The Present Ain’t What It Used To Be: The Shadow Now #1 Review

Editor’s Note: Who knows what spoilers lurk in the hearts of men? Oh, I’ve used that one before? Well, I’ll email you a full refund.

Back in the mid-1980s, Howard Chaykin rebooted The Shadow for the 20th Century with his Blood & Judgment miniseries for DC Comics. And that story was a classic, firmly dropping Lamont Cranston into what was then the present, including MAC-10s instead of Colt .45s, a pastel pallate, and, being a Howard Chaykin book, more tits and ass than you can shake a stick at. And even though the book came out when I was 15 years old, long before the widespread adoption of the Internet, I categorically deny that I ever shook my stick at it. But I digress.

Well, that story took place 27 years ago, which means it’s time for another reboot, because God knows that unless someone comes up with a rational explanation for it, you can never allow a comic book character to not age in real time. That’s why Batman ‘s latest wonderful to is a colostomy bag. Jesus, I’m losing the thread again…

Anyway, writer David Liss and artist Colton Worley are tasking themselves with the same goals that Chaykin had back in 1986: bring The Shadow into the present day. And how would a dude carrying a couple of guns and an adenoid laugh fare in the world of the Internet, easily-available pornography, and where the evil that lurks in the hearts of men is leveled off by Adderal and Xanax?

Not nearly as well as you’d hope, actually.

Pulp With A (Bad) Twist: The Spider #8 Review

For most people, when they think about pulp fiction, they think about period pieces. They picture men in tailored clothing driving vintage Packards, going from swanky cocktail party to party, pausing only to could mens’ minds and then shoot them in the face with a .45 before flying off on a rocket pack or autogyro or something. This is probably a natural association, as most of the classic pulp stories were published in the early 20th century, back when if a man wanted a little titilation, he needed to purchase a nickel story about a pulp hero rescuing a scantily-clad dame in chained dangers. You know, as opposed to today, when a man can pound his fist on his computer keyboard and see pictures of women and fine china, but not using it in a way that Lamont Cranston would find appropriate.

But that’s not necessarily what pulp fiction is at all. For your standard debonair urban pulp vigilante, all you need is a rich socialite, preferably an industrialist, with resources, an ally or group of allies working with him in his crusade on crime, and some kind of costume for his nocturnal activities. Oh – and a gun, and the willingness to use it. Sure, sometimes it’s better to place it in the 1930s or 1940s, when the idea of a guy being able to run around killing criminals without being caught made more sense since most people believed that a “fingerprint” was some form of sex act, possibly related to a Rusty Trombone, but the era doesn’t matter if you have the core elements at place.

So by that measure, The Spider #8, written by David Liss with art by Ivan Rodriguez, is most decidedly a pulp story. Richard Wentworth is a wealthy industrialist with a bodyguard who helps him in his adventures, a Margo Lane in reporter Nita Van Sloan, and even a gimmicky nemesis. And he has a pair of guns to completely make the nut. And it does it all set in good old 21st Century urban America… but it also does it with the worst of pulp tropes: a plot twist so obvious that a blind man could see it coming. For all the cool modernized pulp elements of The Spider #8, it most decidedly will not cloud any man’s mind.

Extra Pulp: Black Panther #527 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: And once again, one last review of last week’s books before the comic stores open… and somehow once again, it’s about Black Panther. Although it might seem like it, Black Panther is not the last book I read every month. It’s just that since it comes out a week before Hawk & Dove, I need it to steel myself for the inevitable.

Black Panther has been canceled; the last issue of David Liss’s run is in two months, closing out the currently running Kingpin of Wakanda storyline. Which is a Goddamned shame on a couple of fronts, the first being that Liss has put together a great run of comics. The second being that, after all this time – I got an inkling of it back when I reviewed issue #524 a couple months back, but I didn’t totally get it – I’ve finally figured this book out. It’s old-school pulp, pure and simple.

A rich guy with a background in adventuring in the jungle, genetic superiority to normal men, who’s battling to defeat colonial encroachment? That’s Doc Savage when it isn’t Tarzan or Alan Quartermain. A rich guy who puts together a team of specialists to battle corruption in an urban jungle? That’s The Shadow –  yeah, okay; it’s also Batman, but if you look back at Detective Comics #27, Batman was also The fucking Shadow. Not to be confused with fucking The Shadow; that was Margo Lane. Or maybe Alec Baldwin. But I digress.

This Is Not The Event: Black Panther #524 Review

And, as often happens, here’s one last review from last week before the comic store opens with this week’s new books…

The Big Two publishers often wonder why so many readers complain about Event Fatigue. Well, here’s the best example I’ve seen of a major self-dickstomping problem with event comics in recent memory.

Last month, Marvel released Black Panther #523.1. The “.1” is meant to indicate that the issue is a self-contained one-and-done tale, unladen by continuity. The “.1” is Marvel telling potential readers that the issue is a safe “jumping-on” point for the book; that if you start here, you can continue reading future issues without confusion.

Black Panther #523.1 was a tight little story about a street-level urban crimefighter and his partner working with, and sometimes against, the cops in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen to apprehend a costumed serial killer. It was dark, moody, and maintained the tone that writer David Liss has been infusing the book with since he took it over after last year’s Shadowland event.

Perfect jumping-on issue, right? Let’s say you read #523.1, liked it, and came back this month to see what happened after last month’s brutal alley brawl. You pull issue 524 off the shelf, hoping for a little of the pulpy action the last issue led you to expect and…

Huh. So Black Panther has six arms now?