Publisher: Dark Circle Comics
Writer: Duane Swierczynski
Artist: Michael Gaydos
Editor: Alex Segura
Release date: OUT NOW!!!!!
Price: $3.99

If you like your characters scarred, drug dependant and just plain nasty, Black Hood is for you.

Greg Hettinger is a Philadelphia cop who was shot in the line of duty, and gets hooked on painkillers. When he guns down the masked vigilante known as the Black Hood he becomes a hero and then decides to take on the Black Hood identity for himself, as you do, and wage a one-man war on crime.

On the trail of drug boss The Connection, this issue see the Black Hood coming off a poor third in a graveyard tussle and, worse, his assailants rip off his mask. With his identity on the verge of being exposed his only option is to track down The Connection and fast.

This is part of Dark Circle’s re-invention of the old Archie Comics stable of characters from the 1960s, which in itself, brought back characters from the Golden Age of Comic Books, with the original Black Hood making his debut in 1940. With classy variant covers by David Mack, Howard Chaykin and Bill Sienkiewicz this is the penultimate chapter in the first Black Hood story arc.

Character re-invention is littered with noble but flawed efforts usually because of over-reverence to the source material. ‘We are not worthy to tread in such hallowed footsteps’ seems to be the mantra of most re-inventors so they just tinker with the original concept a bit and give themselves a self-congratulating hug that they’ve added their own mark to a classic.

Sadly, ‘if it ain’t broke, it wouldn’t need fixing’ would be better advice, because, no matter how much you might have loved this character when you were knee-high to a grasshopper, if they had legs, they’d still be in print, right? Those with fond memories of the original Black Hood (and there have been several incarnations) will find little similarity here and that is all to the good.

This is dark, original, and noir storytelling pulling no punches and a fitting addition to the Black Hood canon. If Dark Circle can maintain this sort of standard with their other characters the Archie gang is set for a new lease of life that deserves to run and run.

 

Reviewer: Gary orchard
Reviews Editor: Steve Hooker