Dark Ages Review (Tom Taylor, Iban Coello)

A gigantic living machine designed to eat black holes has been imprisoned in the centre of Earth (for no reason) and is now awakening (for no reason) which spells the end of the world (no - in a Marvel comic? But those are hardly ever the stakes!). However, in putting a stop to the destruction, Doctor Strange (that bloody magician again!) inadvertently creates a “dark age” wherein all electricity no longer works on the planet. And still, even knowing the danger now lying dormant in the centre of Earth, the madmutant Apocalypse wants that power for his own - superheroes gotta stop him, dystopian(ish) future style!

Tom Taylor brings his brand of non-canon, Elseworlds-style storytelling (Injustice, DCeased, Dark Knights of Steel) over from DC to Marvel for one of their own non-canon, What If…?-type books: Dark Ages. And, like all of these offbeat tales, it’s not very good.

The novelty factor is there - seeing (some) familiar faces recast in (slightly) different roles in an unusual setting - and I appreciated that Taylor didn’t make his future world a predictably gloomy dystopian one - the post-electric world isn’t that bad and the atmosphere is often surprisingly upbeat. I liked Iban Coello’s art and Deadpool’s scenes were fun. I also liked how swiftly and effectively Taylor set up the premise in what might be in other hands an entire book-length storyline compressed down to a single issue.

But for all the nuances and little twists here and there, the story boils down to the tired, overused trope of one side of superheroes punching another side of superheroes until the big bad goes down. Characters die but it doesn’t really matter because this is a standalone piece so the consequences of this story won’t last, and also I just don’t care about the Marvel characters that much. I’m not a Marvel fanboy and Taylor doesn’t do enough to make me invested in anyone in particular.

Once we got past the premise and I saw what the comic really was, I quickly lost interest and never regained it as the familiar beats played out as they always do. It’s the same old superhero story in a slightly different outfit - it’s Dork Ages.