By David F. Walker, Dietrich Smith & various (Dynamite Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-1-52410-260-9 (TPB/Digital edition)
For most of modern history black consumers of popular entertainments in what used to be called the “Free West” have found far too few fictive role models. In the English-speaking world that began changing in the turbulent 1960s as America’s Civil Rights Movement gained traction and truly took hold during the decade that followed. Many characters stemming from those days come from a commercially-led cultural phenomenon called Blaxploitation.
Although criticised for seedy antecedents, stereotypical situations and extreme violence, the films, books, music and art were the first mass-market examples of minority characters in charge and in leading roles, rather than as fodder, flunkies or flamboyant villains. One of the earliest movie icons of the genre was the man called Shaft. His filmic debut in 1971 was scripted by journalist and screenwriter Ernest Tidyman (The French Connection; High Plains Drifter; A Force of One) adapting his own 1970 novel. Tidyman authored six more between 1972 and 1975, with his urbane urban warrior simultaneously starring in numerous films and a (far, far tamer) TV series. He even had in his own retro-themed, adults-only comic book.
An eighth prose novel – Shaft’s Revenge – was released in 2016, written by David F. Walker. Amongst his many talents – you should hunt down his online culture-crunching ’zine BadAzzMoFo and you won’t be sorry – Walker numbers writing intriguing, hard-edged comics (Occupy Avengers, Cyborg, Red Sonja, Tarzan on the Planet of the Apes and many more), so in 2014 it was probably inevitable he be invited to write that long-overdue comics iteration…
Blockbusting premier miniseries Shaft: A Complicated Man – relating the lone wolf’s origins – led to this sequel, illustrated by Dietrich Smith and coloured by Alex Guimarães, with Walker himself lettering the series. Whereas that comic book took its look, settings and tone from the novels more than the Richard Roundtree (whom we tragically lost in October last year) films, this one carefully refocuses and aims for a satisfactory blending of prose and film iterations.
Originally released as a 4-issue miniseries, Imitation of Life finds the detective ‘Before and After’, regretting his life choices, successes and recent notoriety as the highly publicised rescue of an abducted girl suddenly make him a famous – if not actually notorious – man. It’s nothing he wanted: Shaft was literally forced to take the job by a major mobster no one in their right mind ever refuses, and now, after sorting the problem in his inimitably pitiless manner, the gumshoe is slowly drinking himself to death on the huge fee he also couldn’t safely turn down…
Eventually guilt and boredom compel him to get back in the game and, free of money worries, he can pick and choose from a big list of inquiries. That said, Shaft can’t explain just why he takes on the pointless problems of the Prossers: a hick white couple desperate to find their son. Mike is 18; a good-looking homosexual kid (we say “gay” today, apparently) swallowed up by the sleaze-peddlers of 1970s Times Square. The kid’s legal and not even a real missing person, but there’s something Shaft can’t get out of his head about this particular runaway…
Convinced it’s all pointless, Big John hits appropriate bars and clubs but no one knows anything: they never do. And then a kid named Tito recognizes him and just like that, the violence starts coming.
Surviving a homophobic attack – and teaching a few bigots the cost of intolerance – Shaft finds his case abruptly stalled just as shady wannabe filmmakers seeks to hire him to consult on their new (blaxsploitation) flick “The Black Dick”. It promises to be an easy gig, but they never are…
Before long, Shaft is writhing in discomfort as the script ludicrously bastardises his career and reputation, but when Tito turns up and bamboozles the detective into facing off with a Mafia pornographer just as the secret moneyman behind his own filmic fiasco starts demanding an early return on his investment, it all stops being a laugh and becomes deadly serious again. Once more, he remembers there’s no such thing as ‘Easy Money’…
As fictional and real worlds increasingly intersect, Vice cops contact Shaft and he sees that somehow all his irons seem to be stacked in the same fire. When the ludicrous leading man is abducted and troublemaking Tito pops up again with some very perilous photographs from his own incessant snooping, Shaft discovers in penultimate chapter ‘Love & Loss’ just what happened to Mike Prosser before tooling up to rescue one bad actor while invading a film set where pornos and snuff films are the preferred hot product…
The strands all pull together in a typically cathartic climax as ‘All the World’s a Stage’ sees order restored, bad guys righteously dealt with and even sets up a delicious funny ending to usher us out…
Revisiting a legendarily foetid cesspool of civic corruption, warring mobsters and get-rich-quick chancers, this tour of a mythic milieu is another wry and intoxicating crime thriller no fan of the genre should miss.
Shaft is ™ & © 2016 Ernest Tidyman. All rights reserved.