Lost In The Shadows: Shadowman #1 Review

Editor’s Note: My name is Spoiler, for we are many.

I’ve said a few times recently that the number of comic titles I was buying back in the early to mid-90s totalled about three or four, with most of them being Vertigo books. There was some reasons for that, one of them being that I was stone broke, and where the rubber hits the road, you can’t go out, drink a comic book and try to get laid.

But the primary reason was that, in the immediate post-Image Comics era, a lot of comics were simply and truly hammered shit. And they were crap for a lot of reasons, but most of them boiled down to the simultaneous rises of the Age of The Artist-Driven Comic, and the Swelling of The Speculator Who Didn’t Give A Shit About Comics Beyond Using Them To Pay For Little Austin’s College Education. So as far as I was concerned, I was seeing a fuckton of books with heavily-stylized covers, new publisher names I’d never heard of, a big ol’ “First Issue! Collector’s Item!” splashed in chromium… and, having read a bunch of these books before tuning out, no story inside whatsoever.

The point is that, when Shadowman debuted back in 1992, I had already begun my early 20s snobbish migration away from stylized superhero comics, and probably turned up my nose at it. Throw on top of that that I didn’t ever have the money for a videogame console until the first XBox came out, it means that I never played the Shadowman videogames by Acclaim, the company that bought Valiant to mine their intellectual properties for games and promptly ran the comics division into the ground. So I have no background whatsoever in the character of Shadowman.

This is kind of a problem when it comes to reading Shadowman #1

Shadowman #1 opens with a guy who I presume is Shadowman, telling a pregnant woman who I presume is his wife or girlfriend, that he needs to go off and fight some guy. He gives her an amulet of some kind, then he goes off and gets his ass kicked by some dude named Darque. Flash forward twenty or so years, and we meet Jack Boniface, apparently the son of Shadowman and whats-her-name based on his rocking the same amulet like he’s on his way to the local discotheque to cruise babes, gack up rails and swiiiingg. Cut to a meat monster named Mr. Twist, who has five eyes and mouths in his shoulder, hip and forearm who is here as a herald to “The Master,” which shows a surprising amount of will and sticktoitiveness, since if I had a mouth in my forearm, I doubt you could convince me to leave the house, if you get my drift. Jack then learns that his parents were dicks and throws away the headpiece to the Staff of Ra, which allows him, in the nick of time, to be possessed by some kind of shadow demons and become Shadowman. And scene!

I’m probably being a bit unfair in that plot synopsis, but the fact of the matter is that, not having any background in the Shadowman character, I really have no idea who any of these people are. Writer Justin Jordan does a decent job of getting across that, whoever the dude and pregnant woman at the beginning are, they are engaged in some kind of final battle against evil, and that the conflict has all but destroyed the relationship between the two, but it is very much a cold open for those who don’t know Shadowman history. And frankly, for an epic final battle, it is abrupt – Shadowman shows up, whacks a few demons, gets stabbed when the sun comes up, and that’s it. So for an epic final battle, presumably with a classic version of the character, it’s kinda weak sauce… however, it effectively establishes that there was a previous Shadowman, and that he loses his power in the sunlight. So it serves a story purpose, and it tells the uninitiated a bit about the character’s weakness, if not his powerset… but it also makes Shadowman look like kind of a pussy.

When it comes to Jack, Jordan does a better job establishing the character. We get that Mom died when he was a kid and that he was raised in the foster system, that he has grown to have a variety of general skills, and that he doesn’t seem to have a lot of close relationships. It’s not a ton of information – the hazards of writing a loner without a lot of personal connections is that they dude is gonna be kind of a blank slate – but the most effective sequence was when Jack learns that his parents have criminal records, and he is just disgusted. It’s a nifty little show-don’t-tell indicating that Jack is a decent dude at his core, which help in a story about, you know, a big damn hero. Don’t get me wrong, there is a certain amount of exposition here – Jack explaining to the PI he hired to track down his folks about his background and education level sticks out as Jordan going, “Hey, readers! Let me tell you about this nice young man!” – but the introduction is varied and complete enough to get a sense of the guy you’d be following if you continue to pick up the book.

But the biggest problem with the books is that it is apparently a continuation of the original 90s Shadowman, which means there are characters and events happening in this book that I simply don’t know anything about. Jordan does a decent job establishing that Shadowman is apparently an inherited powerset based on the supernatural, and that there are forces – good and evil – who have been searching for Shadowman in whatever incarnation for about 20 years, but without knowing any of the background, I still found myself somewhat confused and guessing. For example: who the fuck is Dox? We see him working with the original Shadowman, and we discover that he’s been searching for the new version for years, but I have no idea what the relationship between them is, or what his role is. I imagine that, in future issues, he’ll be used to tell Jack, and by extension the reader, who and what Shadowman is… but for now he’s just some dude who’s here.

Further, there’s the timing of Mr. Twist’s appearance and Jack’s transformation into Shadowman: Jordan shows us Twist first, then shows us Jack chucking the amulet that has apparently hidden him and his potential from the world… so does this mean that Twist appeared because Jack is now unhidden? Was the PI some kind of Judas Goat who, upon discovering Jack’s dad was Shadowman, sold him out to Twist’s “Master”? Were Jack’s parents really criminals, or did the PI just tell him that in the hopes of getting him to chuck the amulet? Or is the timing of demons appearing and Jack throwing away his protection just a case of, “Because shut up, that’s why!”? The point is, there’s a lot of stuff in this book that is intimidating and unclear to the uninitiated, and while Jordan makes a lot of it clear enough to understand the broad strokes of what’s going on, there is simply gonna be stuff in this book that you’re not gonna fully understand.

One thing you will understand is the art by co-writer Patrick Zircher, because it is actually pretty damn good. He deals in realism where it counts: his normal, human figures are realistic, and his faces extremely detailed and expressive. And yet, although this is a reboot of a 90s comic, Zircher doesn’t fall prey to the useless 90s convention of chucking in extra detail lines on the faces. When people have lines on their faces, it is because they are fucking old, which is the way God intended. However, this is a book with a heavy supernatural element, and Zircher delivers on that front too; his demons are big and grotesque, with several non-symmetrical elements to heighten the disturbing unreality (although seriously, Patrick: that mouth on Mr. Twist’s forearm only made me wonder how many hours a day he spent blowing himself). Zircher’s pacing is solid, shrinking up the panel size to speed the reader and amp the tension in the action scenes, and his panel layout is simple and easy to read. This is a simple to follow, good-looking book, which helps the reader keep pace, even if they’re not familiar with the characters and the story.

Shadowland #1 is a pretty good first issue, but if you’re not familiar with the character, there are gonna be chunks where you’re just not sure what’s going on with people you don’t know. Jordan does some pretty solid work to try to make sure that new readers like me aren’t utterly lost, but there are elements here that are clearly meant for readers familiar with the earlier comic series. Considering I generally liked the issue, despite some confusion, if you’re an existing fan of Shadowman, I’m guessing you’ll be psyched. For myself, well, it was good enough for me to check back in at least one more time.

If only to see if Mr. Twist actually does use those horrible extra mouths in the same way any mortal dude would.