Dark Souls: The Complete Collection

Dark Souls comics #1-3

by George Mann, Tom Williams, Kassandra Khaw

Ten years after Dark Souls was first released on the PlayStation, comes the ultimate collection of the comic series inspired by one of the most influential games of the 21st century!

Step back into the Kingdom of Lordan ten years after its first appearance in Dark Souls and immerse yourself in the complete collection of Titan Comics' graphic novel series. All five Dark Souls graphic novels have been bound in one spine for the first time ever in this anniversary edition! Now featuring the Age of the Fire - the comic prequel to the game - and the Legends of the Flame and Tales of Ember anthologies. Dark The Complete Collection is packed from cover to cover with rich artwork from rising star Alan Quah and more!

Collects Dark The Breath of Andolus , Dark Winter's Spite , Dark Legends of the Flame , Dark Tales of Ember and Dark The Age of Fire !

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Fantasy, Horror, Video Games, Fiction, High Fantasy

384 pages, Paperback

Published November 9, 2021

About the author

George Mann is an author and editor, primarily in genre fiction. He was born in Darlington, County Durham in 1978.
A former editor of Outland, Mann is the author of The Human Abstract, and more recently The Affinity Bridge and The Osiris Ritual in his Newbury and Hobbes detective series, set in an alternate Britain, and Ghosts of Manhattan, set in the same universe some decades later.
He wrote the Time Hunter novella "The Severed Man", and co-wrote the series finale, Child of Time.
He has also written numerous short stories, plus Doctor Who and Sherlock Holmes audiobooks for Big Finish Productions. He has edited a number of anthologies including The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, The Solaris Book of New Fantasy and a retrospective collection of Sexton Blake stories, Sexton Blake, Detective, with an introduction by Michael Moorcock.

Reviews

[Dead Inside · Rating 5 out of 5]

Being a graphic novel this was a quick read, gorgeous art work, compelling story. This was just what I needed to focus on while feeling like I am looking through an off-white yellowish bubble on the verge of loosing it completely,suffering from paroxetine withdrawals.

[Serpenthesia · Rating 3 out of 5]

De los cuatro cómics que vienen, diría que solo el tercero tiene algo que ver con DS y está realmente basado en el mundo del videojuego. El resto podrían ser cómics totalmente random de fantasía. Ojalá todos hubiesen sido como ese tercero, ya que me encantó. El resto meh, una pena.

[Nagic · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was great. Amazing artwork that nails the feel of the games. The stories were hit and miss but mostly hits. Glad I picked this up and gave it a read.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having played the Dark Souls series of games, I wanted to dive deeper into the lore of the saga. After reading this graphic novel, I'm even more confused than before. But thats okay. The artwork is impeccable in this series! So many amazing artists working together to craft these wild stories that truly capture Dark Souls's sense of dread. Each story follows the motif of impending doom, there are no heroes, just creatures wandering aimlessly, balancing life and death in everlasting darkness. I felt so sad and depressed reading this graphic novel. 10/10 definitely recommend.

[Lucas Hesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Für Souls-Fans echt zu empfehlen. Wenn man die Spiele nicht gespielt hat, kann man die einzelnen Storys trotzdem für sich sehen und "verstehen". Die Artworks sind der Hammer!

[NeilW · Rating 1 out of 5]

There is very little to recommend this collection. The artwork is generic fantasy tropes that does very little to channel the impressive style of the Dark Souls games, it flows poorly panel to panel, and the artist seems to lack a solid grasp of how the human body works. The story is a mess where the only parts that aren't common fantasy cliches are utterly incomprehensible. It does nothing to explain the famously baroque lore of the Souls games. It utterly fails to add anything of interest to that lore or to build upon the many interesting threads found in it.

Thematically, stylistically, or story-wise, this "complete collection" lacks any of the charm of the Souls games. It's so detached from the source material that it feels like somebody tried to salvage a mediocre fantasy comic by slapping the Dark Souls logo onto the cover and calling it good enough.

[Scott Macey-Ridgway · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great for anyone interested in the Souls series or medieval fantasy

[R · Rating 1 out of 5]

This felt like it was written by someone who didn't know anything about ds but knew the time period inspiration. It is also is unbearably ugly :(

[Chris Lemmerman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a fan of Titan's Bloodborne comics, so when I saw they were collecting all of their Dark Souls stuff in one place I snapped it right up.

We open with The Breath Of Andolus, from George Mann, which follows a heroine searching for three objects to summon a dragon and relink the flame. Sounds familiar, right? To say it's derivative would be being kind, it's literally the plot of any Souls game reskinned with a different character. It's not bad, but it's hardly revolutionary - even the 'twist' at the end is signposted right from the off. Alan Quah's artwork really sells it though, it's gorgeous, and well suited to fantasy settings.

Winter's Spite, also by Mann, is a step up. It's only tangentially Dark Souls related, but the set-up and ending give definite Dark Souls vibes. It doesn't seem like the first two issues are related to the overall story until the last issue which puts everything into perspective, which is pretty neat, and there's a twist that should I have seen coming but didn't, so that was unexpected. Again Alan Quah's on art, so it all looks great - the sweeping snowy vistas are especially good.

Then there's Age Of Fire, from Ryan O'Sullivan, which is easily the best. It's a deep dive look into the politics at the end of the fall of Lordran, and follows a minor character as he crosses paths with a series of other, bigger characters, shaping his own fall from grace after a trip to Izalith and a descent into the shadows. The art here is sometimes a little too dark to discern what's going on, and there are a few dodgy faces, but overall Anton Kokarev does a very good job capturing the decline of the world.

And finally there's Legends Of The Flame, which are some anthology issues collecting lots of shorter 6 to 8 page stories. I think there's only one out of the twelve or so that I didn't enjoy - of particular note are Crossroads and Behold, Townsfolk!, both by George Mann and Piotr Kowalski (who will go on to draw the Bloodborne series), and The Devoted by Dan Watters and Casper Wijngaard (which I had to go back and read twice because the twist is very clever).

The Dark Souls comics aren't bad, but I feel like they could be better. The art's usually a good fit, but it seems like either the writers were too scared to embrace the rich mythology of the world or they weren't allowed to put things to paper that were only implied in the games. Either way, this collection's got a lot of bang for it's buck, but you'll likely feel like you're missing something by the end of it.

[b · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some gems, some fantastic art, but also full of stories that seem written by folks who’ve never touched dark souls in their life. Compared to the Bloodborne comics, this is a really weak series overall (BB does have the one insistent dud, which suffers the disconnect issue that this omnibus does). Kinda disappointed. If these stories had permission to be dark fantasy free of IP-connection you might not notice the difference, or perhaps they would benefit from that, hard to say.

Best entry is The Age of Fire, hands down. A few others rival and surpass art-wise, but this has the appeal and attention of something like, say, “Star Wars: From A Certain Point of View” (at least its best elements); a devoted, plausible sort of fanfic, that drills down into peripheral characters, that only glancingly relies on cameos but never trespasses or distorts in a way that undermines the work.

Anyhow, I’m enjoying the new one in singles a lot better than this.

[Ifrah Akhtar · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of stories from the Dark Souls universe. I found the art to be the most compelling part of this book.
The storytelling was hit or miss in most of the tales. Winter’s Spite was my favorite story because it seemed the most cohesive and had art that matched it’s cold atmosphere.
I also enjoyed the details of how the scripts turned into the final comic pages at the end of the book. I think if you are a fan of the Dark Souls games, you will enjoy this book, but the games are the true gems of this universe.

[Justin · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5? Bought it on a whim as it was on sale. Mediocre collection of comics based on the Dark Souls video game. Gutter loss negatively impacts the book in a couple of key spots, most significantly the two page spread featuring Artorias. The artwork in that same story is too dark and my guess is it looks better in the original comic issues. The stories are decent enough though. The collection of tales that make up the final fourth of the book benefits from their brevity. This section also feels more closely tied to the games as most of them feature “The Chosen One”, aka the player of the game.

[Aaron · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a bargain bin generic fantasy comic featuring a poorly drawn Solaire and some Dark Souls concept artwork for the covers and preliminary pages. Solaire has veins in his armor lol. Looks so stupid. All the art looks stupid. Nothing looks like Dark Souls. A bold move would be to get someone who makes comics as obtuse as the Souls games and let them go wild with a story, like Yuichi Yokoyama or someone in the Fort Thunder tradition. It would never happen, but at least you’d have an interesting artifact.

[Erich Funes · Rating 2 out of 5]

While it was set in the general idea of the Dark Souls world, a lot of it didn’t really FEEL like Dark Souls nor did it look like it either. While I respect each artists craft and art style, none of them really hit the mark of what I was hoping for in this collection. There we’re really only 2 stories that felt right (Akron and Mirror Knight) which is why I gave it 2 stars, but ultimately it doesn’t hit the mark I was hoping to see it meet.

[ollie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The art is really nice, and the writing is good as well. The story is nothing to write home about though. It's just that nothing really stands out as special honestly and it wasn't the most interesting comic to me. I think this is due in part to it being a series of short unrelated stories. Because of this it was difficult to be invested.

[Patrick Boey · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this dark souls graphic novel collection purely as a gaming fan. It was alright, mostly. Anyone looking for conclusive souls lore would be better off trawling the fextralife wiki, and those looking for a cohesive dark fantasy story would probably be quite disappointed. That being said, the art is mostly pretty to look at, if a bit stiff during action scenes. 2-2.5 stars.

[Caleb Stratos · Rating 3 out of 5]

I give a 3.5 not 3, only because I was expecting something different than what I got. It was very fun to read being a souls fan and as it is a compilation of stories, some were better than others.
I don't regret buying it.

[Bruno · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cool variation of art styles. Feel like this would be really good to the Dark Souls lore experts who want to dig into the world. To me it was pretty cool to see the familiar locations and people dying in gruesome ways.

[Ed Oakes · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit disjointed since I’ve never played the game.

[Randy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Offers very little from a narrative standpoint, but the illustrations are incredible!

[Andy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fun but forgettable collection of Dark Souls comics. My favorite story, The Devoted, was one of the shortest but also the most petrifying.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

A hopeless world but those alive keep fighting. Some cool swords and armor. Nice artwork.

[パラダイム 2 0 7 0 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Terrible writing but the art is cool.

[Seb · Rating 2 out of 5]

Breath of Andolus
2/5

Winter's Spite
2/5

Age of Fire
2/5

Legends of the Flame (Anthology)
3/5

[kristiana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I absolutely loved the art style, the dark souls lore and the poetic language

[Markosaurus Fisticuffs · Rating 1 out of 5]

Barely readable

[Lou Hughes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant addition to the lore of the dark Souls universe

[Julio Hernandez · Rating 5 out of 5]

it was a pretty good book and i enjoyed it and i read it and i hope to read many more like this in my life

[ali ♥ · Rating 2 out of 5]

weak compared to the bloodborne collection
& i hated most of the art (sorry)

[André · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Dark Souls: The Complete Collection" is a comprehensive anthology that immerses readers in the dark and challenging world of the beloved video game series. Featuring detailed lore, stunning artwork, and insights from the creators, this collection provides an in-depth exploration of the atmospheric and intricate universe of Dark Souls.