Written by Dan Abnett
Art by I.N.J. Culbard
Published by Dark Horse Comics
In the first couple pages, Dark Ages #1 has a lot going for it. Minimalist cartooning with a simple image of a falcon catching a mice until the setting and characters are introduced. The main characters are a (sadly) interchangeable band of mercenaries wandering France on the eve of the Hundred Years War between France and England. No one stands out on his own as a character, and their views about the world around them fluctuate from hardened, cynical atheism to devout orthodoxy as they rush to a monastery of all places to heal their wounded leader. Dan Abnett and I.N.J. Culbard squander the rich storytelling possibilities of an era which formed the subject of Shakespeare’s early plays and was a transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Culbard’s art is lacking in background detail, and his color choices are uninspired with a monster’s fire looking like puke, or worse. The issue’s few highlights include a quite hilarious joke towards the end of the comic, the well-written opening narration, and some nice shading and color work on the purple, starry night sky. The plot is easy to follow, but the action lacks any kind of dynamism or suspense and the ending cliffhanger is laughable.
In comics, great art can cover up a subpar story, but bad art can exposes a story’s weakness. The latter holds true in Dark Ages #1 as the “menacing” things falling from sky are actually black blobs, and characters have the same blocky faces and poorly choreographed movements. Even a dragon can’t save the day. The design for the character is a bad joke with all belly and no wings. And what it spews isn’t fire, but it hurts the characters and their leader. The fight against the farce of dragon could have been like a Monty Python’s Flying Circus sketch or an early episode of Blackadder, but it using “damn” and “hell every other word is no substitute for wit. In fact, if the writer wasn’t British, the dialogue sounds like someone’s horrible stereotype of how British people speak. (Luckily, there is not a single “Zounds” to be found in Dark Ages.) The mercenaries’ speech seems to only to move the plot from point A to B and occasionally developing the theme of faith and godlessness, which steadily declines from the eloquent opening narration to yelling snatches of prayer as they run from a supposedly disgusting hand belonging to their captain. Abnett tries to give a character a little bit of personality, like the company’s second-in-command Galvin, who is nicknamed Lucifer. There’s no particular reason for this moniker though.
The concept of Dark Ages has a lot of potential for intriguing stories with the mixture of horror, fantasy, and historical fiction. However, the characters are woefully underdeveloped, and Culbard’s art has shaky line-work, poor or generic color choices, and only a handful of eye-popping images. The storytelling is easy enough to follow during the walking and talking scenes, but it is hard to see who hits whom in the fight sequences. With the help of an inker to tighten up the figures and flesh out the backgrounds and a colorist to add mood and emotion to the storytelling, Dark Ages #1 could be an average adventure comic. Unfortunately, it doesn’t even reach the level of mediocrity.