Comic Review: Event Horizon: Dark Descent

Event Horizon: Dark Descent
Platforms: Hardback, Paperback, eBook
Writer: Christian Ward
Artist: Tristan Jones
Pages: 128
Publisher: IDW Publishing

I just finished reading the new collection of prequel comics to the 1997 gothic cosmic sci-fi horror film Event Horizon.  The comic was first published in five issues between August 20th, 2025, and February 4th, 2026.  I didn't know about the comic's existence until mid-March, when I saw a listing for this collection, so I'm coming to all of these stories without prior knowledge.  All I knew before going into these issues was that this was a prequel to the film, showing what happened to the crew of the Event Horizon during their seven-year absence after their first test of humanity's first gravity drive.

While reading and rereading the comic in its entirety, I realized that there were things that I liked, really liked, didn't like, and really didn't like.  Unfortunately, there is a bit of crossover between those four feelings, and none of them are really consistent.  So in this brief article, you're not going to find any "I didn't like the artwork, but the font choice was on point," or "I only really liked the designs of the monsters and the redesign of the ship took away meaning from the themes set in the movie."

From this point on, there are going to be spoilers from the comic, because it would be nearly impossible to talk about the giant red figure on the cover without going into the character itself, and I have a few thoughts.  Also, trigger warning for those who are affected or disturbed by body horror.

Let's start off with the things that I took issue with, most importantly, the giant red figure on the cover, but first, we have to cover Issue #1, which is the lead-up to Earth's first gravity drive ship, the Event Horizon, making its inaugural warp flight just beyond the planet Neptune.  Upon engaging the gravity drive, the ship travels to a space reminiscent of the insides of a shoggoth if you included more eyes and teeth.  Towards the end of Issue #2, we are with the ship's main engineer who's checking on the status of the gravity drive, and an eyeless figure climbs out of the void in the center of the drive, declaring itself to be "...the King of your Hell", and that "...someone on this ship calls me Paimon."  So not only are we given a physical manifestation of the "ruler" of this realm, but a name given by a member of the crew (revealed in Issue #4).  To me, this is something different from a cosmic horror like Nyarlathotep or Cthulhu.  Maybe it was my misinterpretation of the original film, but having this creature of Paimon be the BBEG (Big Bad Evil Guy) for the rest of the series creates a bad guy that the reader is capable of understanding, something that I felt that the "Hell" (titled the Chaos Realm in the story) the crew of the Event Horizon travelled to in the movie tried to avoid.  Yes, there was Dr. Weir, who by the end of the movie was a physical manifestation of "Hell," but it was a being born out of an existing character, not a physical entity straight off the bat.  For me, it took away a lot of the mystique of where the Event Horizon actually travelled to.

There were a couple of aspects to Paimon that didn't quite bring me around to liking the character fully, but more to liking the look and design of the character, and a few panels that felt especially cinematic.  In Issue #4, we see a flashback to Captain Kilpack's life, studying Latin and reading excerpts from Le Dictionnaire Infernal with a drawing of Paimon riding a horse, and in the next panel, the character is that of the same Paimon we see on board the ship.  In the back of the book, there is a series of alternate covers and concept art, and among them is a series of head drawings with the text, "Crown of Broken Skull" and "Hollow," with an arrow pointing to the back of Paimon's head.  Had Paimon been created out of one of the crew members, seeing them cave in the back of their own skull and rip the shattered bones forward to create the crown, I think I would have liked Paimon's manifestation rather than them emerging fully formed from the center of the gravity drive.  For me, there was less horror in seeing this brand new villain, rather than seeing someone whom we already knew, become a manifestation of the villain.  I know it would have been nearly identical to what happened to Dr. Weir in the movie, but it worked then; that being said, put a pin in that thought.

In Issue #3, we see Paimon pull a mass of flesh out of it's torso, throw it on the ground, and watches as it grows a tangled mass of arms and a mouth, then skitters off into the dark.  Two pages later, maybe 15 minutes at most in-comic we see the creature has now grown into a spherical creature about four feet in diameter with arms reaching out, easily, an additioal five feet in each direction.  It's face, because of course it would have a distinguishable face, looks like that of a lion, with two forward facing eyes, a nose that looks like a mix between a pitbull and a lion, and a humanoid mouth filled with fangs of various lengths.  The creature slightly resembles Buer, again from Le Dictionnaire Infernal.  Apart from the physical presence of this creature being intimidating, what's really horrifying about it is when we see it grab two crew members and smash their faces together like Playdough, then ads them to its own body, gibbering the last phrases they said in life amongst their screams.  The point of this creature is to eat or absorb the bodies of crew members, and while that's horrifying in and of itself, I feel like it doesn't really fit within the source material as there were only 18-21 crew members.  If you take into account all of the body parts and viscera on the ship when the Event Horizon is discovered by the crew of the Lewis and Clark, the creature could not have consumed as many as it seems to have in the comic.

One of the things I love about movies like Alien, In the Mouth of Madness, the original Dead Space, and Event Horizon, is the slow burn and watching the characters slowly coming face to face with their respective horrors.  In Alien, it was watching Kane and Dallas explore the ship, following by the mystery around Kane's exposure to the face hugger, followed by the few scenes of normality after the face hugger detaches itself.  In Dead Space, Issac Clarke is thrust into a ship overrun with Necromorphs, but it's the collection of journals and audio logs from the members of the USG Ishimura that are documenting the outbreak caused by The Red Marker that draw the player into more than just another monster-blasting game.  In Issues #2, crew members of the Event Horizon begin having flashback-related hallucinations with their own guilt being made into physical manifestations.  There's little time for the crew to breathe and not a lot of pages are spent on the crew trying to figure out where they are.  The justification for this is that they are in The Chaos Realm, or Hell as Paimon and Captain Kilpack also name it.  It would be like the dose that the crew of the Lewis and Clark receive from The Chaos Realm would be comperale to that of being cut with a knife, versus that of the wood chipper that the crew of the Event Horizen experience.

My final criticism is how this story ends in Issue #5.  Most of the issue I really enjoyed.  It follow Quantum Physicist Jennifer Kwon, introduced in Issue #1 in the Dr. Weir roll of explaning the function of the gravity drive, but little else until this point.  Like the rest of the crew, she also has flashback hallucinations, but hers come across as more of a divine origin, and not from the Chaos Realm or Paimon.  Just like Miller in the film, explosives are lined along the "neck" of the Event Horizon, to turn the bridge into a life boat.  Through a great encounter with Paimon in the gravity drive chamber, Dr. Kwon manages to succeed in detonating, destorying the neck and separating the bridge from the rest of the ship.  Just like in the movie.  But then Paimon pulls its own kind of Deus ex Machina and reforms the ship, nullifying everything Dr. Kwon had done, except her own personal journey of receiving forgiveness.  I kind of get that the point of this is to show the power of Paimon, especially when it's in the Chaos Realm, but it just kind of felt like a rehash of the film when the finale of this story should have been something more coinciding with the beginning of the film.  Maybe something about Dr. Kwon only tyring to blow up the gravity drive and that explosion is what reactivates it and sends it back to our universe, near Neptune.

Now here's the kicker.

Despite everything that I've written here, I did enjoy the comic.  I felt that there was enough her for me to latch onto and engage with.  I liked almost everything in the first two issues leading up to Paimon's reveal.  I liked the scenes leading up to the launch of the gravity drive and the confusion immediately after.  I liked the look of the Chaos Realm and the hallucinations it created for the crew members, pulling from each of their own respective traumas and the guilt they brought with them.  In Issue #4, I liked that Paimon seemed to have the ability to alter time and cause events to repeat over and over again, because that's what Hell is, repetition.  I liked it enough to preorder followup to Event Horizon Dark Descent, Even Horizon Inferno.  I am intrigued with how the events in this prequel comic and the events in the movie will influence the events in Inferno, 200 years later.  And I'll just have to wait until March 2027 to find out (although the individual issues have now all been released), and then the following year to read the conclusion to this now 30 year old cult film.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Somehow I Never Wondered Why

P.S.  As much as I don't like Screenrant for all of its clickbaitiness, they did do an interview with Event Horizon: Dark Descent writer Christian Ward that's worth reading.

P.P.S.  And as far as what is now going to be a trilogy of comics, Dread Central did an interview with Christian Ward during San Diego Comic Con about parts II and III, Inferno and Pandemonium repectively.