For as mysterious and impossible as the Darkhold is meant to be, there sure is no end to the amount of stories about it.
Ostensibly Marvel’s answer to Lovecraft’s Necronomicon, the Darkhold first appeared in a Werewolf by Night-led issue of Marvel Spotlight in 1972, meaning the book has been kicking around for over fifty years of real-world time – and, of course, since the dawn of time on Earth-616. It’s been the MacGuffin for a who’s who of Marvel’s supernatural characters, from that aforementioned Werewolf to Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch; it is, as of writing, a living, breathing, real live boy.
Darkhold: The Saga of the Book of Sins puts forward a very small sampling of those stories, and while the stories included are mostly heavy hitters, the book only concerns itself with the Darkhold’s first eleven years (1972-1983). Several comic book ages have passed since then – indeed, the Darkhold has had not one but two series of its own since then – which means that any reader hoping for a definitive understanding of the Book of Sins are apt to leave this volume as mystified as they came to it.
See, like so many delightful odds and ends of the Marvel Universe, the Darkhold was initially a jumped-up plot contrivance, easily disposable as needed. In its initial Werewolf outing, the book is barely handled (there is a mutant Medusa for Jack Russell to worry about), and though a man does become possessed by the book shortly thereafter, there is never any indication that the book would ever become a staple of the Marvel Universe. Like the Infinity Gems a little later, the Darkhold didn’t sink to the bedrock of the Marvel mythology until much later.
By limiting the scope to these select, early stories by no means conveys an accurate understanding of the Darkhold as it’s been used recently; it does, however, offer some insight into the organic shaping of a comic book artifact. One of the most compelling inclusions in The Saga of the Book of Sins is a very brief – and very foundational – short story from Dracula Lives! #6 by Steve Gerber and Gene Colan. In this story, Dracula is on the hunt for a clergy member named Montessi, a man who has uncovered an anti-vampire incantation from the Darkhold. Doctor Strange uses this ‘Montessi Formula’ to do away with all vampires later in this collection.
This same Montessi Formula would have been very useful during this summer’s Blood Hunt event, and though the middle portion of this collection centers more on the Scarlet Witch connection, I have to assume that this release was intended to synergize in some way with the vampiric aspects of the mythology. Yet Darkhold (the boy) was only briefly utilized in the Strange Academy tie-in to Blood Hunt.
It’s a shame that the book’s scope is so narrow, however. Given that a much denser, more complete exploration of the Darkhold was released back in 2018 under the title Avengers/Doctor Strange: Rise of the Darkhold, Saga of the Book of Sins might have benefited from a more diverse selection of later stories to earn the title of ‘Saga’.
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