Advance Review: Darkhold Blade #1

The pages of the Darkhold continues to reshape the Marvel Universe. This time around, the “hero” of the piece seems a tad more logical in the shape of the Daywalker himself, Blade.

Half human, half vampire, Blade walks both worlds in his quest to rid the world of the vampire. A difficult task at the best of times, made even harder by this Darkhold twisted world having turned people in vamps and super-humans into human or vampire. Top of the food chain is Wilson Fisk. But where there is a King, there is always someone looking to take the crown from his head.

The book is written by Daniel Kibblesmith, a writer I am not overly familiar with. Kibblesmith takes the main ideas from the story and tries to apply some twists and turns. There are a few guest stars, which may please a few readers, to help move the action around. If there is an issue with the writing it’s the fact that the format of the book has such a massive impact. It is hard to create a new world, introduce characters and motives and then try and then play with readers expectations for a surprise ending in 24 pages. Kibblesmith tries hard, but unfortunately I just don’t care enough about any of the characters and the format of the book hinders Kibblesmith’s ability to change my mind.

With so many artists looking the same nowadays, it is refreshing to see the work of Federico Sabbatini who looks to merge anime stylings with an angular style, the latter adding a variety of movement and pace to proceedings. Now that I have said that, it’s a style that I am not overly enjoying; here then is an opportunity to appreciate the hard work of an artist, even if it isn’t quite my cup of tea. There are chaotic pages which I found hard to follow; maybe this throw everything at the reader and hope it sticks method is a ruse to detract from the weak plot. The colors from Rico Renzi work really well with an abundance of purple generating the pseudo night. Letters are provided by possible the hardest working letterer in the business VC’s Clayton Cowles. As busy as he is, the quality of the letters never falter, especially given how action orientated this book is.

As with the majority of events or even mini-events, there are going to be highs and lows. Darkhold Blade has an exterior problem to deal with. The Darkhold Iron Man book set the bar extremely high with the idea of Tales of Suspense type of twist. That issue used existing characters that were instantly recognisable to even the most casual of readers; here Blade kind of suffers a tad. I wonder where on the scale the following book land.

Writing- 3 Stars
Art 3 -Stars
Colors – 4 Stars

Overall – 3.5 Stars

Written by; Daniel Kibblesmith
Art by Federico Sabbatina
Colors by; Rico Renzi
Letters by; VC’s Clayton Cowles
Published by; Marvel Worldwide

Author Profile

Johnny "The Machine" Hughes

I am a long time comic book fan, being first introduced to Batman in the mid to late 70's. This led to a appreciation of classic artists like Neal Adams and Jim Aparo. Moving through the decades that followed, I have a working knowledge of a huge raft of characters with a fondness for old school characters like JSA and The Shadow

Currently reading a slew of Bat Books, enjoying a mini Marvel revival, and the host of The Definative Crusade and Outside the Panels whilst also appearing on No-Prize Podcast on the Undercover Capes Podcast Network