This is Artifacts where I will be exploring the Artifacts line of TopCow Productions. This first batch of readings will be dealing with the beginnings of the nascent universe. A lot can change in 18 months. What started out as a single book, “Witchblade” turned into to two with the launch of “The Darkness” at the end of 1996 following a debut in the pages of “Witchblade” #10. Now just under a year later the two books would crossover again with the four part ‘Family Ties’ story arc written by “Witchblade” writers Christina Z and David Wohl. It’s a quintessential crossover and quasi-team up as both Sara and Jackie’s enemies find themselves working together as Sonatine makes another play for an Artifact of power with the perfect muscle to do the job: Sara’s frenemy Ian Nottingham. ‘Family Ties’ was published in “Witchblade” #18-19 and “The Darkness” #9-10. This story arc has been reproduced in full in “Witchblade: Origins” Vol. 3, “The Darkness: Origins” Vol. 2, “The Complete Witchblade” Vol. 1 and “The Complete Darkness” Vol. 1.
Crossovers have never really been my thing. They are cinematically in after the success of The Avengers and have been a foundation of late sequel reboot franchise storytelling ever since. But those are more straightforward than their comic book based forebearer. With The Avengers or whatever that latest banal Jurassic Park movie is called, you didn’t have to really see other movies outside of that franchise. For the most part the first three phases of the MCU are characterized by stable franchise roots that eventually meet in a bigger ensemble piece called an Avengers movie, but the fact you may not have watched Thor: The Dark World wasn’t meaningful interference with understanding Infinity War. With superhero comics, especially the Bat titles, though you can have crossovers that connect 5 separate books with different teams that all had their own thing going on that this big event is likely interrupting – which is another reason I dislike them.
As far as crossovers go ‘Family Ties’ is decent. It’s written by the “Witchblade” writing team and mostly features the normal art teams, with one glaring omission. By running only 4 issues or about two months neither book is impacted too much and for the most part never loses its narrative center. ‘Family Ties’ is very much a Sara Pezzini/Witchblade story. ‘Family Ties’ is pretty much the entirety of the third “Origins” collection. Jackie Estacado is relevant in terms of plot macguffery but he isn’t the one who gets the character work. One could also argue his character is so purposefully shallow that such character work is impossible, but that’s for a latter discussion. Yet for all of these qualities a lot both happens … and doesn’t happen. After Jackie does some wetwork on the local Yakuza, seen in “The Darkness” #8, tensions rise between the local organized crime units. This gets the attention of Pezzni’s bosses who fear a mob war, again, breaking out and decide to take things into their own hands as the White Bulls. Meanwhile the manipulative Bruce Wilder takes advantage of this by giving Sonatine hope that he can still take The Darkness for himself by putting him in contact with Ian Nottingham. With an en media res look at what would be the start to “Witchblade” #19, the series pushes its pieces into place for a big showdown in the Natural History Museum and we watch them explode.
It’s only in retrospect that a reader could look back and graft some amount of significance to this extended meeting between Sara and Jackie. This is not Avatar the Last Airbender S1E12 “The Storm” that took the mirroring of Aang and Zuko from a structural standpoint in ‘A’ and ‘C’ plots and made it clear there was a deeper connection between the two that was going to be explored and revealed. One could argue that certain plot points are broken by the lore that is written later on about the nature of the Witchblade and Darkness and who is able to wield them when Nottingham becomes the host to both Artifacts and eventually just the Witchblade, but that is for another time. Even without that in the moment textual framing and signalling, it still gives readers this image of Sara and Jackie being connected to one another in ways they do not understand at the moment. It’s the kind of visual reference that could inspire their evolving relationship as both series continue. That loose inspiration the potential for someone to look at this down the line and change it is what I like about long running semi-serialized fiction wherein multiple creative teams can come in and give their spin on things.
Continued belowWhile Jackie isn’t the main player in this arc, ‘Family Ties’ is a chance to see what “The Darkness” could look like under a different pen with David Wohl and Christina Z penning two issues. It shows us a Jackie Estacado that is played decidedly straight. This will be more evident after Ennis leaves the title with “The Darkness” #14 once the book is less meta-plot driven. The dark comedy of the series disappears, and it becomes something of a standard cool guy action book with references and stereotypes that would’ve read dated even in 1996. Jackie is put on the path to hunt down Yakuza to force talks with the Mafia and cool guy action ensues. The action itself is solid in #9 as Marc Silvestri and Matt Banning do good work. It is interesting to see Silvestri-Banning pages put up so close to Turner D-Tron work. While neither team really draws “off model” the differences in how D-Tron and Banning ink their respective pencils draw out the differences. Banning’s use of hard angles and thicker line weights gives pages a stiffer quality, despite their layouts, compared to the often rounded shapes and intensive noodling of D-Tron. For their part at least Turner and Silvestri keep a similar visual language that these two first issues largely feel coherent with one another.
I don’t know what happened to “The Darkness” #10 though. It is the issue where everything blows up as the renegade cops aka White Bulls, Yakuza, Darkness, Witchblade, Sonatine, and Bruce Wilder all collide. That doesn’t mean it had to be the visual disaster it is. Disaster is perhaps too strong a word it’s just a mess of a book that reads like a jam issue and not piece of a serialized narrative. We have 3 different pencilers: Marc Silvestri, Joe Benitez, and Clarence Lansang and 6(!) different inkers: Joe Weems V, Jason Gorder, Jonathan Livesay, Edwin Rosell, Marlo Alquiza, and Richard Bennett. Deadlines had to be made but it’s impossible for me to figure out who did pencils and inks for which page, though it’s clear when someone helped finish another page. It’s a real mess of an issue to read even though the plot is simple: the bad guys win.
Yet for all the chaos of the the final two issues there is some enjoyable elements. Joe Siry blowing Bruce Wilder’s brains out – after not doing it several issues earlier – is a good moment that also further pushes the supposedly good cop into lawless corruption. The art of Nottingham wielding both Artifacts is fantastic, “Witchblade” #19 did not have the visual issues with just Michael Turner and D-Tron on line art. Also there is an animated T-Rex that begins to run wild … and produce sounds despite only being a skeleton. It takes care of Sonatine by yeeting him out the window in a surprisingly well executed bit of physical humor. ‘Family Ties’ has its moments but isn’t the kind of important narrative you’d hope a crossover between the two flagship Artifact books would. Those would come later. While they’re decades removed from one another the sort of shallow but visually excessive and fun qualities of these issues remind me of reading the old Justice League-JSA crossovers that would occur annually prior to “Crisis on Infinite Earths”. Like those old crossovers this one understands the appeal of movies like Avenengres or Spider-man: No Way Home, getting to see these two character interact with one another is plainly kinda cool.
