Darklight

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RATING:
Darklight
Darklight graphic novel review
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  • North American Publisher / ISBN: Archaia - 978-1-60886-294-8
  • Release date: 2014
  • UPC: 9781608862948
  • Contains adult content?: no
  • Does this pass the Bechdel test?: no
  • Positive minority portrayal?: no
  • CATEGORIES: Science-Fiction

The universe is dying, and humanity’s only hope of survival is to reverse the decay somehow, which immediately applies a scale. And the only hope of doing that is an untested device merging human technology with that of other races.

Chad Kultgen starts Darklight with two pages of text prologue explaining the background, but is adept at filtering information into the comic content. As the situation is laid out over the first dozen pages we learn about prejudice between various races, and the relationships between the key people involved in the mission. Conditions are tense, and only the possibility of all life being wiped out was enough to bring the various species together.

Darklight was relatively early in Piotr Kowalski’s career, and he’s already extremely good, although it’s odd to see the influence of John Byrne here that’s absent in his later work. In terms of storytelling clarity the influence couldn’t be better, and Kowalski really puts the effort in. It’s noted that there are many observers to the initial process, and Kowalski shows their spacecraft by the dozens, those in the foreground rendered in ornate technical detail.

The set-up is three primary species, none of whom trust each other, in a situation that doesn’t appear to be able to deteriorate, but it does. How far, then can Captain Rhodes trust a Luminid, more intelligent than humans? And what of the shapeshifting Duron? At first it’s easy to transfer the main cast into Star Trek analogues, but Kultgen’s aware of that and spends time investigating the Luminid society and the capabilities of the Duron, ensuring their individuality is essential to the plot. Loyalty and sacrifice are also explored in what turns out to be more complex than initially presumed without ever pushing the boundaries too far. There’s a sense of a bigger story to be built on the assembled pieces, with Darklight’s universe possibly worth revisiting.

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