After Black Scorpion II: Aftershock, Roger Corman himself produced a Black Scorpion TV series, which ran for one season of 22 episodes on the SyFy channel in 2001. To date, I haven’t seen any of it, but you can read a review HERE, and an interview with Michelle Lintel, who took over the role of Darcy Walker/Black Scorpion HERE. I’ll probably track it down eventually.

In November 2009 Bluewater Comics (now known as TidleWave Productions) released this 4-issue miniseries of the character. Written by Paul Salamoff, this is not a continuation of the movies or TV series but rather serves as a reboot of the character.

Set in Angel City, as this series opens Darcy Walker is a police detective who has a bit of a reputation as a loose canon on the force, which often puts her at odds with her Captain, Strickland (who is written as far more competent than his film counterpart. Thankfully her father is the police commissioner, and he’s usually able to keep her out of trouble. The city is in the midst of a crime wave, and the police are underfunded due to the mayor’s budget cuts.

The main villain in this series is the Gangster Prankster who pulls off a daring robbery of $2 million cash that the city designated for a fake hostage crisis that he staged. Darcy had cornered the Prankster as he was escaping, but he got away from her which doesn’t help her reputation. Then Darcy’s father is killed, and although she manages to kill the assailant, Darcy is convinced there’s a bigger conspiracy behind his murder. This leads to her creating a makeshift costume and taking to the streets as a vigilante. Then Darcy is saddled with a new partner, Detective Rafferty, and is tasked with tracking down this vigilante. Eventually, she seeks out the mechanic named Argyle and tells him her secret, and has him build her special car, and he also designs a better costume, the classic costume from the films, to help her carry out her mission.

Gangster Prankster teams up with The Breathtaker, who it turns out was behind the murder of Darcy’s father, and now as the Black Scorpion Darcy must take them both out, while continuing to hide her secret from her partner, who is convinced that Black Scorpion is just as bad as the villains and wants to arrest her too. The series ends with the villains defeated and Darcy vowing to continue to fight crime as Black Scorpion.

It’s a pretty by-the-numbers superhero story, and I think that’s the main problem with it. There was nothing inherently special about the Black Scorpion as a character in the movies, she’s just another costumed vigilante, there are hundreds of characters like that already from DC, Marvel, and many independent publishers. This could have been told using any generic character. It should have at least tried to embrace the campy tone of the second film and the TV series, or played up the sex appeal of the character to make it an erotic comic book, to give a reader who wasn’t already familiar with the character a reason to check it out.

But the worst part is the artwork. Daniel Cuchacovich is the artist and his work here is just very amateurish. In fairness, I have seen recent work of his which looks much better, so perhaps he was an amateur when he drew this series, and he just wasn’t that good yet? In any case, better artwork could have made this comic more enjoyable, even with the bland scripts.

Chacebook rating: THREE STARS

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