This is the End: Darkman

So it was Christmas 1989 (or it may be 1990 - Australia typically got stuff much later) when I saw this poster


I was like "who is this?"

It was a number of months later that I got to see the movie - a double feature with Ghost (if memory serves) and holy smokes it blew me away,

Sam Raimi wanted to make a Shadow movie but couldn't get the rights (although there was a story a few years back that he had the rights to all the Street and Smith pulp characters but nothing has come from it - I'd love to see him do those characters)

It always struck me as odd that when Taken came out in 2008 that people were surprised that Liam Neeson was an action hero I mean he was Darkman nearly 20 years earlier.

Darkman became a multimedia star - the movie was adapted to a three issue Marvel comic and a novelisation by Randall Boyle. There was plans to make a TV series with a  pilot that was a 30 minute version of the movie

Except for the pilot, each had their own continuation, first up was Marvel with a six issue miniseries which had Darkman believe that Durant wasn't dead with an outrageous way to bring him back from the dead.

Then there was a four book series by Randall Boyle which was really good.

Next was two direct to TV movies starring Arnold Vosloo: Darkman II The Return of Durant Darkman III: Die Darkman Die.

The final Darkman product is the Dynamite 6 issue miniseries teaming Darkman with Ash Williams from The Evil Dead movies.  Dynamite reported that they were doing a series but nothing came of it.

Surprisingly despite the fact that all the continuations were produced separately the stories form a fairly consistent narrative - the obvious one for me is the novels having Westlake taking a briefcase of money questioning if he should use it or not.  By Darkman II we see Westlake ripping off  criminals for money.  (that said Durant's fate in the Marvel miniseries and the second movie are contradictory)

I collected everything I could find and original Marvel series was the most elusive and I finally found the last issue the other day.