Darklight

by Chad Kultgen, Piotr Kowalski (illustrator)

We poisoned our planet. Sucked it dry of natural resources. Killed one another in the name of gods that never existed, and survived despite it all. Now, at the very edges of the fabric of space-time, the universe itself is starting to decay. Three warring races–the Human Empire, the organic Duron, and the cybernetic Luminids–must band together to stop their mutual destruction, and the future of the galaxy rests on Captain Rhodes and the crew of the H.E. Woden.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comics, Science Fiction, Comic Book, Fiction

Hardcover

First published April 15, 2014

About the author

After two months in his birthplace Spokane, WA Chad Kultgen spent the majority of his life in a suburb of Dallas, TX called Lewisville. After high school, he turned down a full ride baseball scholarship to Trinity University in San Antonio, TX to pursue writing. He moved to Los Angeles, CA where he joined the likes of George Lucas, Robert Zemekis, and Ron Howard as a graduate of the prestigious School Of Cinema/Television at the University of Southern California.

His first job was writing for one of the most widely circulated trade magazines in the music industry, HITS. After two years of being entrenched with rock-stars and their entourages, Chad moved on to become a staff writer for one of American Media's most beloved supermarket tabloids. He created stories about flesh eating zombies, time-traveling stock traders, and
sandwich making house cats for the magazine that gave birth to Batboy, THE WEEKLY WORLD NEWS.

Chad's next endeavor found him selling his first TV show to VH1. The reality show POSERS featured Chad himself along with two of his real life friends posing as various unrecognizable celebrities to get behind Hollywood's velvet rope. VH1 made a pilot episode in which Chad posed as the bass player from the band Maroon 5 in order to infiltrate one of Hollywood's hottest and most exclusive nightclubs. Once inside he proceeded to drink free champagne and use his fake celebrity to escort five female stars of the adult entertainment industry back to his limo. Despite the success of the pilot internally, a perfectly timed regime change at VH1 left Chad with nothing but DVD of the night's events and the paragraph you just read for his troubles.
In addition to writing the pilot episode of The Average American Male, Chad's feature screenplay BURT DICKENSON: THE MOST POWERFUL MAGICIAN ON PLANET EARTH is currently in the process of being optioned by NEW LINE CINEMA.

Reviews

[Juho Pohjalainen · Rating 2 out of 5]

In medias res as a concept is all very well, but this is too much. I would have liked to know a bit more of what's going on, what all this crisis is about and what caused it, and the background of the characters and the species and other stuff. It felt like a tiny slice towards the endpoint of a much greater and grander and - maybe, who knows - better story. On its own it did nothing for me.

[Tom LA · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good art, bad writing. Essentially, this 2014 comic book is a re-hashing of a dull Star Trek episode, including almost exactly every character, changed only slightly. And consider that EVERY Star Trek episode was already a major steal from a classic sci-fi story. So this is a derivative story to the second power.

Sorry. I buy your book, you get a very honest review.

[Karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Grabbed it from the library for a scifi romp. The art is okay, but the pace of the story feels rushed and perfunctory, and I'm bummed to imagine a far future in which white men are still the heroes, and everyone else (polymorphous alien species included) is a B-plot. Do better, humanity.

[Simon · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's sort of like an episode of Star Trek. Only the science part of the science-fiction makes even less sense than normal.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chad Kultgen typically does uncomfortable contemporary fiction, so when I noticed he did a graphic novel, I was more confused than intrigued, but I'll give most anything a shot. What we get is an above-average sci-fi action movie of a comic with an interesting premise and some bold choices.

Sci-fi comics have always been kind of hard for me to get into, but this one just worked for the most part. As a quick sci-fi one-off, give this a look even if you've been turned off by his other work.

[Edmund Bloxam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not entirely unlike a Star Trek plot, as others have pointed out, although more like a movie.

The robotisized alien race was an interesting element, enough worthwhile things happened.

Art was a bit crap. Could see everything for the most part, so didn't suffer from Artist's Syndrome. Bit the splash pages and ship designs failed to pop. In fact, in one big, black hole moment, crucial to the plot, I didn't know what had happened.

[Emerson Harris · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ooph. The writing is abysmal. The art is clear in a conventional style, though not particularly good. But the writing... The premise... It's all really, really bad. It's the graphic novel equivalent of waking up at 2 AM and catching a made-for-TV movie on Syfy - brief moments of coolness, completely drowned out by its terribleness.

[Paolo Aguas · Rating 3 out of 5]

So I do understand the other reviews here that say this feels like just like an episode of Star Trek. The names of the aliens are pretty cool and the story had potential but in terms of execution it was just okay. Art work seemed okay but I felt that this could have been overall much better

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Three civilizations work together to save the universe from disintegration. Interesting technology and several plausible paths for people to take in the future. Create your own sun and play with an event horizon.

[Chuck Knudsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was ok. Pretty straightforward space opera tale about three warring races barely working together to try to stop the end of the universe.

[Michaela · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

holds a lot of potential because of its interesting premise but has an issue with the very quick pacing; could've taken more time to explore the worlds and the characters.

[RL Bailey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty dull standard sci-fi tale.

[Cory Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great sci fi comic

Exactly what the title says. It's a stand alone sci fi story in grapjic novel form. Well worth it for any fan.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly ambitious for a four issue arc, Darklight does a surprisingly good job of telling a story within a complex universe that doesn't overburden the reader with unnecessary details or dumb itself down with too many battle scenes or cliches. I tend to be a critical "serious scifi" reader, always paying attention to where I need to suspend my disbelief. Of course that's challenging with a setup that takes place so far into the future it's hard to imagine what's realistic and what's not. But where I had questions or noticed inconsistencies, Kultgen was able to attend to them in some form or another (and not, again surprisingly, with excessive exposition). The ending was idealistic and maybe trying a bit too hard, but I didn't mind it because of the interesting and terrifying world I had been immersed in. I would have been just as happy to see them all die in the end, because they're just going to bring endless war to their new universe. Sigh.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short and sweet, if predictable and cliche. Humanity has destroyed their planet and taken to space to survive. However, the universe is now dying and the humans must join with two other species to attempt to save it.

Pretty basic science fiction story. Obligatory romantic subplot that kind of made me gag a little, but overall a decent tale. Worth a read if you're bored.

[Kyle Shepherd · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although steeped with potential, I feel that the author failed to deliver. The baseline story is great, the races that occupy it intriguing. . . the characters weren't these things. Feels like so much more could have been accomplished here. There was no connection to any of the characters, which made it seem like reading the review of the book, instead of actually reading the book.

[Yanique Gillana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short and straight to the action. I loved the art style and the setup. Not the most original back story, but definitely an interesting permutation of it. I did wish it was a bit longer and it didn't feel like everything was resolved in a couple of minutes though.

[Eric C. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ok, sci-fi...not really my cup of tea.