Dark Ages #6

Dark Ages as a whole gets an 8, maybe an 8.5. Its really good, it will read well as a whole, and will be worth visiting in trade paperback a couple of months from now.


THIS issue feels a little rushed, but that's not why we're here. I don't really expect someone to start a title on the last issue, so why bring it up? Because I read back to back books this week that suggest..no too soft...flat out state that sometimes you absolutely are better off killing a person causing problems that will never be solved by the means man has put in place. There are a couple of those murders in this book, this Marvel superhero book, this Teen + Marvel book, including a John Wick style headshot done in panel. There are a couple more after that, and earlier someone is bisected, again, all in a Marvel comic that has a happy ending. For the life of me, I can't figure out how to get to that happy ending w/out those killings.

Similar arguments are made in the independent book The Killer:Affairs Of The State #2. This is presented as a 'real world' book. It is a more depressing affair full of lots of things that would need to be researched to see if they're true or not. On a basic level (and the title may give this away) the book is bluntly and brutally predicated on the idea that killing appropriately chosen people is the only way to make real progress.

I guess they've left me wondering if anyone is looking for the Grant Morrison clever out anymore. Mark Millar has had them in the past, but even the 'clever' usually comes with a side order of death (see Magic Order, Kick-A**, Superior, Secret Service, you know what see almost everything that isn't Huck). I'm fine with a fair amount of real world depression mixed in with my comics, but I'm also ready a little bit of that hope, that wishful thinking, that ignorance is bliss mentality that comics can do so very well. All this comes immediately after raving about the new Something Is Killing The Children, so take this downbeat dredge with a grain or two of salt.