Not the best of experiences by far. As such, I can’t really recommend this graphic novel at all.
The review was originally posted to my review blog here.
My only experience with the Darksiders is with the Ari Marmell-penned Abomination Vault, which was released last year to coincide with the releases of Darksiders II and is a prequel story set in the far, far earlier times of the setting. Kreisberg’s graphic novel is a much more immediate prequel to the game however, and it ties in heavily to it is my understanding.
One of the first things I noticed was that each of the five issues is almost half the size of a regular comic, if we count the story-only pages and not the extra ad space and what not. This means the story is told in short bursts of script rather than something much more… developed and nuanced. I certainly did not get the feeling much that this was an engaging story. I read the book because I wanted to read more about Death and the Horsemen, and not because the story generated any particular interest and excitement in me.
Abaddon, one of the high Angels, sends Death on a secret mission to find and destroy a demon who has killed some of Abaddon’s best. Death’s hunt for this missing demon, whom he is supposed to kill on sight, takes him through various places and various times. And that’s where my biggest issue with the comic comes up: Kreisberg has treated each single issue as if it was a “roughly speaking” standalone episode. The pacing was all over the place and it showed in spades.
What the comic got right though, or awesome for that matter, was to show how Death met Despair, and some great scenes (albeit limited) with all the Four Horsemen in a single frame. Ari Marmell’s fantastic novel got the characters, especially Death, down pat and this comic is no exception, because here too Death emerges as the chosen one to go on a hunt.
There is a bit of a disconnect in the book towards the end of the fifth issue, as the motivations for the demon turn out to be a rather confusion bunch and they really confused me. It was as if a lot of information was simply cut from the script.
Not the best of experiences by far. As such, I can’t really recommend this graphic novel at all.
Rating: 6.5/10