The Darkness #4 // Review
There’s a white van that pulls into an alley in the Bronx. It’s raining. A big guy named Butcher gets out of the van. He’s there to meet with Jackie. Jackie’s there to ask a favor of Butcher. He’s one of only a couple of people Jackie feels like he can trust. So he shows Butcher his demons in The Darkness #4. Writer Marc Silvestri continues his supernatural revival with the art team of Giuseppe Cafaro, Augustin Padilla and colorist Arif Prianto. Some of the action feels a bit weak, but the drama at the heart of the series continues to hold its appeal.
There’s a safe house. Jackie wants Butcher to take Jenny to the safe house in question if anything should happen to him. Jackie knows that he’s in a bit more danger than he usually is and so it’s totally understandable that he might be in a position to suddenly...disappear. Jackie gives Butcher the address of the safe house and the combination to the safe inside it. When Butcher’s gone, Jackie’s going to have a conversation with his demons. That conversation is going to be cut short when angelic, animalistic winged warriors show-up.
Silvestri’s best work in the issue involves the conversation that Jackie has with the demons that he’s been hanging out with. It’s pleasantly weird on a few different levels that seem far enough way from the more standard schlocky Image Comics action horror stuff that listlessly glares and snarls across the page in the action sequences. The deeper psycohlogical aspects of the horror seem a lot more interesting than anything else that Silvestri has to offer. The crime drama angle doesn’t have a whole lot to offer. The action feels pretty dull. It’s the deeper interior stuff that feels much more compelling.
It may not have a whole lot of visual impact, but the supernatural action IS brought to the page with a certain amount of respectable depth. Prianto’s colors lend a great deal of atmosphere to the page which helps to define a line-heavy rendering of a dark metropolitan world that is also inhabited by demons and angels and things. Looking as generic as he is, Jackie doesn’t exactly light up the page all that well all by himself except when the magic masks him-up and he takes to looking like a more standard superhero.
It's not like there is a whole lot of potential in the series still. I mean, I've had been running for quite some time. It still holds a great deal of potential all these years after which was first introduced. And certainly there are elements and aspects of what Sylvestri and Company are bringing to the page that continue to hold fascination. It's just a matter of angling the story just right to capture those things that are of greatest interest. It's kind of difficult to manage that when there are so many ways for it to go wrong.
