{"id":17984,"date":"2018-02-21T08:00:15","date_gmt":"2018-02-21T08:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=17984"},"modified":"2018-02-20T16:25:57","modified_gmt":"2018-02-20T16:25:57","slug":"shaft-volume-1-a-complicated-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2018\/02\/21\/shaft-volume-1-a-complicated-man\/","title":{"rendered":"Shaft volume 1: A Complicated Man"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nBy David F. Walker<\/strong>, Bilquis Evely<\/strong> & various (Dynamite Entertainment)
\nISBN: 978-1-60690-757-3<\/p>\n

For decades Black consumers of popular entertainments had far too few fictive role models. In the English-speaking world that began changing in the turbulent 1960s and truly took hold during the decade that followed. A lot of the characters developed at that time came from a cultural phenomenon called Blaxploitation. Although criticised for its seedy antecedents, stereotypical situations and violence, these films and books were the first mass-market examples of minority characters in leading roles, rather than as fodder or flunkies.<\/p>\n

One of the earliest movie icons of the genre was a man called Shaft<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The film was scripted by journalist and screenwriter Ernest Tidyman (The French Connection<\/strong>; High Plains Drifter<\/strong>) from his own 1970 novel. He authored six more between 1972 and 1975, with his timeless urban warrior starring in numerous films and a TV series. An eighth novel – Shaft’s Revenge<\/strong> – was released in 2016, written by David F. Walker. Amongst his many gifts Walker numbers writing comics (Occupy Avengers<\/strong>; Cyborg<\/strong>; Red Sonja<\/strong> and many more) and in 2014 was invited to write a long-overdue comics iteration. Illustrated by Bilquis Evely and coloured by Daniela & Miwa (Walker lettered the series himself), the comicbook took its look, settings and tone from the novels more than the Richard Roundtree films with the first 6-chapter story-arc collected as Shaft: A Complicated Man<\/strong>. In all the detective’s prior appearances, no mention was made of his past, but here Big John gets a proper origin story\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Following an Introduction by educator and author Shawn Taylor, the story – winner of the 2015 Glyph Comics Award for Story of the Year – begins in December 1968. Young John Shaft<\/em> is a former marine and veteran of the Vietnam war who’s come home and is trying to find his place in the world. An indomitable fighter, he’s using boxing as his big chance, but when he refuses to throw a fight, he incurs the wrath of both local black gang boss Junius Tate<\/em> and the area’s mafioso overlord Sal Venneri<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Proud and resolute but no fool, Shaft wins his bout, accepts his brutal punishment from Tate’s conflicted leg-breaker Bamma Brooks<\/em> and vanishes from the cloistered island-within an-island known as Harlem\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Just drifting, Shaft briefly goes to college before the call of adventure finds him joining private detective agency National Investigation & Security Services<\/em>. His first job is as a plainclothes guard and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153undercover negro shopper\u00e2\u20ac\u009d at a fancy department store\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

While on duty he meets pretty Arletha Havens<\/em> and finds a reason to stop drifting and start planning. Before long he’s seeing a bright future together.<\/p>\n

That all goes to hell when cheap thugs bust into their apartment looking for a hooker named Marisol Dupree <\/em>and her pimp Jimmy Style<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

With Arletha hostage, Shaft is forced to accompany one of the abductors back to Harlem for the first time in years, hunting the missing woman and a package she’s holding that someone really important wants back. In fact, Marisol’s mystery treasure is something that has big city money men in a panic and all the criminal factions in Harlem at each other’s throats, but Shaft’s immediate problem is staying alive\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

After surviving a savage gunfight that leaves five bodies piled up in an alley, he returns home to find Arletha’s body and resolves that somebody – maybe everybody – is going to pay\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

All on his own again, the coldly furious killer finds his true calling, tracking down Marisol, methodically putting the pieces together in a chilling city-wide web of graft, favours, murder and money and ensuring that the guilty parties pay the ultimate price\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Comprising a devious wasps nest of civic corruption, crooked cops, warring mobsters and treacherous friends, played against a tragic backdrop of true love forever lost, Shaft’s first case is a superb crime thriller no fan of the genre should miss and comes with a bevy of bonus features including character designs, unused illustrations by Walker & John Jennings, script excerpts, in-production art pages and a covers and variants gallery by Denys Cowan, Bill Sienkiewicz, Ivan Nunes, Francesco Francavilla, Michael Avon Oeming, Ulises Farinas, Matt Haley, Sanford Greene, Nacho Tenorio & Sergio Mora. It even comes with a toe-tappingly cool playlist to track down and enjoy whilst reading\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6
\nShaft is \u00e2\u201e\u00a2 and \u00c2\u00a9 2015 Ernest Tidyman. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By David F. Walker, Bilquis Evely & various (Dynamite Entertainment) ISBN: 978-1-60690-757-3 For decades Black consumers of popular entertainments had far too few fictive role models. In the English-speaking world that began changing in the turbulent 1960s and truly took hold during the decade that followed. A lot of the characters developed at that time … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Shaft volume 1: A Complicated Man”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[75,105,127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime-comics","category-mature-reading","category-nostalgia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-4G4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17984\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}