By Frank J. Barbiere, Colin Lorimer, Micah Kaneshiro & various (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-555-9
During the speculation-fuelled 1990s even the normally restrained and aesthetically broad ranging Dark Horse Comics was seduced into creating its own proprietary shared-universe of superhero characters.
Some like Ghost and X were very good and others – such as Barb Wire – even made the then incredibly difficult jump from print to silver screen.
Ever since the company has only cautiously dabbled with the genre; generally preferring to put their unique gloss and on previously well-established (Doc Savage, Captain Midnight, The Shadow), creator-owned (Hellboy, B.P.R.D.) or cachet-laden stars from outside the company (Buffy, The Umbrella Factory).
Now they’re rethinking the policy and creating a new pantheon of home-grown mystery men to join venerable heroic ancients for the ongoing “Project Black Sky†and, with the introduction of Blackout, seem to have found their first sleeper hit…
Written and lettered by Frank J. Barbiere, Into the Dark collects a trio of short introductory tales from the anthological Dark Horse Presents volume 2 #24-26 (May to July 2013) and the first four issues of Blackout from March to July 2014, dropping us into the middle of an ongoing and rapidly escalating crisis for a most unlikely hero…
Illustrated by Micah Kaneshiro and comprising a Chapter 0, the three opening yarns find dull lab assistant and extreme sports devotee Scott Travers in well over his head as he invades extremely hinky corporate science facility Mechatonics in search of his best friend and mentor “Uncle†Bob…
Robert Marshal was the top genius at Avenir Microanalytics, the ideas factory where Travers wastes his days as an underachieving, low-level techie, but the old guy simply vanished one day after a confrontation with some suits from Mechatronics.
Soon after, Scott received a package containing a bizarre science fiction bodysuit and a note which simply said “find meâ€â€¦
Donning the all-enclosing apparel Scott discovered it could somehow shift him into a kind of parallel dimension: a ‘Strange Terrain’ from which he see and bypass the real world. It even allowed him pass through solid objects here in living world…
Suspecting foul play and with no preparation at all, Scott infiltrates the Mechatronics citadel, easily evading the rent-a-cops by zipping in and out of the chilling silent otherworld. It all goes pretty great until he encounters a beautiful woman with a gun who recognises the clothes, if not the man…
She clearly knows something about Bob and calls the bizarre bodysuit “Blackoutâ€â€¦
Although she gets the drop on him, a quickly opened dark portal plunges them both into the shadow world which Scott only then discovers is deathly cold, pitch black and practically a vacuum for anyone not garbed in a strange spacesuit like him…
Swiftly popping them both back to Earth before she expires, Scott begins to question her about Bob but is interrupted by another newcomer… a giant killer robot…
The ray-gun toting automaton almost destroys him until he manages to chop it in half with a portal, only to discover the thing was actually manned and he might now be a murderer…
As more security moves in, the slowly recovering woman shakes him out of his shocked stupor and urges him to get out…
Illustrated by Colin Lorimer, ‘Into the Dark’ opens with Scott plagued by nightmares that girlfriend Ash can’t console him out of. Stumped for answers – or even clues – Scott decides to show up for work (for a change) and see what a civilian approach can glean.
As police swarm all over, Mechatronics’ big boss Mr. Cassius is quietly interviewing the still shaken Dr. Alexis Luca. She is nowhere near recovered from her brief sojourn in another dimension but Cassius loses all interest when he gets a distressing call from his ominous backers. He anxiously steels himself for more trouble…
Later, when Scott again dons the suit for more covert reconnaissance, he interrupts a band of armed invaders not at all surprised or daunted by his abilities and busy stripping the lab of its databases. Soon he’s in the fight of his life, but once more panic, quick thinking and the suit’s dimension-rending capabilities allow him to prevail.
Elsewhere Cassius’ terrifying Ãœbermensch masters are making demands, insisting he hand over the robotic super-suits they commissioned and paid for…
Having claimed the stolen databases, Scott gets Ash to break into them and what he sees makes him keen to get back to Mechatronics.
This time, however, he’s going in fully prepared so takes time out to test the Blackout’s capabilities…
And that’s when the thing runs out of juice, leaving him stuck in the dark dimension…
Tightly plotted, sharply scripted and superbly illustrated, the first outing for this reluctant shadow warrior is a superb blend of corporate chicanery, sinister secret societies, moody menace, weird science and frantic action that will delight fans of fast-paced conspiracy thrillers and looks set to become a fast favourite of Fight ‘n’ Tights fans who love a smooth veneer of plausibility over the fantasy fiction.
This slim scintillating chronicle also includes a covers and pin-up gallery by Raymond Swanland, Kanashiro and Paulo Rivera.
© 2013, 2014 Dark Horse Inc. All rights reserved. Blackout is ™ Dark Horse Inc.