There A.D arrives at 1992, after the two events of 1991 or War of Gods And Armageddon 2001, aware of having to set up a more “controllable” event than the previous two both in terms of editorial and scope. In July 1992 thus began the publication of Eclipso – The Darkness Within written by Robert Loren Fleming And Keith Giffen, now a real column of DC and multifaceted talent, and designed by Bart Sears and from the same Keith Giffen.
The formula adopted is the one that had had the greatest commercial success, that is a main miniseries to which the annual of the various newspapers involved and in which the plot would have unraveled. More specifically for Eclipso – The Darkness Within it was decided to create a two-issue miniseries, i.e. a prologue and the conclusion of the event, effectively leaving the annual the task of telling the story thus divided into 16 parts.
As the title itself suggests, the event was centered on the villains eclipso, created by Bob Haney and Lee Elias in 1963 for the pages of House of Secrets #61. Eclipso was the “dark” personality of solar energy scientist Bruce Gordon who took over whenever an eclipse occurred. This was because Gordon had been injured by a shaman on a scientific expedition into the jungle with a mysterious black diamond. The villains it was evidently inspired by the literary classic The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. His early adventures saw Eclipso doing mischief thanks to increased strength and invulnerability and only a strong light source allowed Gordon to regain control.
DC Major Events: Eclipso – The Darkness Within (1992)
A new Eclipso
In the late 80’s and early 90’s, A.D tries to renew its pool of characters and, strictly speaking of the mystical and horror side of its universe, a series of characters considered “second tier” or anchored to traditions that dated back to the Golden Age and Silver Age were the subject of profound, and not always punctual, revisions. Eclipse definitely falls into this category. In fact, the event kicks off retroactively changing its origins.
The first number of Eclipso – The Darkness Within then opens with the revelation that Eclipso is an evil entity, the Spirit of Vengeance. He was later exiled to the dark side of the Moon and his essence imprisoned in a huge black diamond which was then shattered to prevent his return. Anyone who comes into possession of a fragment of the diamond is not only possessed but is literally transformed and has the opportunity to give free rein to their revenge. When by pure coincidence value from the Legion of Super-Heroes (Lar Gand or the ex-Mon-El, who died during The Magic Wars, and returned to life after the collapse of the pocket universe in which Superboy had met the Legion of Super-heroes and all of reality had been rewritten by Glorith (former right arm of the Time Trapper) he runs into the entity’s palace-prison, Eclipso awakens and decides to conquer the Earth.
The plan is simple: use Black Diamonds to take possession of superheroes e villains. Thus Eclipso begins to wreak havoc among the community of heroes while Bruce Gordon is the only one who understands that what until then was considered a villains scarcely fearsome is actually a cosmic entity that will stop at nothing.
Obviously the first hero Gordon will ask for help will be Superman. The two try to track down all the diamonds but they don’t always manage to arrive in time and many heroes, including Hawkman, Starman and Superman himself twice, fall directly or indirectly under the influence of Eclipso. The Spirit of Vengeance will thus be able to dangerously increase the ranks of his followers by creating a dangerous army that gathers in the Arizona desert in conjunction with an eclipse.
Providential is the intervention of the LEGION which informs the remaining heroes, orphans of Bruce Gordon who mysteriously disappeared, that Eclipso’s hiding place is on the Moon. Thus an expedition is organized in which, equally providential, will be the return of Gordon and some other scientists who, after having developed a series of solar-powered weapons, manage to get the better of Eclipso also thanks to the promptness of spirit of the Gordon himself and with the help of the revived Starman and Valor.
But as Gordon himself will prophesy at the end of the lunar mission, it is a matter of winning a battle not of war because defeating an entity like Eclipso is not simple and fragments of the original Black Diamond still exist on Earth. The war will be fought but will almost fade into the background because another event, starring Superman, is tragically on the horizon.
Eclipso – The Darkness Within: Change everything to not change anything
Events in the world of superhero comics move in two directions. The first is upset him status quo giving a new structure to the narrative universe, radically changing the balance and interactions between the various characters and / or creating new characters that introduce lifeblood and narrative. The second is instead that of promise this change and then actually change nothing or almost according to the assumption of the writer and editor Jim Shooter.
Eclipso – The Darkness Within undoubtedly falls into this second category. In addition to retroactively modifying the character of Eclipso, which now takes on a very different scope in the economy of the panorama of DC villains, the event offers no further lasting consequences. It is true that value will become a character who will be the pivot for some events of the cosmic side of the DC Universe and that the war against Eclipso himself, mentioned above, will then actually be fought in the regular series completely dedicated to the character which will last 18 numbers but beyond this little or nothing .
The expedient of possession allows the authors to play on a broad spectrum with the leitmotif of the event, so much so that many decide not to actually continue the horizontal plot of the event itself but to use it only as an expedient to enrich their plots (The New Teen Titans, Deathstroke) or make self-contained themed episodes (Robin, The Demon).
On the other hand, it is interesting to note how the event manages to photograph some rapidly changing scenarios within the DC Universe. Take as an example the annual of Batman magazines monopolized by the consequences of the seminal The Killing Joke by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland, a story in which Barbara Gordon was injured by the Joker and remained paralyzed for many years. Again: the newspapers of the Justice League they were beginning to feel tired of that irreverent and highly successful formula with which they had been relaunched at the end of the 80s (and still widely imitated today) but which clashed with the most extreme sensibility of the early 90s. Finally, it is precisely during this event that Guy Gardner leaves the Green Lantern Corps, later returning to the scene sporting a yellow ring instead. Prelude to a more drastic change, the transformation into Warrior, when his DNA was combined with that of a warring alien race, a few months later.
More generally then Eclipso – The Darkness Within photograph a moment of transition, narratively speaking, for many characters in the DC Universe. Those same changes that an event should inevitably bring with it, and which, in fact, are missing here. Finally, this moment of transition explodes dramatically in a few months when Superman will face Doomsday on the streets of Metropolis with an unthinkable result: his death.
Looking for identity
Robert Loren Fleming And Keith Giffen exploit the possibility given to them by bending, and in a certain way renewing, the character of Eclipso with a very solid idea, certainly not revolutionary, but interesting on paper and ideally borrowed from a certain space and science fiction superhero literature of the 70s re-read here magical and horror. Too bad that their contribution stops at the prologue and the final register because, as already mentioned above, the rest of the authors involved are not always able to hit the soul of the event itself both in terms of atmosphere and thematically, with fluctuating results.
Just the one-shot conclusion deserves a brief digression because it manages to contextualize and make more organic the sudden progression of the events of the last annual also providing a finale as dramatic as, again, without consequences of the event as well as a decided cliffhangers towards the spin-off series Eclipse and the one-shot value.
This discourse is then corroborated by taking into consideration the clearly heterogeneous graphic parts of the books. The designers involved are a strange mix of styles: on the one hand those still heavily anchored to the aesthetics of the previous decade and to the so-called in house style DC, borrowed from the great Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, and on the other by the search for breaking up spaces, exaggerated hypertrophy and very extreme detail typical of the 90s. Just to cite two examples of this almost irreconcilable dichotomy: Phil Jimenez and Curt Swan illustrate the annual, moreover connected to each other, of The New Teen Titans And Deathstroke while Travis Charest tries his hand atannual Of The Flash.
Exactly in the middle of this graphic tension is placed Bart Sears. Strong gods layouts clear by Giffen, the draftsman plays with those stylistic elements typical of the 90s aesthetic: important anatomies, dynamism and research of the effective page that strikes the reader more for the form than for the substance. Inevitable, in the final album, then also pistols and rifles with disproportionate mechanics and dimensions, this is a true trademark of the 90s. A test by Sears that is absolutely not unpleasant but still proportionate to the historical moment.
Eclipso – The Darkness Within: the Italian editions
Eclipso – The Darkness Within is completely unpublished in Italy: neither the two numbers that make up the main miniseries nor any of the annual that make up the saga have in fact been published in our country by the various publishers who have succeeded in the publication of the DC material.
It doesn’t go better in the original language because not even DC itself has ever collected it in volume and in an organic way. Eclipso – The Darkness Within it therefore turns out to be one of the very few events to be “unpublished” since it has not enjoyed a reprint.
If we wanted to do some “fantasy publishing” we could play at compiling a volume of Eclipso – The Darkness Within just inserting:
- Eclipso: The Darkness Within #1
- Superman: The Man of Steel Annual #1
- Superman Annual (vol. 2) #4
- Action Comics Annual #4
- LEGION ’92 Annual #3
- Adventures of SupermanAnnual #4
- Eclipso: The Darkness Within #2
This selection would thus allow us to enjoy the most important main points of the plot net of some necessary side notes to explain some events and the presence or absence of some characters.
If you want to delve into the character of Eclipso retrieved Geoff Johns’ JSA Volume 3.
