Shadowman #11
Creative Team:
Writer: Jim Zub
Artist: Miguel Sepulveda
Color Artist: Brian Reber
Letterer: Dave Sharpe
The Issue:
Jack Boniface left for New Orleans to find out more about his parents. What he got instead was the weight of the Shadowman. A role passed down from father to son for generations. If life wasn’t hard enough being Shadowman added extra difficulty points. Locked out of his apartment by his landlord with his phone dying, Jack left to walk with his thoughts through the city.
During his walk, Jack spotted two Djab, trouble making spirits, and to deal with him he transformed into Shadowman. Unable to capture them they took turns possessing three belligerently drunk college aged males. They get into a scuffle with Shadowman and stole his staff. As the rest of the city celebrated Halloween, Shadowman found his hands full with low level spirits in the bodies of these guys.
In his pursuit Shadowman dove and landed on Dr. Mirage’s float. Together they take on the college males and send the spirits out of their bodies. The spirits possess a pug which grew to giant size. Shadowman and Dr. Mirage team up again this time destroying the threat completely. When Dr. Mirage walks away she tells him she would leave him with an invoice.
What I Liked:
Keep it moving. Nothing to see here.
What I Didn’t Like:
For months, Valiant has had ads for this issue in their other comic books. Shadowman is their darkest title, and a Halloween episode makes sense. But it really makes me wonder if the idea for a Halloween episode came before they even had a writer for this issue. It just all felt thrown together.
The plot of the issue is basically two stereotypical bros walk around New Orleans drunk causing trouble get possessed by spirits, and Shadowman chases them. I won’t hold too much against Jim Zub because this is his first (only?) issue writing this series and it is obvious that he doesn’t have much knowledge of what happened prior. It is hard to stomach Shadowman overpowering Master Darque and then struggling with some bros.
It just felt really rushed. If it’s a Halloween episode it should be scary. Instead it was shallow characterizations. But to be fair again, to Jim Zub, this book hasn’t had the deepest characters you’ll seen in this medium. So in that aspect it is somewhat consistent. It just isn’t a good issue and there is only so much you can excuse. We are still two months away from the start of Peter Milligan’s run. Please get here.
Grade:
Coatesvillain
Just a guy who was into this nerd stuff before it's popular. Now that is I'm just happy I have people to talk about it with.
