The Darkness (2026) #1
by
Marc Silvestri, Matt Banning (Artist), Sal Regla (Artist), John Livesay (Artist), Arif Prianto (Artist), Ed Benes (Artist)
My rating: 4 of 5 Ω‘s
This is not a revival, it is a reboot of one of the two central comics from the erstwhile days of Top Cow Publishing when it had a huge array of titles that were directly related to or spun out of The Darkness and Witchblade.
Our reboot goes back to the origin of Jackie Estacado, the latest host of the deadly primal power known as The Darkness – one of three forces in balance as per the traditional mythos: The Angelus on one side, The Darkness on the other and The Witchblade in between as a force for balance; however only further in this series will we see if this mythos will be retained or changed.
This issue comes in with the literal inception of Jackie and the death of his father and then speed-runs through his painful youth as an orphan and then his adoption by a mafioso all the way through to his twenty-first birthday when his “gift” is about to kick in and all hell breaks loose as the Angelus hopes to find the latest bearer and kill them before they can fully come into their power; that power being the ability to control darkness itself and from within the dark, call forth an army of evil, vicious little Darklings, not to mention getting a very sweet looking new body armour!
I was really skeptical about rebooting Witchblade and The Darkness as a pair of series that I remember reading almost in their entirety back in the day – they were (at least for older readers like myself) comics I grew up with, that had interesting characters and mythologies from the rest of the comics around and had a style all their own. It is pretty normal in the industry, the majority of big names have been rebooted hard and soft and repeatedly in many cases; but this is a first for these ones.
I also wasn’t sure about rebooting versus creating a new character, I daresay it is a hard choice to make since you never know what will work with audiences new or old in these situations. That said, Silvestri did a very good job keeping this script moving very fast but never feeling too fast and despite the speed, it actually was a fairly densely packed first issue that introduced all the major players, give us space to get a basic feel for Jackie and also end with some solidly brutal action as the intensity picked up a few notches to keep the reader engaged to read more.
And much like the original series, the art is really good! The art team has done a stellar job of making the book feel reminiscent of the older versions but at the same time does not feel like a straight copy of the style – the look of the Angelus creatures is the most standout at this point and even the Darklings seem to have gotten a revamp.
The general look of the art is nicely balanced between being a dark setting and vibe, but never does it feel overly dark and annoying to look at – I can see everything I am supposed to and the colouring pops nicely in so many places where I feel it was well executed by the team. The characters are well drawn and the action is pretty good.
How good the series proves to be, time will tell. As a first issue, I give credit where it is due for crafting an issue that felt familiar to an oldie and did not feel like you were doing our Jackie-boy wrong. It was what you would hope The Darkness would be and kept me interested in wanting more which is exactly what a first issue is meant to do.
One Happy Monk 
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