The Darkstalkers comic series were a comic adaptation of the videogame Darkstalkers created by UDON Entertainment, the company behind the Street Fighter comic books. It was written by Ken Siu-Chong and drawn by comic book artist Alvin Lee. Its first issue was published on 2004 and the first six issues were released between that year and 2005.
A sequel called Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors was released on 2011. It consisted about 3 issues that continued the story where it was left. The series was later made part of UDON's Street Fighter comics continuity and continued in the aptly titled Street Fighter vs. Darkstalkers.
Tropes:
- Adaptational Villainy: In the games, while a demon, she's genuinely friendly and sees humans as more fascinating than a food source. And even then, she prefers dreams and fulfilling her desire for excitement than souls. The comic instead depicts as the more typical succubus, draining the souls of men by a Forceful Kiss and show general disregard for people's lives. Her travels to the human world are also given a darker depiction, showing she's been going to the human world enough to know about human culture to use it at her advantage (she fakes being a homeless widow immigrant in the first issue to trick a man and infiltrates a train to travel to Romania in the sixth issue).
- Adapted Out: Morrigan being able to live off dreams of humans and excitement literally fueling her is cut out, making souls her only method of sustaining herself.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: Subverted. Morrigan, pretending to be a homeless widow named Ann, tries to get Jack the fisherman to sleep with her as a thanks for his kindness for letting her stay the night. Jack is clearly terrified of her, and his face is contorted with shock even after dying. It's also clear this was just some excuse for her to feed on his soul and didn't need a place to stay..
- Canon Foreigner:
- Majorette and her cat Thomas are characters created for one issue, and are never seen again. It's also lampshaded when Jon and Felicia have no idea who they are.
- Jack, the nice fisherman who Morrigan tricks and kills in the first issue.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Morrigan is a disgusting evil succubus, but she cares deeply for her adoptive father and servants Lucien and Mudo.
- Evil Versus Evil: The Aensland clan and Demitri Maximoff are longtime enemies, with Morrigan herself opposing the vampire. Pyron gets involved as a third party. Out of the three, you got a malevolent soul sucker (Morrigan), an evil vampire (Demitri) and a genocidal galactic conquer (Pyron).
- Fantastic Racism: Darkstalkers are shown hate and prejudice by normal humans, although given what Morrigan did in the first issue alone, it isn't unwarranted.
- Happily Adopted: For all her evil, Morrigan cares for her adopted father.
- Karma Houdini: Morrigan spends most of the comic going around the human world killing people yet not only does she get away with everything she does but also has everything she wanted done. Demitri is killed by Donovan and Anita and she proves her worth as queen of makai to her father. The one downside is that the missing part of her power (Lilith) is been stolen by Jedah... and even that gets fixed at the end of the Street Fighter crossover.
- Kiss of Death: Morrigan's preferred method of feasting on souls, forcibly kissing her victims and sucking it out of them. The sequel crossover with Street Fighter suggests she can kiss a person without doing this, as she needed Akuma's help and admits if she didn't then she'd do the same to him.
- Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Morrigan justifies draining human souls by saying she's taking them from lives of suffering and disappointment by putting their souls in state of bliss. Outside of expressing disappointment of not finding love, Jack didn't complain much about his life. None of her victims could be described as depressed or willing to accept death so soon, meaning it's just a flimsy excuse to take their lives.
- Shared Universe: Unlike the games, which are stated to be a separate universe, these comics are explicitly set in the same world as Udon's Street Fighter comics. In Felicia's one shot its stated she was adopted by a woman named Rose, who may or may not be the same woman from Street Fighter Alpha, and later in that same comic BB Hood uses a hig-tech set of goggles she stole from Shadaloo, Bison's criminal organization.
- Villain Protagonist: Morrigan is technically the main character, as the comic mostly centers around her, but she's also a malevolent succubus who tricks and kills people draining their souls and has a complete disregard for human life in general.
- Wide-Eyed Idealist: Felicia hopes for a world where humans and Darkstalkers can co-exist, something Jon thinks is unlikely. It's also less likely given how the two are among the few Darkstalkers who don't want to hurt people.
