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michaelstearns's review
2.0
Astonishingly violent, and some of the panels are just a big ole mess. Compares poorly to my memory of American Flagg, but now i'm mistrusting my memories: Weird to look back at comics from twenty-five years ago. I wonder if I would have loved them back then.
Anyway, it is set in the present (at least, though the "present" of the late eighties), and all of the Shadow's/Lamont Cranston's cronies are aged while he remains young and vital. Which is a nice touch, but isn't really explored at great depth here. There is a new twist on the Shadow's origin, some calculatedly chauvinistic behavior from Cranston (man of the thirties can't deal with women's lib—wah wah), and a lot of frankly embarrassing "provocative" sexually tinged material that would be deemed daring only by a thirteen year old boy.
This was clearly a hard-working reboot of the character for the short-lived comic which followed, which was done by others (and was well-liked though never popular). But this graphic novel is just ... annoying and boring by the end of it. It felt very much like a relaunch that had been compressed artificially into four issues when it should have been eight or so: just too much backstory versus the modern story. So for, like, two issues of backstory, there are two issues of present-day story, and it just feels imbalanced.
The thing is, I loved American Flagg. But this Shadow is just crappy.
Anyway, it is set in the present (at least, though the "present" of the late eighties), and all of the Shadow's/Lamont Cranston's cronies are aged while he remains young and vital. Which is a nice touch, but isn't really explored at great depth here. There is a new twist on the Shadow's origin, some calculatedly chauvinistic behavior from Cranston (man of the thirties can't deal with women's lib—wah wah), and a lot of frankly embarrassing "provocative" sexually tinged material that would be deemed daring only by a thirteen year old boy.
This was clearly a hard-working reboot of the character for the short-lived comic which followed, which was done by others (and was well-liked though never popular). But this graphic novel is just ... annoying and boring by the end of it. It felt very much like a relaunch that had been compressed artificially into four issues when it should have been eight or so: just too much backstory versus the modern story. So for, like, two issues of backstory, there are two issues of present-day story, and it just feels imbalanced.
The thing is, I loved American Flagg. But this Shadow is just crappy.
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