Title | : | The Darkhold |
Author | : | |
Rating | : | |
ISBN | : | 1302925849 |
ISBN-10 | : | 9781302925840 |
Language | : | English |
Format Type | : | Paperback |
Number of Pages | : | 184 |
Publication | : | First published March 1, 2022 |
Collects The Darkhold Alpha (2021) #1, The Darkhold: Blade (2021) #1, The Darkhold: Wasp (2021) #1, The Darkhold: Iron Man (2021) #1, The Darkhold: Black Bolt (2021) #1, The Darkhold: Spider-Man (2021) #1, The Darkhold Omega (2020) #1.
The Darkhold Reviews
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After Dr. Doom accidentally unleashes the god Chthon, the Scarlet Witch gathers a group of heroes—Blade, Spider-Man, Iron-Man, Wasp, and Black Bolt— to read from the Darkhold to unleash their inner insanity and stop Chthon! Amazing plan Wanda! This leads to an Alpha and Omega that bookend the book, mainly dealing with that aforementioned plot, while the rest of the book is filled out with one-shots that show the 5 heroes' darkest fears come to life. Some work better than others, but I enjoyed this for the most part. I also read this in the trade paperback, so I’ll list the stories in the order they were in.
The Darkhold Alpha by Steve Orlando, Cian Tormey, and Jesus Aburtov ☆ ☆ 1/2
This was an okay start that sets up the whole existence of this book. Besides some awesome art and cool Wanda moments, it's not particularly great. The five proceeding short stories definitely carry this collection, as both this Alpha and the later Omega are just fine at best.
Darkhold: Iron Man by Ryan North, Guillermo Sanna, and Ian Herring ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Holy fuck, this was utterly stunning and a great way to kick off the one-shots! A skin-crawling body horror tale that has a neat spin on Tony Stark’s early days as Iron Man, right after he came back to the US of A after escaping the cave. The ending has horrifying implications, making me cringe and squirm more than most Marvel MAX books ever made me. The art is gross while still being terrific, and it compliments the story perfectly, with the coloring adding to how grotesque the art is. Even the lettering stood out to me, so this was just one of those books that does everything it sets out to do absolutely perfectly. A perfect example of why comics are a team effort.
Darkhold: Blade by Daniel Kibblesmith, Federico Sabbatini, and Rico Renzi -☆
This deserves five negative stars but I’ll only give it one since the artists are clearly talented. Daniel Kibblesmith should not be allowed to write comics though. A dumb event makes everyone Vampires and takes away mutants' abilities or whatever. So fucking dumb
Darkhold: Wasp by Jordie Bellaire and Claire Roe ☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2
This was a surprise for sure, but a very welcome one indeed. I know Jordie Bellaire from all her coloring gigs over the years on stuff like Moon Knight, Vision, and Suicide Squad Blaze, but she’s a pretty damn good writer. This was a nice slow-burn tale with a killer ending and some incredible art by Claire Roe as well. This wasn’t as unnerving as something like Iron Man, but it still does a great job at building up to the twist, and just like Iron Man, it’s set during the early days of Avengers continuity.
Darkhold: Black Bolt by Mark Russell, David Cutler, Roberto Poggi, and Matt Milla ☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2
Mark Russell trying his hand at a Twilight Zone-esque story involving the Inhumans? Sign me the fuck up. I love TZ and you can see it heavily influenced Russell here, and I think it totally works. The art is beautiful, the twist in the middle was pretty cool, and the ending worked for me just as well. I don’t think it was anything outstanding or mind-blowing, but it was very good and well-written.
Darkhold: Spider-Man by Alex Paknadel, Dio Neves, and Jim Charalampidis ☆ ☆
This was grosser than anything. The art is the highlight here, a trend among the stories in this book it seems, as the story kinda just drags towards its pretty disturbing conclusion. It’s just Spidey having to web the city back together even though his webbing always dissolved. This was the weakest of the one-shots not counting Blade.
The Darkhold Omega by Steve Orlando, Cian Tormey, Jesus Aburtov, and Roberto Poggi with Marc Deering & Walden Wong ☆ ☆ 1/2
Just like the Alpha, the main plus here is the art and some awesome Wanda moments. My problem was that this wasn’t that interesting and the fact that only one of the five heroes who turned actually feels like the version of the character we saw in their one-shots was super lame. It’s Iron Man and mainly because he actually uses the tech he developed in that one-shot, but all the other heroes are completely different from how we saw them in their respective stories. It’s a weird choice because they are just mindless assholes who kill demons now. Wow so cool.
I would recommend this to anyone who likes horror comics or Marvel in general. Even if the stories are a bit inconsistent throughout, the art is always a constant pleasure. Each artist compliments the story perfectly with their art, and it’s the high point of this book. The covers for each story are gorgeous as well, and if you get the collected edition, you get a Greg Smallwood cover. The variant cover gallery in the back was also one of the better ones I’ve seen in recent memory. This was well worth the read for the art alone, but some good horror one-shots would be worth any Marvel fan's time. -
This is really a tale of 2 separate stories. The bookends are a story unto themselves, while the middle volumes are dark standalone What If? stories.
The Darkhold: Alpha and Omega by Steve Orlando, Cian Tormey & Jesus Aburtov - ★★★
Dr. Doom finds The Darkhold (It's the Necronomicon of the Marvel universe.) and accidentally unleashes the elder god Chthon. The Scarlet Witch shows up because she has a long history of being messed with by Chthon. This does set up a new status quo for the Scarlet Witch. It also brings back an old, obscure character from the 70's in Omega the Unknown.
Blade by Daniel Kibblesmith, Federico Sabbatini & Rico Renzi - ★
Blade runs around in a New York taken over by vampires. Completely uninteresting.
The Wasp by Jordie Bellaire & Claire Roe - ★★★
This starts off kind of boring but ends great. It follows The Wasp around in her early days married to Hank Pym. The story has a 60's aesthetic with women left in the background. Then we get to the moment where Hank hits Jan and things go in a different direction. That's the kind of dark story I love to see in things like this.
Iron Man by Ryan North, Guillerma Sanna & Ian Herring - ★★★
A body horror tale set in Iron Man's early days right after he came back to the states after building the armor. Tony sets to work on his armor as a way to heal himself and things go horribly wrong. Another good one.
Black Bolt by Mark Russell, David Cutler, Roberto Poggi & Matt Milla - ★★
Black Bolt learns Maximus has put together a plot to overthrow him and is stranded on a prison planet. Russell tries to get Twilight Zone with this. I was thoroughly bored.
Spider-Man by Alex Pahnadel, Diogenes Neves & Jim Charalampidis - ★
This was stupid. Everything in Manhattan starts falling apart, buildings and people. Spider-Man spends his days webbing buildings and people back together, only to have the webbing dissolve in 3 hours. This whole thing was pointless. -
An ok book. As soon as I started reading your I knew I was not going to lije it when they gave Spider-man the "fool" totem of the group. Why do they always got to do Spidey like that?
The Darkhold is a book bound in the skin of an elder demon, written by another. To even look read a page of it is to be mad. The demon lord Chthon once possessed the Scarlet Witch, now she using the Darkhold Doom has once again opened the world to him. Now the only the only hope is to choose five champions and use the Darkhold to empower them. However power corrupts, what effect will power made for the sole purpose of corruption have on the heroes.
The book contains dark and corrupted version of the champions. The Alaph and Omega issues are thar actual battle against Chthon. The book finishes with a thumbnail cover gallery including variants and a sketch book containing character designs. -
I recently reviewed Extreme Carnage, which was one of those crossovers where all the plot is in the first and last issues of the crossover while the rest of the entries are their own separate thing. Darkhold is very much the same, with the Alpha setting up the ideas, the one-shots in the middle telling their own separate stories, and the Omega bringing everyone together to resolve the plot presented in the Alpha. It's not a bad set-up, but it does make the middle stories feel unnecessary.
That said, I think the middle stories are the actual draw here. They're all very dark What If? type stories, with some funky horrible twists to beloved characters. The Iron Man story is full on body horror, as is the Spider-Man one with some added despair for good measure. Black Bolt's story is an identity crisis in 30 pages, while Blade's is easily the most hopeful even if it's absolutely not hopeful at all.
Meanwhile the framing sequence, which seems like a good idea to start with, sees the Scarlet Witch trying to deal with Chthon once and for all, only to drag Doctor Doom into the mix. Again, not bad, but it feels a bit anticlimactic, especially since it all turns out to be a vehicle to bring back a character so obscure even I had no idea who they were without a Wikipedia deep dive.
Darkhold's a strange experiment, and if you're looking for something dark and twisted for a change then I'd say give it a look. But if you're here for Scarlet Witch shenanigans, look elsewhere. -
“the scarlet witch will return” EXACTLY 🧎🏻♂️
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Darkhold: O Tomo Negro é uma história em quadrinhos que aborda a busca pelo dito livro que é capaz de despertar um mal ancestral, incorporado pelo deus das profundezas, Chthon. Nessa missão, entram a Feiticeira Escarlate e o Doutor Destino, dois dos grandes magos do Universo Marvel, para evitar que os arautos de Chthon tragam seu mestre de volta. Esses arautos acabam encarnando no corpo de Homem-Aranha, Homem de Ferro, Vespa, Blade e Raio Negro como versões deturpadas desses heróis. Depois da primeira edição, que é bastante interessante, seguem-se one-shots contando a origem destes heróis, que são totalmente desnecessários e cheios de roteiros e desenhos bastante meia-boca. A edição final encerra a saga e o encadernado com uma reviravolta trazendo de volta do nada um personagem, vamos dizer, desconhecido, do Universo Marvel. Darkhold: O Tomo Negro é uma outra daquelas HQs que tem uma premissa boa e um começo empolgante, que vai degringolando com o passar das edições. Uma pena.
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This is one of my favorite Scarlet Witch stories ever written. This creative team is composed of some of my favorites in the comics industry today, and the care and understanding they have for the horrors done to Wanda is the strength of this book.
This is the first time in recent years, maybe ever, that Wanda’s hair, skin, eyes, have been colored correctly. And the way she’s drawn— Her eyebrows! Her hair texture! Her nose! The powerhouse team of Tormey qnd Aburtov on the art in Alpha is my favorite depiction of Wanda ever, and one I feel is the most accurate to her heritage.
The main focus of the story is on two of Wanda’s most prolific abusers. The first being Cthon, who we can thank for years of Wanda being hysterical and tortured, the abuser who made all her stories for the last decade about Wanda pushing that abuse onto others and struggling to atone. We’ve had so many stories of Wanda apologizing and making amends for M-Day and fall of avengers mansion, and it’s such a relief that this story is a Wanda who has come to terms with the past and refuses to let it control or hold her back anymore. Instead of spending every ones apologizing, she’s fearsome and unwavering and clever. She asserts that she is not broken, not someone’s tool, not the way she has been characterized for the past 20+ years. And the way she defeats Cthon is brilliant and chilling— no one has suffered more than Wanda, so she can take it, she will take it, and continue to carry these burdens because they really can’t touch her anymore.
But the best part of this story is that Wanda finally gets to address what Doom did to her. Young Avengers fans who read childrens crusade know about Doom’s attempted wedding to Wanda, the in-canon years she was held captive by him and brainwashed, and all the classically-comic-book skin crawling implications such an experience holds. And the way it never seemed to be addressed afterward.
After her abuse by Cthon, Wanda was immediately retraumatized by Doom. And to see her finally assert that and make her boundaries clear, to best and humiliate him, to prove that she is truly in an entire different playing field, is so satisfying.
This mini series sets up a new characterization and journey for Wanda that’s been a long time coming, and one I hope we get to see play out. It feels like the traumas Wanda has been through have been put to rest in a way that feels true to character and how humans grow after abuse. If her abusers told her she was weak, it only makes sense that she’s stronger than Kings, eldritch gods, and cursed stories.
How especially clever this book is, that the cure to overcoming a bad story being to look it in the eye and tell it it doesn’t own you. -
Wanna throw a thanks to a good friend who was kind enough to lend me her copy. <3
The True Darkhold, perhaps the most cursed item in the Marvel Universe, has been found by Victor von Doom, who is attempting to harness its magnificent might for himself. This alerts Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch, who attempts to stop him. I didn't expect this to be a subtle sequel to The Children's Crusade, but I'm glad to see it. It's great to see Wanda and Victor interacting again, and the mix of respect and animosity between them came off as nuanced. Well, as nuanced as a man who refers to himself in the third person can be. Between the intriguing premise, strong writing, and my need to see more Wanda-centric stories that celebrate her instead of unfairly vilifying her, I was immediately invested.
To stop the True Darkhold, Wanda assembles five teenagers with attitude allies who fit an archetypical "role" needed for a spell she is planning to use.
Some of her choices to fill the roles work for me. Wanda is friends with Janet and is/was at least friendly co-workers with Tony. I'm not well-versed on her relationship with Spider-Man, but I can realistically believe the two have met. Spidey knows everyone. The story makes it apparent Blade is familiar with Wanda on sight, so that's cool. A little unsure about Black Bolt. Have these two interacted? Why pick him as "The Stoic" instead of someone like, I dunno... Vision? Maybe because he's not fully biological? Or it would be too awkward to ask for help from your ex? But then, of everyone you can think of, why Black Bolt of all people? Wanda basically kidnapped a king. But okay, sure.
Wanda assembles her group of marketable heroes and beseeches them to read from the True Darkhold. "Just enough to gain resistance to the effects of Cthon's realm." Except, whoops, instructions unclear and her five champions read too much and go insane.
Herein lies an issue. This "event" has so much potential that goes unmet because instead of being about Wanda leading a team of her (ostensible) friends against the greatest magical threat known to the planet, staving off hell and the fall of man, it's mostly just a framing device for an anthology about the corrupted heroes.
I like a good anthology. I like character-focused, navel gazing, introspective stories. But this is a massive and terrifying eldritch event which gets severely limited in page time and it really kills the pacing. The threat is just BAM, In Yo Face and gets resolved almost anticlimactically. What should've been a slow burn into horror, character development among the team and a lead in to an epic conclusion gets heavily diluted so it can fit in two comics-worth of space.
Wanda gets some great moments, so I'm happy about that, but this really should've been more issues to flesh it out instead of feeling so rushed.
As for the anthology stories, they're a bit mixed as all anthologies tend to be. Thankfully none of them are straight up bad, and two of them are exceptional.
Black Bolt's is the least interesting. It focuses on another attempted coup by Black Bolt's brother Maximus (is it Thursday already?) Nothing about it is particularly bad, though the big "twist" at the end is kind of convoluted. Black Bolt's inner monologue is well done.
Blade and Spider-Man's are mid from a narrative standpoint, more engaging than Black Bolt's, but not as strong as the main plot. Blade's story focuses on Amadeus Cho in a world where a vampire virus has spread across the galaxy. Amadeus and a group of non-turned warriors are fighting against Wilson Fisk, the vampire lord of New York. Blade, meanwhile, is acting as an enigmatic third party who is killing vampires and humans alike. It's like DC Vampires, but... Marvel.
The art is very different from anything else in the book. It's very high energy anime. Blade always looks good, but he's really slick looking here. My biggest issue with Blade's story is that... there's not much Blade. The other characters take up valuable page time, and this feels the most like it should've been a miniseries that explores this new world, with Amadeus as our viewpoint character and Blade as the big mystery. Make it happen Marvel.
Spider-Man's story is less interesting than Blade's as a main story, but it has better individual moments. Does that make sense? I cared more about Blade's setting, but I wasn't really connected to any of the characters. So in this one, Peter is swinging through New York, trying to keep it from falling apart-- literally-- for reasons I don't totally understand. Maybe a reference to a Spidey event I'm unfamiliar with, Gone Bad. Either way, Peter is one of the only non-affected people, along with Reed Richards. I was mostly just confused with this one. The world felt like it needed more fleshing out. What I appreciated though were two-fold: Pete's encounter with Venom is extremely sad and hits hard as an Eddie fan, and the very ending (Reed's last lines!) have stuck with me in one of those "Jesus Christ, that's dark" kind of ways.
Tony and Janet's respective stories are the high points. Tony's is a retelling of his immediate origin, but from Pepper's perspective. We love Pepper in this house. The story is paced well, builds suspense, and becomes a straight up horror story by the end. Tony's writing is so good. The art is spooky and atmospheric. I absolutely adored this.
Janet's story is kind of the same thematically-- a retread of her early history, but through a more introspective lens. Some of the dialogue is pretty much verbatim from the comics back in the day, which adds to the surreal horror of it all. It's a Janet character study at the core, and it's so strong. The art is absolutely gorgeous, and the 1950/60s designs look great. This story ended up being my favorite, with Tony's as a very close second.
Some of the individual bits were great. Nothing was actively bad. The biggest issue was a lack of page time. If the into and outro were two-three issues longer each I think we would have had a real killer adventure. As it stands now, I definitely recommend this for fans of Wanda, Janet or Tony. Their bits alone make the story a worthwhile read.
Couldn't decide between three or four stars, and 3.5 wasn't an option. I'd rather lean towards the positive. -
Too much happening, yet no actual character development. It feels a bit like a Marvel's What if.. story yet even more chaotic.. Often had to flip back to other pages to see if I missed something or it just randomly was there out of the blue...
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This was a really interesting story! Definitely some points I liked more than others but all and all it provided a interesting lenses into Wanda’s character and the marvel universe
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Another “big” event that uses pieces of characters as chess pawns for the sake of the plot its creatives want to tell. Loads of body and psych horror and none of the characters’ hearts.
The initial story pulled me in and the final story at least concluded it. I know the end was meant to be strong but failed for me as I think it misreads the Scarlet Witch (like many before have, especially Bendis).
Can’t really recommend unless you like seeing long standing characters turned into horror tropes, so it’s for Marvel Zombies fans I guess -
Yo, pourquoi il y a autant de critiques élogieuses ??? C'était nul ??? Titre mensonger, on ne parle pas du out du Darkhold mais d'histoires alternatives pour différents personnages Marvel. J'ai même pas compris la trame principale, ça n'a pas de sens ? Les différents chapitres, qui racontent la vie alternative de chaque personnage, sont vraiment ennuyeux ??? Les seules histoires sympas sont celles d'Iron-Man et de la Guêpe (vraiment cool ça). Je ne pourrais pas prêter ce comics à une amie, je l'apprécie trop pour lui faire perdre son temps. Pour 19 euros c'est une honte. >:(
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interesting read
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Certainly an interesting read. I would have liked more heroes previously associated with the Darkhold such as Werewolf By Night, but I get it from a marketing standpoint. The individual issues which are dark What Ifs is the highlight of the trade. Twilight Zone story. The alpha and omega issues where fine, but anticlimactic.
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Ehhhm... I don't know. This is not at all what I expected. The actual plot is only dealt with in the first and last issues, and it seems just an excuse to develop a few "What If...?" stories, that yeah, are mostly nice, but save from the Iron Man and Spider-Man ones, not truly outstanding either. I did like what they do with most of the characters, and the art was fine overall, but I think the volume requires knowing a lot about them to truly enjoy whats happening.
I don't know. It's not a bad comic, but aside from a few really great parts, it's not essential. -
Well, all in all the worst marvel comic I’ve ever read. The different stories gave me a kind of “What-If”-Vibe, but had NOTHING to do with the actual Darkhold-plot. So just a bunch of nonsense and except of the Wasp story (which was way to short), the stories are just boring and absolutely weird. Not that typical mystery-weird, just WEIRD.
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I think only the second time Marvel's knock-off Necronomicon (it even includes the word "fhtagn"!) has got a book of its own, and whereas the first was wonky but pioneering (including the publisher's first openly lesbian character), the opening gambit of this one is just a mess. Granted, that old mainstay of Doctor Doom biting off more than he can chew is played with enough nuance to get around much of the potential overfamiliarity, but a lot of the rest is generic event set-up 101, right down to the odd assortment of characters grabbed unceremoniously from their own stories to play protagonist. As for the mission...they then have to read a little bit of the Darkhold, because they need a certain amount of madness to be able to do the thing, but not too much. Anyone possessing even osmotic familiarity with Call Of Cthulhu could tell you how well that was likely to go, and lo and behold, they all fail their SAN checks and go a bit too mad. Which manifests as getting red and black costumes with boob windows and spiky bits, because apparently madness inspired by dark and ancient gods is much the same as getting a reboot in the nineties. Though the evil tome itself has also had a reboot; apparently this is now the original edition, which was copied on to stone, which was then itself copied on to what we'd long assumed was the original, and how long until we find another stone version before this, and then the oldest version of all, honest, on a dot matrix print-out?
Anyway. That's the plot proper, but it only surfaces in the opening and closing issues, and Steve Orlando is no longer a writer I feel particularly motivated to follow, his early promise having rarely been sighted in more recent work. The reason I gave this a chance was that the intervening five issues are each a self-contained dark What If? by a different writer, some of them interesting. Alas, it turns out that while Ryan North may have been responsible for one of the best Marvel runs ever with Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, if you get him to do an Iron Man horror story, all he manages is to invent the Cybermen again. And while Mark Russell is a writer who was able to make searing critiques of the American century out of Snagglepuss and the Flintstones, even he proves unable to render the internal politics of the Inhumans interesting. Jordie Bellaire's Wasp story barely even counts as horror so much as what someone should have done to Hank Pym a long time ago; the Blade one is just forgettable. Spidey is probably the best of a bad bunch, but then I dislike Spidey and enjoy stories about him fucking up even more than he usually does, so I'm biased. They're saved, to some extent, by the art: Roe and Bellaire give Jan's story a warped romance comic look, while Guillermo Sanna and Ian Herring make CyberStark much creepier than he deserves to be. But all in all, reading this is barely a better idea than reading the actual Darkhold - at least that would come with a makeover. -
Iron Man 2.5
Good ending but too long, the pace was horrible
Blade 2
Pretty anticlimactic because the twist is not saved until the end
The Wasp 3.5
Pretty simple story but paced really well and not super out there
Black Bolt 3.5
Felt very twilight zone esque the only problem is that the twist that mak3s the story interest is until the very end so you sent get much time to process it
Spider-Man 4
Wasn’t convinced at the beginning but very creepy -
Wanda solos
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This book was a dark and fun concept. Not sure how it will play into the Marvel Universe at large, but with the new Dr. Strange movie coming, I saw "Darkhold" and "Scarlet Witch" on the cover, and thought I'd read it before seeing the movie...
The story revolves around the Darkhold being found by Doctor Doom and his servant/bodyguard/love Victorious. Being that the book is connected with Chthon and Scarlet Witch (really should look into this connection and become more knowledgeable about it), she immediately goes to them. In order to stop Chthon from waking up, the "Darkhold Defenders" need to be awoken. Wanda chooses Blade, Wasp, Iron Man, Black Bolt, and Spider-Man. Needing them to experience "madness", they have to read a passage from the book, which transforms them into a crazy form. (These were really dark and awesome!)
Then we get a backstory for each of them indicating their new origin that got them like that....
- Blade claims the power of La Magra for himself, after most of the humans were turned to vampires, then kills all the vampires, leaving himself as the only one left
- Wasp decides she has stood too long in the shadow of Hank Pym and kills him in cold blood
- Iron Man comes home from the first time making his suit and begins working on it, realizing that being in the suit will always be better, and he basically eliminates his humanity
- Black Bolt is actually Maximus, his jealous brother, who has altered himself and his powers to be just like Black Bolt
- Spider-Man does whatever it takes to save his wife, Gwen Stacy, when things start to fall apart.... including use Reed Richards for webbing....
Coming all together, the final fight with Chthon begins, ending with Wanda absorbing him and the Darkhold, and being able to set the 5 heroes right again.
Again, not sure what this will mean for Wanda (especially with her death at the end of the Hellfire Gala), but I guess I'll find out.
Very cool one Volume story. Check it out. Recommend. -
When I skimmed the teaser, I was optimistic. After my reaction to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, I was ready to see a take on the Darkhold's place in the MCU. Finally, a team promised to present the volume in all of its gruesome horror. And the initial prelude offered the take on evil personified that I anticipated. (Maybe a touch heavy-handed and overdramatic, but we're talking the evilest character, so I figured I could let it pass)
Unfortunately, the horrific madness didn't last.
These are champions, heroes, descending to their vilest, basest instincts and desires. It was an opportunity to find the chinks in the armor and twist the story. And while some of the writers - Mr. North, Ms. Bellaire, Mr. Paknadel - rose to the challenge, the others turned in a lackluster performance. Mad? Twisted? Outside of their usual character? Eh, not so much. Granted, I have zero knowledge of the histories of these characters (aside from what I've gleaned from movies and television), but I didn't find anything worthy of a shiver or a grimace. Instead, it was nothing more than a casual shrug at a wasted effort.
Even the grand finale (why do these epic magical battles always fall flat?) felt wanting. The tendency of these comics to introduce the dreaded deus ex machine is beyond irritating. In a world composed of superheroes possessing abilities that defy description, it's a copout to deliver a savior from the aether. Such a weak literary device cheapens the entire tale, stealing away even Scarlet Witch's triumph.
When offered the chance to play with the shadow sides of characters, unearthing the darkest motivations of their minds and actions, I expect more. It's a shame that so much of the writing failed to deliver on that promise. -
A good read but needed more of a storyline. Worth a read but I wouldn’t pay full price for it.
The illustrations were amazing! The character designs were gorgeous! A lot of thought went into it and you can tell. Easily one of the best things about this comic. Also the variant covers are stunning, you should check those out!
Now the bad part….
The main storyline (the first and last comic) needed more going on. It was very straight forward and ended very quickly. There was no struggle when fighting chthon it was over it a matter of pages.
It took me a hot minute and a google search to realise that the middle comics with the individual characters are what if? dark stand alones (I could’ve just been really dumb and not realised). These ranged from amazing to boring af.
IronMan - AMAZING. I had chills. This is the level of story telling that I was expecting. Put the dark in darkhold.
Blade - so boring I instantly forgot what actually happened (spoiler: it wasn’t a lot).
Wasp - got better as you read on. Predictable but we appreciate a girl boss moment
Black bolt - boring until the end twist which was the end couple pages
Spider-Man - a solid meh.
Overall, this could (and hopefully) will be used as references for future marvel projects. I wish it had a stronger storyline because the concept is great, they just didn’t quite nail it.
For anyone wondering, I bought the comic at Forbidden Planet, it sells for £14.99 :) -
I really didn’t enjoy reading this but that isn’t necessarily evidence that it’s bad. I don’t know much about the Darkhold, Scarlet Witch outside House of M, or anything about Chthon so the core of the narrative here was entirely lost on me (though I wasn’t very clear on what led up to this volume either). The interlude chapters ranged from downright horrific (and fairly well executed) in the case of Stark and Spider-Man, but the Blade and Blackbolt and Wasp stories felt entirely out of place and didn’t really offer clear insights into how their characters became who they were when influenced by the Darkhold (seemingly only Iron Man got that clear bridge from interlude chapter to his new-to-me-at-least character). The art ranged with the interlude chapters, with some reasonably inspired stuff (I liked the sorta 50s-era minimalism quasi-art deco look of the Iron Man and Wasp entries). But by the end, I wasn’t really sure why I read any of this nor what the stakes were beyond GLOBAL CATASTROPHE!
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This was a weird book. Obviously, they had to write a Wanda-Darkhold book because of Wandavision (good show!) and it's rather cheesy when Marvel does this to align with other media.
So this was essentially their effort to write a Cthulu-esque dark horror story given the nature of the Darkhold and the role Chthon plays in the Marvel Universe. The Scarlet Witch's efforts to recruit heroes to stop the latest Chthon incursion results in the Darkhold Defenders...but something else.
Confusingly, the bulk of this collection involves one-shots that depict the lives of these different heroes if they lived in very Cthulhu-esque dread versions of their realities. These standalone stories have nothing to do with the main event, but they make for decently interesting reading. And then after all those solo stories, we get back to the action and try to wrap things up very quickly.
It's all the given Wanda a new status quo that is very magic and not very mutant. and we re-introduce a random character back into the Marvel Universe just because. -
Four good short stories wrapped in a dull framing narrative. The first issue sets up the conflict and the last brings it to a close. Everything in between is functionally a collection of What If style stories that don't really connect to the other two. Thing is, those stories are actually good. The Iron Man story is pure body horror, Blade gets an interesting vampire dystopia, Black Bolt gets an unresolved existential crisis, and Spidey's story is sad and horrifying and probably the best of the lot. In universe, these stories are contained within the titular Darkhold, a sort of extremely powerful mystical book that is really poorly explained in context. Reading these stories drive the heroes into some sort of mystical evil madness. Again, poorly explained. The ending is weirdly anticlimactic, and seems to serve only to make an already overpowered character even more powerful. I can highly recommend the middle four stories, but the framing narrative just didn't work for me.
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Si hay una cosa que no me acaba de gustar mucho de Marvel son los "what if...?"s que no acaban de aportar mucho. Y este tomo es una buena muestra de ello. Partiendo de la premisa del maldito libro conocido como Darkhold y de cómo la Bruja Escarlata y dr Doom intentan parar a Chthon en su enésimo intento de conquistar la tierra. Para ello, la Bruja Escarla recluta a Iron-Man, Spider-man, Blade, Blackbolt y a la Avispa para que se sumerjan sus, supuestas, peores locuras y/o pesadillas para poder convertirse en guerreros que podrán enfrentarse a Chthon. Cada mini-historia nos plantea el temor de cada héroe.
Como ya sabemos que son pesadillas, no va a tener consecuencias posteriores, así que te da un poco igual lo que les pase. Todo ello para, finalmente, hacer a la Bruja Escarlata más poderosa y presentar a un nuevo personaje.
Lo más destacable ha sido descubrir el estilo de dibujo de Guillermo Sanna y Claire Roe. -
Bleah! The only good part of this (and the only part I would recommend you read) is the first and last chapters (Alpha and Omega). And even then, the finale was rather pedestrian for such a reality-bending, world-conquering menace as Chthon. It was great to see Dr. Doom in the first part. But the Scarlet Witch, while being essential to this, was almost nothing more than a throwaway character.
The middle five stories are simply thinly veiled "What If...?" scenarios that attempt to show how those five characters could have ended up as the needed avatars for defeating Chthon. -
Darkhold is essentially multiple stories in one. The first and last chapters are about the discovery of the true Darkhold, the book of evil and the demon that it awakens. The middle chapters each focus on an individual marvel character and serve as "What if...?" Storylines each with a horror theme.
The overarching story is okay but predictability and a lack of any true uniqueness hold it back. The middle sections are hit and miss but there are some interesting concepts. The varying art styles are very nice and differ from chapter to chapter depending on whose story is being told. Iron man and the Wasps chapters stood out the most to me.
Darkhold is an interesting concept that ultimately fails to meet its true potential but it's always nice to see some fan favourite characters and explore a few interesting concepts along the way. -
Okay I was going to write a big review on why I didnt like this comic but I got lazy and I dont think it need anything else then to say that it is not what one expects it doesnt give much understanding of what the darkhold is to wanda it is expected to already know what Cthon and the darkhold has dont to the scarlet witch and her persona. the only thing i like about this comic was the wasp story line, iron mans, and spider-mans although the latter one was okay not as scary as iron mans and the wasps. i do not recommend it as it just a small continuation of the connection scarlet witch has with cthon and the darkhold. i give it a two stars because of the wasps and iron mans storys when they read the darkhold.