The Darkest Hour Review

The Darkest Hour

writer- Rick Spears

artist- various

The Darkest Hour is a graphic novel from Oni Press, promoting the motion picture released this Christmas. The book really is just an advertisement for the film, but Oni really brought out the big guns for this 23 page ad. The list of artists includes Ben Templesmith, Pia Guerra, and Becky Cloonan just to name a few, and each artist illustrates how an alien invasion takes places in various parts of the world. It's interesting to see ten different artists be able to pull of something like this. When a book has such a large ensemble contributing to the artwork, it can often times be a distraction and possibly ruin the mood of the story. That wasn't the case in The Darkest Hour. All of the artists managed to flow easily right into the other.

I have a couple issues with this book. One is that the book mostly relied on the art to tell the story. There was so little in the way of narration or dialogue, that I never formed the slightest interest in seeing the film. It is after all, an ad for the movie. But the book, as well illustrated as it is, failed to hook me. The second problem I have with this book? Well, if there's one thing I can't stand in published works, it's typos. There's no reason anything you read either online or in book form, should have misspelled words. Even I have spellcheck and an editor go over my reviews before I publish them. The text box is explaining things from the alien invaders perspective and the line goes exactly like this, “In the face of certain death they have a will harder to crush then their buildings or bodies.” Let me draw your attention to the culprit... the word “then.” The word Mr. Spears was looking for was “than.” I understand that a spellcheck will ignore that word thinking it's spelled correctly, but the book should have been handed over to a proofreader of some kind.

At any rate, that's my review for The Darkest Hour from Oni Press, Inc. Fine artists, lackluster concept, and poor spelling. You won't catch me at the theater this Christmas.