffaele, Agustin Padilla and colorist Arit Prianto.
Of course, if Jackis simply hands over a powerful magical force to a very sinister guy, there’s no questioning that he could do some pretty sinister stuff with it. That's not really going to be an issue, though. The Darkness has chosen Jackie, and it's not exactly going to be too terribly comfortable working with anyone else. The gentleman and question claims that he can simply release it back into the force of nature that it has been prior to fusing with him. Jackie is about to find out, however, that it's not going to be even quite bad easy.
Silvestri keep the action and intrigue rolling. The fusion of supernatural forces with a story of organized crime continues to be working in a very clean and efficient fashion. The drama has the proper way. The action has the proper pacing. And everything seems to be moving along in a way that is more or less entertaining. Deeper concerns about power and supernatural forces and humanity, arrest somewhere in the emergents moral less completely unexamined by the central core of the script. This is a pity as it is the case that Silvestri really has the potential to explore some deeper issues with the premise.
They, our team has a tendency to blog down at the page in detail that is not entirely necessary. There's a lot of rendering that seems to be pulling attention away from the central conflict of any given scene. It all works perfectly well on the page more or less. Very visual feel of it has a very early 1990s Image Comics feel about it. Everything is delivered to the page in a various straightforward manner with a lot of detail. Lots of rendering. Lots of lines. But the central impact of any one moment doesn't seem to have the kind of power it could have had with a bit more of a dramatic delivery to the page.
It's not like the story itself isn't interesting. It's just lacking some profound inner direction that would allow it to be a little bit more than a supernatural crime story. The fusion between the two genres is working quite well. But it lags a whole lot of power beyond the initial impact. Jackie seems like an interesting enough character. The central premise of what he's dealing with also seems pretty interesting too. It just needs something more.
