{"id":4941,"date":"2010-05-05T06:29:17","date_gmt":"2010-05-05T06:29:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=4941"},"modified":"2010-05-05T06:29:17","modified_gmt":"2010-05-05T06:29:17","slug":"shadowman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2010\/05\/05\/shadowman\/","title":{"rendered":"Shadowman"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nBy Steve Ditko<\/strong>, Steve Englehart<\/strong>, Jim Shooter, Bob Hall, David Lapham <\/strong>& various <\/strong>(Valiant)
\nNo ISBN<\/p>\n

The 1990s were a slow period in terms of comics creativity: the industry had become infested with collector\/investors and was increasingly market-led, with spin-offs, fad-chasing, shiny gimmicks and multiple-covers events replacing imagination and good story-telling in far too many places. One notable exception was a little outfit with some big names that clearly prized the merits of well-told stories illustrated by artists immune to the latest mis-proportioned, scratchy poseur styles, but one with enough business sense to play the industry at its own game.<\/p>\n

Eschewing most of the more crass profiteering stunts Valiant revived some old characters and proved once more that the basics never go out of fashion. As Editor-in-Chief, Jim Shooter had made Marvel the most profitable and high-profile they had ever been, and after his departure he used that writing skill and business acumen to transform some almost forgotten Silver-Age characters into contemporary gold.<\/p>\n

Western Publishing had been a major player since comics’ earliest days, blending a huge tranche of licensed titles with a few home-grown heroes like Brain Boy<\/strong>, Turok, Son of Stone <\/strong>and M.A.R.S. Patrol Total War<\/strong> (created by Wally Wood). The company’s most notable stars were Dr. Solar, Man of the Atom <\/strong>and Russ Manning’s magnificent science fiction cautionary tale Magnus<\/strong>, Robot Fighter.<\/strong> When the parent company closed its original comic division in 1984 these masterful sagas soon faded from comic fans’ memory.<\/p>\n

As the 1990s opened and with an agreement to revive some, any or all of these four-colour veterans, Shooter and co-conspirator Bob Layton came to a bold decision and made those earlier adventures part-and-parcel of their refit: acutely aware that old fans don’t like having their childhood favourites bastardized, and that revivals need all the support they can get. Thus the old days were canonical: they \u00e2\u20ac\u0153happened\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and the new company was off and running with an interested, older fan-base already in place.<\/p>\n

But the upstarts were not content to simply revive and retrofit past glories: a growing legion of new characters was gradually added to the pantheon. One such was a Voodoo-tainted, New Orleans based wild man daredevil named Jack Boniface – Shadowman.<\/p>\n

After a truly seminal cameo in X-O Manowar<\/strong> #4 musician Boniface was properly introduced in 1992 his own title. Shadowman premiered with ‘Jazz’<\/em>, written by Shooter and Steve Englehart, illustrated by David Lapham and Joe Rubinstein.<\/p>\n

The credits are a lot more complex that they might appear. Shooter famously used a communal brainstorming system to create characters and stories. The full credits for the graphic novel under review – gathering issues #1-3 and 6 (the un-included chapters being part of the company’s first braided cross-over event Unity<\/strong>) of the first Shadowman run read Plotters: Steve Ditko, Mark Moretti Don Perlin & Shooter, Writers: Englehart, Bob Hall, Faye Perozich, Shooter, Pencillers: Ditko, Lapham, Moretti and Inkers Charles Barnett III, Gonzalo Mayo, Rubinstein & Tom Ryder.<\/p>\n

In that eerie introduction Boniface was a struggling session saxophonist trying to strike it rich in the Big Easy when he was seduced by Lydia, a mysterious woman he picked up in a club. Her sinister, trysting assault left him unconscious, amnesiac and forever altered by a bite to his neck. Unknown to Jack, Lydia was an agent of the Spider Aliens who form a covert keystone of the Valiant Universe, preying on humanity for millennia and responsible for creating many of the paranormal humans who secretly inhabit the world.<\/p>\n

Alone in the morning light Boniface discovered that Lydia’s home was filled with half-digested corpses. Clearly he was to be her next meal – but now has no idea how he survived or where she went. He cannot conceive of how her bite has altered him\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

He flees but later as darkness falls he feels agitated, restless, aggressive: he roams the streets and finds himself drawn back to Lydia’s home and stumbles upon a voodoo sacrifice. Attacked by the priest the once docile musician dons a Mardi Gras mask found at his feet and fights back with brutal abandon. Lydia’s has somehow turned him into a violent driven maniac, hungry for conflict – but only when the sun goes down\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

In ‘Spirits Within’<\/em> (Perozich, Shooter, Lapham & Ryder) Jack’s own hunger for answers takes him to both experts in medicine and Obeah magic before his Shadowman self drags him into a confrontation with a Bayou axe murderer, whilst ‘The Beast and the Children’<\/em> (Perozich, Moretti & Barnett III) finds the increasingly off the rails music-man tackling mobsters and hit-men before destroying a well-connected super-powered child abuser.<\/p>\n

There’s a big change in the character seen in the fourth and final tale here. It begins with Shadowman’s return from the far future and a distant dimension where the combined Valiant heroes experienced \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Unity\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. Whilst there Boniface fell in love and learned exactly when he would die\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Written by Shooter, Ditko, Don Perlin and Moretti with art by Ditko, Moretti and Gonzalo Mayo ‘The Family That Slays Together’<\/em> pitted the Shadowman against a murderous clan of degenerate swamp-dwellers stealing women and children from local communities. Bitter, merciless and now completely reckless since he believes he cannot die – yet – Shadowman had become a relentless, remorseless, punishing force of nature. What a pity Jack Boniface was a helpless witness to everything his night-self did\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Combining the best elements of conflicted lone vigilantes and dark avengers such as Batman and Daredevil with an exotic locale and traditional horror elements, Shadowman<\/strong> offers a tense, dark underbelly to the super-science and shining heroism of Valiant’s other titles, and despite the committee-like nature of its creation still delivers heaping helpings of moody mystery and arcane excitement. Well worth reviving and definitely a different action hero you will love to read\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6
\n\u00c2\u00a9 1994 Voyager Communications Inc. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Steve Ditko, Steve Englehart, Jim Shooter, Bob Hall, David Lapham & various (Valiant) No ISBN The 1990s were a slow period in terms of comics creativity: the industry had become infested with collector\/investors and was increasingly market-led, with spin-offs, fad-chasing, shiny gimmicks and multiple-covers events replacing imagination and good story-telling in far too many … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Shadowman”<\/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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous-superhero"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-1hH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4941","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=4941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4941\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}