Jackie Escada is an orphan at St. Gerard's orphanage. He's something of a troublemaker, but he's also got a lot of good in him, because he looks out for and protects one of the other girls there, his friend, Jenny.
Since not all of the nuns and priests working at St. Gerard's even like children, there is plenty of room for abuse by the staff. Sister Agnes persists in thinking of Jenny as a whore, even though Jenny is only eight years old. And Father Antonio Basilio has no excuse even being around children when he's sexually attracted to them- Jenny and Jackie especially.
Jackie has some problems. Ever since he can remember, he's had nightmares of things skittering in the darkness outside his perception. Sometimes, he even has these nightmares before he falls asleep. Only talking to Jenny about them helps him to deal with them. She's the only one at the orphanage who knows about them.
But when Jenny and Jackie fall asleep after dinner and wake up out in the courtyard after lights out, he helps her get back into the girl's dorm and prepares to take any punishment on himself. When he's caught by Father Basilio, the good father prepares to sodomize Jackie in punishment- he can't tell of what happened, or he'll be punished for being out so late with Jenny. As he kneels on the stones, his pants pulled down, waiting for Father Basilio to do whatever he is going to do, Jackie hears the sounds from his dreams and passes out.
When he wakes up, he's back in bed, and thinks that this dream was particularly awful. But it had to be just a dream, right? The discovery of Father Basilio's body, torn to shreds, doesn't even faze Jackie. He must have heard the struggle and incorporated it into his dream.
Shortly after, Jackie is found in the orphanage and adopted by his uncle, a crime boss named Frankie Franchetti. Frankie takes Jackie home to his wife and daughter, Appolonia. Appolonia hates Jackie on sight, and is only somewhat mollified at the gift of a dollie from her father. After dinner, she cuts the doll into bits, and plans to do the same to Jackie, but her father has caught her mother cheating on him with another man, and Appolonia sees her father kill the man in a horrific way and deal out justice to her mother as well.
After that, her mother must go into an insane asylum, where she remains in a near-comatose state, and Appolonia never quite forgets what she saw. She still hates Jackie, but she never tries to kill him. Jenny is safe in the orphanage because Jackie insisted on her being protected, and Frankie paid for it to be that way. If anything happens to her, he'll hurt whoever hurt her.
Meanwhile, Jackie is slowly pulled into the family business, becoming a hitman for the Franchetti family. He makes his first kill when he is sixteen, and becomes an enforcer as well as hitman. But when he's finally twenty-one, he discovers that those things he used to hear in his dreams are a sign of his heritage. Jackie is the wielder of the Darkness, passed down from his father. From this point on, if he has any children, he'll die, and the darkness will pass to his child.
Since he recently discovered that he's in love with Jenny, that hurts, but when a rival crime boss tries to take out Frankie, Jacie finds out just how mean and cold a bastard he can really be- as he uses his darkness powers to take down those who have hurt his uncle. But as he does so, he remains unaware that others are watching him, and they have an interest in him- interests that may not coincide with what he wants to do...
I've heard of the Darkness comic, along with a computer game I saw reviewed by Yahtzee Croshaw on "Zero Punctuation". So it was kind of nice to see the comic become a game and now a book. Unfortunately, it's a very slim book- and this is only part 1! I wondered if the book is based on the graphic novel story- since that also seems to be broken up into similar chapters. If it is, I sure hope that the novels get longer. Because the length makes it seem that the story is for kids. And the kind of stuff that goes on here? So not for kids it isn't funny.
These are adult comics- they are all about death, killing and yes, Darkness. Not an external Darkness, but an internal Darkness that is somehow more scary than merely an outer darkness. But the novel implies that Jackie must not give into the Darkness, or he'll be taken over. I didn't see any of that coming out in the book. He uses the Darkness to murder pretty much at will. Where, exactly, is he holding back? I couldn't see it, myself. Perhaps in that he is deciding where the Darkness should be used rather than letting it use him- but we never get a sense of that really being the case.
Suffice to say that, even as a book, the story here doesn't quite live up to the hype that is the back cover copy. Something is missing. It may be in succeeding volumes, but while Jackie is an interesting character, he never quite makes me want to root for him- and the story that's given here isn't long enough to really make me care. I might be willing to see more, but not to purchase them unless and until the story really ramps up. I'm decidedly iffy on this series and can't really recommend it. If you already like the comics, I'm not sure why you should have this version- and this book is hardly a good advertisement for why you should read the comic series.
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