It is 901 AD. The Dark Ages. The darkest of times. Centuries after the Romans retreated and faded, yet many centuries before reason and order would take hold. The Dark Ages were times marked by sweat and blood and lives cut short by famine and disease. Desperate days. These were the times the lands known today as Great Britain were fought over like raw meat in a dog’s teeth. The world was up for grabs. New religions were sweeping the continent like a plague of hope in a hopeless time. These are the days that a Hellspawn named Covenant walked the earth in search of the truth, understanding and solution to the curse that bound him. These are his Dark Ages. These are his adventures…
Written by Brian Holguin
Illustrated by Liam Sharp
Colored by Brian Haberlin and Dan Kemp, Josh Meyers, Andy Troy, David Kemp
Lettered by Richard Starkings
Since he first burst on to comic book stands and shops in May, 1992 “Spawn” has been a semi consistent presence in popular culture spawning a HBO animated series, live action movie, continued threats of another live action movie, toys, etc. This presence is in part due to an easily recognizable iconographic signature, primarily a circular emblem with green eyes on white with a hint of red. The S-shield meets Grendel’s mask. Not unlike the various toy lines of the eighties this repeatable iconography allowed for the implementation of all sorts of Spawns, Medieval to Mecha and everything in between. The ease at which this imagery is mechanically reproduced, with its gross capitalism, can at times rightly create the suspicion that all that “Spawn” has wrought is superficial, facile, juvenile, and not worth considering. At times it is those things, but there can be more that explains why “Spawn” and all its derivatives have created an enduring icon and consumer relationship. “Spawn: The Dark Ages” a spin-off series that ran for 28 issues from 1999-2001 is an example of how a “Spawn” comic can be all those things and more as the first 5 issues put it all on display, artistic excess mixed with an male anti-hero drama that isn’t too far removed from types of prestige TV series of the 2010s.
Due to “Spawn: The Dark Ages” beginning publication 7 years into the publication of “Spawn” is able to use the established tropes and language of the property to condense and illustrate what makes a Hellspawn engaging. There is a level where it is aesthetic, it was certainly part of the early promise when McFarlane and eventually Capullo drew the main book. Early on narratively there is the promise of mystery, of identity. Who is this Spawn? After that mystery is solved the character perspective becomes one of redemption, however that is defined. Hellspawn were not “good” people in life. Al Simmons was a CIA hitman, he murdered and more in the name of country. The Hellspawn for the “Dark Ages” Lord Iain Covenant, killed in the name of religion and in search of absolution from his other sins. Hellspawn are people of violence and are eventually undone by that violence. What changes when they are returned back to the mortal plane by Malebolgia, with their new life represented as a ticking clock, is the hope that they can use their power an maybe enact some violence that can do some good. “The Dark Ages” is able to condense what was the first roughly 18 issues of “Spawn” in to two and a half, with the creative team employing the overall tool set of the property.
The main artist for the first half of “The Dark Ages” is Liam Sharp. The technological shifts in in how coloring is done has changed how his line work appears. Brian Haberlin’s pallet is solid but isn’t overly rendered, with most figure work getting a basic blend of base medium and highlights. His value choices are influenced by the copious amount of black used by Sharp, which is the primary source of texture and rendering on the page. Compare Haberlin’s work against Romulo Fajardo Jr. in “The Brave and the Bold” or Steve Oliff in “The Green Lantern,” Sharp gives that latter more space to work and define the image. “Dark Ages” being not just a 90s book but a “Spawn” book brings other obvious comparisons. Sharp uses thicker more inky and jagged lines compared to the obsessive noodling of Todd McFarlane or Jim Lee. The splash page of Guy DuBlanc unmasked in the fifth issue feels closer to the work of Frank Miller, with copious line work and a degree of hashing but with an abstract quality compared to the obsessive precision of the Image founders.
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These and other decisions help to create an aesthetic that feels influenced by both the property and the time period even as it stakes out its own territory. Sharp’s figure work and page designs do not have that sense of dynamism or energy you would find in “Spawn” or “WildCATs.” His staging and design work feel closer to what you would fined on the Bayeux Tapestry, rooted and iconic. That sort of construction comes through in the battling splash pages of the third issue. Pages are given borders and frames, that break single images into quasi panels. This has the effect of turning issues into sequences of framed images than traditionally understood sequential art. There is a weighted quality to his the splashes and spreads. It wouldn’t be a “Spawn” #1 without a vertical double page, and despite the mid action snap shot Lord Covenant reads more like a statue of Hercules than a nimble Spider-man like figure.
That sort of page design is both common in the early issues of “Dark Ages” and a fundamental way the early narrative is being told. In the first issue there are 9 spreads or splash pages. With nearly twice as many in the second issue and so on. Normally this sort of design work could read as cheap and fast to read. In practice on “The Dark Ages” the opposite is true as writer Brian Holguin and Richard Starkings build around the images. Starkings lettering placement and Holguin’s use of narration give “Dark Ages” a picture book like quality that makes clear the basic mechanics of comic books: words and pictures working in concert with one another. Early issues of “Dark Ages” feel closer the work of Ashley Wood found in later books like “Spawn: Book of the Dead” or “Hellspawn.”
This sort of storytelling reinforces the meta narrative aspects of “Dark Age.” McFarlane continues to employ copious amounts of omniscient narration in his comics, one of the few still using that technique. Holguin shifts the type of narration between retrospection and omniscient throughout but uses frame narratives that clearly establish who is narrating. These shifts give the series a metanarrative and allows the creative team to tell different kinds of stories. Lord Covenant is the main character of this book, in that he is the most consistently featured. “The Dark Ages” isn’t really about him though. Covenant isn’t the most dynamic character. Through the use of narration and Sharp’s stoic imagery the creative team go on to tell dark morality tales in issues 4 and 5 where Covenant functions more like The Specter during Ostrander’s run as a phantasm intent on punishing or delivering justice to those who have wronged. Treating a Spawn that way is in keeping with the main series, there is a run of issues from like #20-50 where that’s all McFarlane does. Treating Spawn-Covenant in this way helps to reinforce the way identity is treated and questioned. Our protagonist was Lord Ian Covenant, now he is something else and when he comes to the conclusion that his old life is no longer available to him it sets him off on a journey to discover and make something out of this new life.
The creative team clearly apply narrative and aesthetic conventions of the main “Spawn” and make them fit within their dark fantasy-sword and sorcery aesthetic. Applying these conventions to this new aesthetic helps to highlight some aspects that have not aged well, nor were they ever well in the first place, for the property/genre. As far as antagonists go in these first five issues the closest would be their version of the Irish deity The Morrígan represented as a trio of sisters. They are described by the narrator as either “pagan goddesses or hellborne temptresses, I can not say.” Liam Sharp’s character design show the limits of the gendered excess of “Spawn” when it is operating under the limitations of patriarchy and compulsory heterosexuality. I like the excessive quality to 90s image books in general and as it relates to gender because Image’s early excesses help to highlight how gender is constructed through repeated stylization on the body, even as they try to visually reinforce a very binary view of it. But reading against text in that way has its limits.
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Sharp’s design is an exercise in contradictions and how they work together to create a feeling of excess in the reader. The trio are depicted all but nude with exaggerated busts and curves contrasted with a surprisingly hard muscle definition. Their body type is that of Barbie Dolls crossed with Sylvester Stallone. Another prominent feature is the Freddy Kreuger like nails/claws. In another story you could use this as a basis for some potentially interesting androgyny. In “The Dark Age,” however, their presentation reads like they exist to reinforce an essentialist view of gender. Sharp draws them in these sexualized pinup positions, always the temptress, not the powerful goddess toying the feeble men according to the narrator. They are not given the ability to be shown ripping men in half like Covenant, who is himself designed excessively in masculine qualities but given a fuller depiction overall. Or actually toying with men as objects of desire, they exist to be looked at by the reader always first. This limited presentation emphasizes their sexuality and how the use of it is what makes them threatening, which is its own kettle of fish. A problimatic trait that is reinforced when compared to the “normal” women in these early and later issues. These women are never the less are drawn as ultra curved despite a general lack of period fashion support and are treated not so much as characters with a spark of agency, but symbols of virtue for the men to vie for.
The Morrígan design is this confluence of “Spawn” and swords and sandal aesthetics that reveals how sexist the dominant mode of both products are. Women were not written well at all in early “Spawn,” it’s potentially gotten better in recent years with Cyan playing a fuller but still macguffin-esque role in the lead up to #300. They were not treated well aesthetically by the sword and sandals genre with depictions of characters like Red Sonja, who has her own complicated history, varying greatly. It is awkward to say the least and gives these first five issues their only real ugh 90s comics eye roll. The role of women in “Dark Ages” will become more complicated in the next batch of issues and the introduction of Sister Immaculata.
“Spawn: The Dark Ages” is the kind of book I would recommend to someone who wanted to read “Spawn.” These first five issues give a condensed version of what the ongoing “Spawn” comic and its manga like sprawl is about, most of the time. It serves as a good example of what works and does not work about the franchise.
