Free Comic Book Day from Top Cow: The Darkness II: Confession

With Free Comic Book Day just over a month away there's news from Top Cow Publications of another great title that will be available on the day.

In conjunction with 2K Games and the Free Comic Book Day Committee Top Cow will be releasing The Darkness II: Confession, an exclusive comic tie-in prequel for the forthcoming The Darkness II video game.

The 32-page, full-colour comic will be based on a story created by Top Cow's Matt Hawkins and Filip Sablik, written by Filip Sablik, feature art by Artifacts team Michael Broussard and Sunny Gho, and a fantastic cover by Escape from Tomorrow favourite Matt Timson (Impaler, The Darkness).

2K Games Partners with Top Cow to Offer Fans The Darkness II: Confession
on Free Comic Book Day
Exclusive comic prequel to the upcoming supernatural horror video game
New York, NY – April 4, 2011 – 2K Games, Top Cow Productions, Inc., and the Free Comic Book Day Committee announced today that they have teamed up to produce The Darkness II: Confession, an exclusive comic tie-in for The Darkness™ II video game, for Free Comic Book Day. The 32-page, full-color comic will be a prequel to 2K Games’ upcoming video game, The Darkness II. Produced by Top Cow’s lead artists and writers in partnership with 2K Games, The Darkness II: Confession will be distributed by Diamond Comic Distributors to thousands of independent comic book stores worldwide on May 7, 2011.

“Top Cow has always supported Free Comic Book Day and this year we’ve created our best offering yet with The Darkness II: Confession, a prequel to the upcoming video game The Darkness II by 2K Games,” said self-proclaimed hardcore gamer and president of Top Cow, Matt Hawkins. “In working closely with 2K Games on the comic, we’ve ensured that everything fits into The Darkness’ canon for long-time and new fans of Jackie Estacado. This free comic is a perfect primer for the game.”

Since its inception in 2002, the Free Comic Book Day event has celebrated the original American comic book art form by supplying thousands of participating independent comic book specialty shops around the world with free comic books for fans. Top Cow has participated as a publisher since the beginning and has given out over half a million free comics through the event, including The Darkness which has appeared in a number of previous Free Comic Book Day offerings such as Artifacts #0, Broken Trinity #0 and First Born: Conception. This year, Top Cow is a Silver Sponsor of Free Comic Book Day 2011, The Darkness II: Confession will be based on a story created by Top Cow's Matt Hawkins and Filip Sablik, written by Filip Sablik (Pilot Season: Alibi, Last Mortal), feature art by Artifacts team Michael Broussard and Sunny Gho, and a cover by Matt Timson (Impaler, The Darkness).

The Darkness II: Confession introduces comic fans, video game fans, and new readers to Jackie Estacado, the bearer of The Darkness, an ancient primal force which acts a blessing and a curse for its bearer, allowing him access to an otherworldly dimension and control over the demons that dwell there. The Darkness II: Confession takes readers from Jackie’s origins in the first video game, through his rise to power, and the events leading up to The Darkness II.

The Darkness II video game breaks out of the sea of conventional first-person shooters with its fervid Quad-Wielding gameplay, which will allow players to slash, grab, and throw objects and enemies with their Demon Arms while simultaneously firing two weapons. The game is layered with the use of dark versus light, steeped in deep and twisted storytelling, and engulfed in stylistic violence that is visualized through a hand-painted graphic noir technique that stays true to its comic book origins.

The Darkness II: Confession and The Darkness II video game are based on the supernatural horror comic book series created by Top Cow. The Darkness II video game will be coming to the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, PlayStation3 computer entertainment system and Windows PC in fall 2011. The Darkness II is not yet rated by the ESRB. For more information on The Darkness II, please visit www.embracethedarkness.com. For more information on Free Comic Book Day, please visit: www.freecomicbookday.com. To find out more about Top Cow, please visit: www.topcow.com.

The Avengers

Continuing with the titles that I [not so] recently picked up for Free Comic Book Day we have The Avengers from Marvel. I thought this book was a good read and a nice reminder of the position some of the superheroes in the current Marvel Universe find themselves in. The story features the New Avengers and the Dark Avengers teams as they are forced to work together to overcome Ymir the Frost Giant.

The story itself is fairly straightforward - and intentionally so I would imagine - and is accompanied by some very nice artwork: there's a lot of dialogue and a lot of action throughout the 23 story pages but, credit to the creators, the panels don't feel particularly crowded.

Throughout the book there's an undercurrent of dislike and distrust between the two groups of Avengers that once or twice spills into physical conflict but the moral of the story is one of 'together we can beat this ... and then we can go back to being enemies'

So, another nice - without being great - Free Comic Book Day offering from Marvel. Worth getting hold of I'd say.

The Avengers, written by Brian Michael Bendis, art by Jim Cheung and Mark Morales with colors by John Rauch
Published by Marvel, May 2009

My other freebies included Savage Dragon 148 from Image, Aliens/Predator from Dark Horse and Star Wars The Clone Wars also from Dark Horse.

More from Free Comic Book Day

I previously mentioned how much I'd enjoyed Blackest Night #0 from DC Comics, part of the Free Comic Book Day promotion and over the weekend I read another couple of titles that were given away as part of FCBD.

Firstly, from Marvel we have Wolverine: Origin of an X-Man. Having always enjoyed the character of Wolverine, and having recently seen the X-Men Origins film at the cinema, I was looking forward to reading this title and to be honest I was a bit underwhelmed by the writing and the artwork.

The story is set before the X-Men, and leads into Wolverine's battle with the Hulk and Wendigo. The man known as "Weapon X" is a lone agent for the Canadian government's top-secret program known as Department H. The authorities find that they can't trust a loose cannon who can't even remember his past, but when a commando unit is lost in a small town that is completely overrun by an unstoppable cybernetic plague, Logan finally has a chance to prove himself... but only if he survives "Operation: Wolverine".

I felt the story was unchallenging and left me with a feeling of 'ok, is that it?' when I'd finished reading and the artwork was simple and 'cartoony' in style. Neither of these comments are meant as criticisms - however they may read - the 'Great for all Ages' comment on the cover leads me to suspect that this title is aimed at the 'young adult' audience: a group I left about 30 years ago!

Wolverine: Origin of an X-Man, written by Fred van Lente with art by Gurihiru. Published by Marvel, May 2009

Next up, is a G.I Joe/Transformers flip book from IDW Publishing that features no less that 3 short stories - two featuring G.I Joe and one Transformers.

The first G.I. Joe short story is called 'One Word' and across 6 pages we see Duke lead the team to thwart a group of smugglers, only to have the mission literally blow up in their face. The story ends with a 'continued in G.I. Joe #1' footnote.

The second story - In and Out - is told over over 5 pages and features a 'discussion' between Hawk and Duke who gets an ultimatum to join the G.I. Joe team... or else. Again, the story ends with a 'continued in G.I. Joe: Origins' footnote.

These 2 stories were first published in G.I. Joe #0 in October 2008 - Newsarama have the 'One Word' story available to view here.

The Transformers story - Survival Skills told over 11 pages - sees academy cadet Optimus take on Megatron in a combat simulator and leads into the Transformer Animated: The Arrival trade. An uncomplicated read that I suspect was aimed at a younger audience.

All in all a really good read - I particularly enjoyed the two G.I. Joe stories that I thought were well told and nicely illustrated: I'll be picking up G.I. Joe from now on as a result of reading these stories.

'One Word' by Chuck Dixon, Robert Atkins and Andrew Crossley
'In and Out' by Larry Hama and Tom Feister
'Survival Skills' by Marty Isenberg, Dario Brizuela, Leandro Corral and Liam Shalloo

Published by IDW, May 2009

Click here for more details of all the titles included in Free Comic Book Day 2009 - including free preview page downloads.

The Best Event Launch in Recent Years? Possibly.

Living where I do I don't really have an LCS - a local comic shop - but thanks to the good folk at Destination Venus I didn't miss out on Free Comic Book Day. Thankfully, amongst the FCBD goodies that arrived in my monthly shipment was Blackest Night #0 and I couldn't have been more impressed.

For my mind this book is as close to the perfect 'event launch' as I've seen and I applaud DC's decision to promote the forthcoming Blackest Night through Free Comic Book Day.

The main story feature - running across 12 pages - features Barry Allen (the Flash) and Hal Jordan (the Green Lantern) reminiscing about some of their past adventures: where there's been a constant theme of death and destruction, and their fear of more to come.

The story ends with the oath of the Black Lanterns and the rise of the Black Hand. At this point I was sold and I'm looking forward to reading the ongoing story later this summer.
This was a powerful short story beautifully told through both the words and the images - here's a couple of pages courtesy of Newsarama.

The remaining pages, adverts aside, included profiles of the teams set to battle in out in the War of Light - Green Lantern Corps, the Red Lanterns, Agent Orange, the Sinestro Corps, the Blue Lanterns, the Indigo Tribe, Star Sapphires and the Black Lantern Corps.

Blackest Night #0 (DC Comics), June 2009 Free Comic Book Day
Written by Geoff John, art by Ivan Reis, Oclair Albert, Rob Hunter, Albert Sinclair

Recommended (even if you have to pay for a copy!)