REVIEW: Spawn, The Dark Ages #1 - 2

Story: Brian Holguin
Art: Liam McCormack-Sharp
Lettering: Richard Starkings and Comicraft’s Oscar Gongora
Review: Art Bee

Brand names. We all have some sort of weakness to a brand name due to superstition, loyalty, etc. Creators and executives use this to their advantage all of the time. One of the best examples is Crystal Pepsi, released while I was in high school. At the time I preferred Pepsi over Coke and thought, “ooooh new Pepsi”. Much to my surprise, this was not soda pop but liquefied, bleached shit in a can. It was horrid! Don’t get me started on New Coke. As much as a diehard fan of Spawn as I am, not all things Spawn are worthy of a read (most are, though).

The artwork in these issues is the best thing about them. Almost all of the panels are good enough to blow up and frame. There are a few panels that stand out and look like they were done by someone else. Much of the art is dark and centered on death, but there are some other types of scenes depicted. Most of my favorites are featured in firelight. Liam possesses a real talent for using color to depict natural firelight, a rare talent indeed. The only reservation I have with the artwork is the lack of flow through these issues. With the turning of each page, the issues feel like an art montage rather than a comic book.              

This series is centered on the former black knight, Lord Iain Covenant, who has returned as a Hellspawn. What attracted me to this series, other than the title Spawn plastered on the cover, is the Dark Ages setting. To help identify this it is revealed that Iain fought in one of the crusades. The design of this medieval Hellspawn is supreme. The artist went out of his way to make this incarnation of Spawn visually appealing to the audience.

The writing in these issues is cumbersome. Half of the time I was wondering what I was reading, because the text wasn’t lining up with the scenes very well or with itself from one panel to the next. What infuriated me the most was the writer’s incessant need to narrate the scenes. HELLO! It’s a comic book! Leave that to the artist. The pictures are supposed to indicate the grotesqueness of the bodies, not the text. I truly wish I had something good to say about the writing, but there is nothing nice to say at all. The entire content of these issues are a complete disconnect between the writer and artist.

Normally comments about the lettering are never mentioned in reviews here at HCB. Realistically, lettering is a standard in the comic world. If it is done well, it isn’t mentioned, but if the lettering is trash, we can’t say enough. Now it’s time to break the mold. The lettering in these issues stands as the best I have ever seen in my time reading comics. There are different styles and fonts used to help convey who is talking and about what. This would have been even more prominent if Holguin had given them better things to letter.

Even though it is only due to a branding and it is crap, it is still a part of my collection. Call me a sucker if you want, but we all protect crap from rain under our umbrella sometimes. If they are willing to brand something with the name Spawn, I am going to be silly enough to check it out regardless of whether it is good or not, even if there are one thousand people standing in my way screaming about how bad it sucks. That’s me as a diehard. Don’t judge me.