Digitally Speaking...#7 "The Darkness"

FCBD 2011 The Darkness 2: The Confession #1 (Top Cow)
Previously in this column I spoke about how terrible an example another Top Cow offering from Free Comic Book Day had been.  This would be more or less the opposite case.  This one's actually pretty good, and what's more, helps makes sense of a comic book property until that had only managed to baffle me.

The Darkness is Top Cow's second best known property after Witchblade.  That alone seems to have been its reason for continued existence, because otherwise it never really distinguished itself as a concept, other than the fact that it was a horror property in the general vein of Todd McFarlane's Spawn, anchored to a mob figure with the unfortunate name of Jackie Estacado (which remains one of the worst comic book names ever).  Simpy put, I never understood it at all.  I thought it was just another example of dumb nonsense from people who wanted to create something new in superhero storytelling but really had no idea how to do it.  (After all, until the Yancy Butler TV series, Witchblade was most distinguished by her relative lack of clothing, which really only identified her with all the other '90s "bad girls," until Ron Marz came along and expanded on the mythology, which has led to the whole Artifacts concept that DC borrowed for Aquaman's new allies the Others, who are soon to receive their own ongoing series.)

Besides "Jackie Estacado," "The Darkness" was also a fairly dubious moniker.  What did it mean?  Again, I never had any idea.  The concept simply existed.  It was never explained, except in the most general ways.  No wonder it never found the same mainstream success as Witchblade.

Except, maybe it does deserve a better fate.  And perhaps it would even make a better TV series.  Actually, it probably would.  In the current TV landscape, The Darkness would make perfect sense.

Thanks to this comic, even the concept does.

It's still not perfect.  Jackie has long hair.  He always has.  Like everyone else I've seen plenty of gangster movies.  I've never seen one with a character who has long hair, which is kind of the opposite of the tough guy image.  The closest equivalent would be Robert Rodriquez's Mariachi character who appeared in three films, but he's Mexican and was portrayed by Antonion Banderas in two of them.  Jackie isn't Mexican.  He seems to be vaguely of New York lineage, but one of the continuing weaknesses of the concept is that all of the gangster elements are pretty standards elements.  The free comic's story includes a version of the classic Crow story of dedicating a career to a lost love, which is another element not usually associated with tough guys.

But the concept of the Darkness itself begins to shine in this release.  This is the first time I read anything about its mythology, and that in itself is pretty interesting.  It's the elemental evil from biblical creation, distilled into demonic form and passed on from generation to generation as a curse.  Jackie has his possession explained to him by his grandfather, which if written by James Robinson would be iconic but is instead just another relatively untapped element of Darkness lore.

The success of this comic in explaining an otherwise obscure concept makes it clear that in the right hands Jackie and his Darkness could really work, not just because a small company needs it to but because it works on its own.