Warning: contains spoilers for Darkhold Alpha #1, Darkhold: Iron Man, Darkhold: Wasp, and Darkhold: Blade!
When it comes to the marketing for Marvel’s new Darkhold series, it is unfortunate that a book cannot be judged by its cover. The spectacular cover of Darkhold Alpha #1, along with those of its character tie-ins, feature the grotesque forms of the series’ protagonists, Black Bolt, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Wasp, and Blade. Yet readers of two of the three individual tie-ins released thus far will be disappointed to find these forms absent from the main pages, even as Darkhold Alpha #1 ends with some spectacular art of the carefully selected heroes as the “Darkhold Defiled” to whet the appetite for their new appearances.
The Darkhold is an ancient tome penned by the demon Chthon, offering its readers dark power in a devil’s bargain, with the author claiming their soul and using them to advance his scheme of returning to Earth. With its provision of awesome dark magic, it was only a matter of time before Doctor Doom found the Darkhold with a scheme to read it without being driven mad. Though his plan works, Doom offers Chthon the opening he needs to manifest on Earth.
Scarlet Witch resolves that it will take a fight-fire-with-fire approach to combat Chthon, with would-be combatants reading from the Darkhold just to stand a chance. Doing so promises to twist their timelines to make them far stronger, but at the risk of being corrupted. Sadly, the heroes read too far. Darkhold Alpha #1 by Steve Orlando and Cian Tormey perfectly delivered on this by showing all five transformed heroes at the end of the issue, with individual tie-ins set to explain how each went so wrong. Darkhold: Iron Man #1 by Ryan North and Guillermo Sanna honored this, depicting Tony Stark’s disgusting transformation, and showing how his body became a nightmare of guts and machinery. But since then, the heroes’ forms in Darkhold: Wasp #1 (by Jordie Bellaire and Claire Roe) and Darkhold: Blade #1 (by Daniel Kibblesmith and Federico Sabbatini) are only glimpsed on the covers.
Given that hardcore visuals of the heroes were a significant part of the marketing, there was an eagerness to see Wasp break from the Avengers with her sleek, spike-shouldered red and black outfit, find out how Blade took on his vampire king form, and witness how Black Bolt ends up confined to a straight-jacket style costume. Beyond the cover, however, these dark forms have not materialized in the books that seemed set to explain how they came to be, and the heroes still look normal right up to the last page. The comics show the beginnings of the characters' paths to ruin, but skip the actual transformations the event has largely sold itself on.
The narratives thus far, though deliciously dark, fail to pay off on the promise implicit in the marketing, giving a sense that these tie-in narratives have been drastically limited in scope so that fans who only check out the core Darkhold: Alpha #1 and Darkhold: Omega #1 don't feel like they're missing out. Readers curious how Wasp develops clawed fingers and jet-black eyes, or how Blade's fangs and muscles become so prominent, won't find any answers in the tie-in comics, nor will they witness the new forms that were the main draw for this mini-event.
Hopefully, Darkhold: Black Bolt #1 and Darkhold: Spider-Man #1 will actually feature the heroes' new forms and how they came to be. If the series had no interest in exploring this, it would have been enough to say the Darkhold simply transformed heroes into dark duplicates, but the tie-in marketing so far has attracted fans with the suggestion that they'll see how these new versions came to be - something only Darkhold: Iron Man has honored. To not have these transformations appear in the pages of the books supposedly dedicated to their origins is proving that the Darkhold isn’t the only book with the capacity to drive its readers a little mad.
