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. For the next couple of weeks, we’ll be shifting focus away from the two main series and instead looking at their “Tales of ….” spinoffs. The potential for a in universe justification for this kind of spinoff was hinted at in the early issues of “The Darkness” but more clearly explored in the ‘Spear of Destiny’ arc (“The Darkness” #15-18). This arc came out two years after “Witchblade” #9 which featured a somewhat perplexing but entertaining daydream of that time when Anne Bonny wielded with Witchblade on the high seas. This week we turn to “Tales of Darkness” a 4 and a half long series that was published sporadically throughout 1998 before a final Wizard ½ issue published in January 1999. The only collection of these issues I’ve found is the out of print old first “Darkness” compendium, they have since been reprinted again in “The Complete Darkness” Vol. 1.
“Tales of Darkness” makes several decisions that set it apart from “Tales of the Witchblade”. Malachy Coney is this series main recurring writer, either as the sole credited or co-writer with Brian Haberlin and Garth Ennis on a couple of issues. This series does not trade in a series of one shots, save for the #1/2 issue. The core set of four issues are broken into two stories, with #4 promising a ‘To Be Continued’ that appears to have never come. The lack of one shots is somewhat curious given the general narrative structure of the Artifacts line up to this point and comics publishing in general. While you’ll see sporadic multi part stories throughout most of the time there are at least several sngle issue stories placed in between. The concept of of “writing for the trade” and integration into the book market are not going concerns in the late 90s, surviving the 90s bubble burst is. While two-part stories are not exactly the height of complex seriality, this era and style of comics still operated under assumptions not unlike broadcast television: that you couldn’t guarantee your audience had seen last week’s much less last month’s episode. The pair of stories in “Tales of Darkness” are structured in such a way that you could pick up part two and still be able to follow along. These economic forces that shaped this style of storytelling would eventually dissipate with the consistent collection and reprinting of near everything these days.
Part of the promise of having these Artifacts be historical objects is it allows the creative team to tell any kind of story at any point in time. “Witchblade” showed that sort of versatility going from comedic swashbuckler to medieval fantasy to post-apocalyptic. This series is only half as long, but “Darkness” focuses on two main fantastical settings: science fiction and fantasy infused historical fiction, and in the case of the #1/2 both together.
We’re looking at this set of “Darkness” stories slightly ahead of when they would have been published. Next week we’ll be finishing up Garth Ennis time on the book with ‘Hearts of Darkness’ (#11-14). After that Malachy Coney comes in and adds to the Artifacts line with ‘Spear of Destiny’. In a lot of ways this helps to show what is to come of Jackie and “The Darkness” once Ennis is no longer behind the pen and it’s not all that positive at first. With Ennis you can sense a satire of masculinity and 90s superhero comics coming through. Jackie Estacado and all the phallic symbolism trying to make up for an absence and lack is the butt of the joke. You get that feeling even in #1/2. In the other issues the bite doesn’t seem to be there, and Jackie/Hosts for The Darkness instead become treated in that “Cool Guy” way that revels in the halfhearted hedonism The Darkness allows. As the series drifts in this direction, it goes into gross, shallow, exercises of misogyny that I’m not all that looking forward to.
That drift is recognizable in the recurring figure of the Monstrous Feminine often embodied by both symbolic and biological Mothers. In the first arc there is Vassal, who despite the name implying a service position is the real power behind the intergalactic Darkness. The Queen of Spain and the Mother in the next two issues both unleash hell on the male characters in attempts to control their libidinal energy. The Ennis co-penned #1/2 issue is the only one where the threat of the Monstrous Feminine isn’t used to justify patriarchal modes and instead makes fun of arrangement by showing the egotistical stupidity of Christian Estacado.
Continued belowThe setup to the first two issues of “Tales of Darkness” is solid science fantasy, as the galaxy is ruled by the Emperor Darkness. This future host of the Darkness has done the thing Somatine dreams a host would be able to do. Whilce Portacio and Gilbert Monsanto provide pencils for Gerry Alanguilan and Monsanto to in; Brian Haberlin also served as colorist for these issues. Together the art team make a solid futuristic sci-fi setting that is a mixture of Star Trek style ship design and meditations on Event Horizon like weird darkness. Notably these issues also feature some of plainly more violent and brutal treatments of the body compared to previous issues.
At the center of this story is a romance between the Emperor Darkness and Sela, First Mate to the ship Runner’s Gold. The Emperor after years of loneliness longs for the woman he cannot have, the woman he killed as she fought to become his Bride. Using the Darkness property to write a romance is interesting given the weariness to go all the way, but also surprisingly fits the sexless conventions of American RomComs. The connection between the two characters isn’t developed in a satisfactory way, they are just fated to be “in love” with one another.
The main dramatic tension is developed through the presence of Vassal a mysterious and ambivalent figure. Aesthetically the body of the Superhero is often hyper gendered this era of comics is built on that excess which is why the bodies of Sara Pezzini and Jackie Estacado are so often drawn in that conventionally banal sort of way. Which is why the presence of Vassal is intriguing as her figure is drawn with a level of androgyny that is hilariously overcompensated for by the emphasize on her deep cleavage. The suspect nature of her character makes her easily readable as an Evil Queer type and with how she manipulates everything and breaks up the heterosexual union between Sela and the Emperor this story plays that perceived threat of queerness to a T. However, the characters androgyny and their role in the narrative provides at least a momentary disruption of the binary biologically essentialist (yet already shown to be fungible) treatment of the Witchblade and Darkness.
In the end it is revealed that Vassal has been manipulating everything, making the Emperor a Mama’s boy if you will. She doesn’t want him to leave the nest or share influence with another. When the Emperor and Sela do run off and the Emperor promptly turns to dust it is Vassal who simply remakes-rests the Emperor into a more pliable form. She is the true wielder of the Darkness. Which is what makes the final page so funny as the design team overcompensate for the characters lack of feminine hair they draw her in a ludicrous sci fi bikini. Even as there is a certain amount of dramatic irony for the reader the storytelling still displays an anxiety over being unable to escape the thrall of Woman-Mother.
Queen Isabella and the Mother in the second story centered around Michaelangelo Estacado are treated as nags and otherwise power hungry, and thus distrust worthy. The first issue takes a strange path by spending the first half of it centered on Sonatine and two scholars investigating beneath the Statue of Liberty for the Brotherhood of Darkness. These two issues are frames as Sonatine reading to his captives. Honestly this could’ve been the framing device for the entire series, and it’d be great. Instead, it’s like 10 pages and you’re wondering where is this past host of the Darkness. The other at best awkward thing is man they refer Romani people as pejoratives a lot. The core flashback narrative is framed around this fear of Mother’s and powerful women and a reverence for Michelangelo’s virality, which is a change in position that isn’t all that interesting. As a whole these two issues read like an unfinished thought.
The final #1/2 issue for Wizard Magazine is just a plainly well done 10 pager. Ennis puts in enough dialog boxes to exposit to the reader. He even puts in a reflexive reverence to this Darkness host, Christian’s, unwanted an enforced Chastity that also acts as a commentary on the kind of hyper sexualized art the franchise and era was built on. This story also features another controlling Mother type, one who seems to have plied her son with hyper sexed art that has left him feeling inadequate and unfulfilled. That environment is why he brutally murders his Mother remarking she never taught him “how to love her” a phrase just dripping with Oedipal energy. After a man appears claiming to have found a tamed and subservient Angelus, who wants nothing but courtship and matrimony with the Prince of Darkness. Christian leaps at this chance. Only to be quickly and brutally murdered by the Angelus because … it’s the Angelus they’re universal opposites. Their inherent incompatibility to one another is modified as the series goes on, but they are never not strange bedfellows.
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Due both to its length and the petulance Christian is written with is why this issue feels like it has some of the same satiric energy of the main Ennis run. Christian for all his power his real dumb, despite all the years and knowledge of the relationship between the Angelus and Darkness he decides to go against nature.
As a whole “Tales of The Darkness” feels like unfulfilled potential. With both “Witchblade” and “Darkness” making a come back it would be cool to see TopCow use these titles as anthologies for new and old creative teams to just put a spin on what is a Darkness, Witchblade, or Artifacts story.
