I am sure you are all sick of hearing at this point how much of a Top Cow fan girl I am. The enormous amount of talent they feature each month is not the only reason I am drawn to the comic company. I also continually pick up their titles because I love their characters that routinely walk on the dark side. While Wonder Woman and Superman deserve their respect - let’s face it - being good all the time gets old. I live for the tough choices, walking the thin line between right and wrong and the flaws that make characters more human.

When I was at San Diego Comic Con this year, I spent a fair amount of time at the Top Cow booth. I was really excited that the company was expanding and the comic The Darkness had been made into a video game. The Top Cow crew told me they were not stopping there. I found out that one of their other titles was being made into a feature film. Better yet the feature film included one of my favorite actresses - Angelina Jolie. Surprisingly, I had not heard of the series the movie was based off of at that point in time. Thanks to a Top Cow artist, I left the convention with a trade paper back of the series Wanted.

I will be honest here; Wanted is not for the faint of heart. As I stated above, I love the struggle between light and dark - but this story takes it to a whole new level. This series is violent, crude, profane and sometimes disgusting…but it is pure gold.

Wanted was created as a six issue miniseries written by Mark Miller. Published by Top Cow in 2003, it follows the mundane life of a protagonist who finds out that he is destined to lead a ring of assassins who fight for control of the world. These assassins are not only fighting - they are winning. Superheroes have become things for bedtime tales. Even the cape of one “Super Man” is kept as a reminder of their triumph. The main character enters this dark world and essentially goes from pushing papers to mass-murder overnight. Even I will admit my moral compass was unsettled while reading this series. The funny thing is that I am sure the creators of this title take that as a compliment.

One fun feature of this series is the constant alluding to characters from different companies in the comic book universe, as well as Hollywood stars. The main character, Wesley Gibson reminds me of rapper Eminem and may or may not be modeled after the comic character Bullseye. The Fox, drawn as Halle Berry is a tribute to Catwoman and so on. Half the fun is trying to figure out what characters are being brought into this new and darker universe.

If you are like me you enjoy reading the book, picking up the comic or playing the game before you see a big screen adaptation from another medium. This one is worth the extra trip to the comic store. Starring James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman - the story is “loosely” based on the mini-series. I understand the “loosely” part, because the series needed to be scrubbed fervently to be appropriate for even the big screen. It looks like they cleaned it up quite a bit from the original script. Regardless the film - dated to be released in June - is going to be worth seeing and guaranteed more enjoyable if you know a bit about the world before entering the theater.

In the end, this is definitely a series worth checking out if you want to flirt with the dark side. A VERY dark side. I will leave you with a link to a quick preview from the movie Wanted. Hopefully it will wet your appetite enough to get you into your local book store to pick up the TPB! Check out the trailer here!