‘Event Horizon: Dark Descent #5’ – Ward, Jones, Martin (ID Dark)

 


Today’s post will be shorter than normal, yesterday was a bit intense in places so, erm… yeah :o) There may be another post today, lets see how it goes.

Anyway…

As someone who normally goes for the trades (my memory for collecting single issues is atrocious), I’m feeling a little bit pleased with myself that I managed to collect all five issues of ‘Event Horizon: Dark Descent’; one after the other as well. It was ‘Event Horizon’ though so of course I was going to make sure I got the whole story. And on the whole, ‘Dark Descent’ has been a welcome return to the setting, promising good things from the ‘Event Horizon’ sequel (more comic books, not another film) that is due out this year. How would it all end though? Especially given that ‘Dark Descent’ is a prequel and we know what’s coming… Well, I’m kind of ‘half and half’ about the whole thing…

With Captain Kilpack dead, only two sane crew-members of the ‘Event Horizon’ remain and their mission is clear. Stop the ship from returning to Earth at any cost, even if that cost is their own lives. Can they do it though…?

And that’s the thing, and the problem with prequels as a whole. If you haven’t seen the movie then the ending of ‘Dark Descent’ will work just fine for you, I’m talking about the fate of the ship, there are still some surprises that I’ll talk about in a bit. If you have seen the movie though then the fate of the ship won’t do too much for you because you know that there’s a whole film that you can now go and watch. You really should watch ‘Event Horizon’ though, it is brilliant ;o)

I’m writing this off the back of one read through though (I need to read the whole series again now, just to get my head straight around it all) so don’t read too much into that last paragraph, especially as the plot still has plenty to give us in the pages leading up to the finale. Jones and Martin continue to form an excellent partnership, in terms of showing us this visceral vision of hell (I can see why some 40K fans have ‘head-canoned’ this setting into that one) and Ward just carries on delivering a really powerful look at what happened to the original crew.

And that’s where #5 really came through for me; not so much in the regular stuff but in the whole ‘Hell is in us’ theme that Ward explores. If that’s the case then it also works the other way round and the fate of Dr. Jennifer Kwon offers a little bit of hope for Captain Miller (in the movie); I’m right here for the bleak horror but I really appreciated the slightly hopeful note for Kwon and the way that slips right back into the helpless terror of the epilogue. I won’t be surprised if I find myself watching the movie very soon.

‘Dark Descent’ has been a great read overall and I’m looking forward to the new series now. As far as #5 goes, I’m a little cagey about the effectiveness of the ending but there is still plenty here to push it over the line.

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