Writers: KS Bruce & Brian Decubellis
Adaptation: Ethan Sacks
Artist & Cover Artist: Fico Ossio
Colorist: Raciel Avila
Letterer: Jame
Editor: Chris Ryall
Designer: Travis Escarfullery
Publisher: Image Comics
Price: $3.99
Release Date: May 28, 2025
The time: March 13, 2020. The place: New York City. The
invader: Covid-19. Inhabitants flee the city, hide in their homes, and prize
masks more highly than gold. The streets empty, and businesses close as a
silent killer overwhelms mobile morgues. With New York driven to a standstill,
how will the pandemic threaten the established order of the criminal
underworld? Let's grab some cash, leap into Dark Honor #1, and see!
Story
A card game becomes the underworld’s first casualty as
Grigor and his gun-toting goons invade the back room of a bar. Grigor-19 isn't
an unknown as he mows down the criminal families and their favored customers.
He has links to the five families that rule New York and the Hundred who
protect them. But the soldiers who protect the families' interests respect
Grigor's momentum and seeming invulnerability. Regime change amid a
society-threatening virus prompts the crime families' soldiers to question who
best represents their future or past in Dark Honor #1.
As Grigor upsets the delicate balance between the five
families and the hundred, Rain languishes in prison. Or perhaps not so much
languishes as disrupts the established order. But the wind of change that blows
through New York also invades its prisons. Rain has links with the Hundred.
When the parole board makes the addicted gambler an offer she can't refuse,
Rain weighs the odds and makes her play in Dark Honor #1.
KS Bruce, Brian Decubellis, and Ethan Sacks shift the point
of view to reveal the pivotal players and the levers that should prevent the
corrupt system from breaking. Grigor and Rain's tongue-in-cheek dialogue
leavens a dark, fast-paced story about intriguing characters who, either by
inclination or necessity, prop up the criminal underworld rather than the
democracy their forefathers fought and died for.
Art
Fico Ossio's art welcomes you to New York City with a
sweeping view of glowing towers beyond a bridge devoid of traffic. Inside an
empty bar, men in suits gather around tables, clutching cards and glasses and
studying the cards in their hands. Framed by masked men carrying assault
rifles, Grigor cuts a stylish figure in his finely tailored slacks, jacket, and
scarf in Dark Honor #1. He smiles, defying Covid-19, as his cigarette fills the
air with gentle arcs of smoke.
Raciel Avila lends Fico Ossio’s art a painted appearance.
Purples and blues enliven the city that never sleeps, while the red cast on the
bar's façade by a white neon light foretells the violence to come. Yellow
lights from upstairs offices and green lighting from the bar fill the card room
with the same stars and glare the skyscrapers produce. As guns strike the
players like lightning, the sparkles filling the dark interior suggest a
realignment of the criminal cosmos. Blood sprays like plants springing from
fertile soil, while a reflection caught in crimson evokes the mark of a signet
ring in wax.
Jame fills white dialogue balloons with black uppercase
letters that occasionally grow bold for intonation, swell for raised voices,
and shrink for lowered or distant voices. Sound effects fill the bar with a
barrage of single shots and continuous fire, Rain making her position clear,
and footsteps echoing through an empty transit station. Thanks to Image Comics
and Synergy Publishing for providing a copy for review.
Final Thoughts
As a pandemic changes New York City overnight, a system
built upon secrets, power, and government corruption seems doomed. Beautiful
and bursting with energy, Dark Honor #1 ponders how fear over an uncertain
future can change our world in ways we could never have imagined.
Rating 9.2/10
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