DC COMICS
WRITER/ARTIST: Howard Chaykin
COLORS: Alex Wald
LETTERS: Ken Bruzenak
EDITOR: Andrew Helfer
COVER: Howard Chaykin
32pp, Color, $1.50 U.S., $2.00 CAN (May 1986)
“Blood and Judgment”
The Shadow is a fictional character that debuted as a mysterious voice narrating a radio program. It was July 31, 1930 that The Shadow began as the host of the radio program, “Detective Story Hour.” Street and Smith Publications, publishers of Detective Story Magazine, hired writer Walter B. Gibson to create a character concept that fit The Shadow's name and voice and to also write a story featuring him. The first issue of The Shadow Magazine went on sale on April 1, 1931.
Howard Chaykin is a long time comic book writer, artist, and writer-artist. He is best known for drawing the first ten issues of Marvel Comics' original Star Wars comic book series and for his adult science fiction comic book series, American Flagg!, which began publication in 1983 via First Comics.
In the 1970s and 1980s, DC Comics held the license to publish comic books featuring The Shadow. In 1986, The Shadow and writer-artist Howard Chaykin came together in a four-issue miniseries, simply entitled The Shadow. Chaykin's creative team on The Shadow included colorist Alex Wald and letterer Ken Bruzenak (a frequent Chaykin collaborator). Chaykin's Shadow re-imagined the origins of The Shadow and of his alter-ego, Lamont Cranston, and also updated the characters. The miniseries has since been collected in book form as The Shadow: Blood and Judgment.
The Shadow #1 opens with a series of savage murders of elderly men and women. Eventually, federal agent, Mavis Lockhart of the “Crime Statistics Bureau,” figures out that these elderly victims were former agents of the mysterious vigilante, The Shadow.” Mostly focusing on the area in and around New York City, The Shadow waged a brutal campaign against the criminal underworld in the 1930s and 1940s before disappearing.
Mavis happens to be the daughter of Harry Vincent, a former agent of The Shadow, who is still alive. Also living is Mrs. Donald Forsythe, formerly known as Margo Lane. The Shadow's best known agent, Lane was one of the few agents who knew many of his secrets, and she was the lover of both Lamont Cranston and The Shadow. As it turns out, Vincent is also a target the killers of The Shadow's agents, and the killers turn out to be a gang of “Punk-Sex-Ghouls.”
Although he left, The Shadow still has agents in America that keep him abreast of the situation in the country, and one of them is “Lorelei.” The Shadow is now known as “Ying Ko” and lives in the legendary kingdom of Shambala with his two sons, Ching Yao Chang and Hsu-Tei. Learning that his former agents are being targeted, Ying Ko and his sons travel to New York City.
Reunited with the bitter Harry and the even more bitter Margo/Mrs. Forsythe, The Shadow reveals his true origin to them. His real name is Kent Allard, and via a series of criminal misadventures back in the 1920s, he would up in Shambala, a land of mysticism and super-science. With him was someone else, Lamont Cranston, the wastrel son of a rich man. After seemingly killing Cranston in self-defense, Allard assumed his identity and arrived in New York in the 1930s as The Shadow, a paladin of Shambala, with a body physically, mentally, metaphysically and cybernetically enhanced. Allard returned to Shambala in 1949 as the kingdom prepared to hide itself away. Thanks to the science of Shambala, Allard/Ying-Ko still looks like a 30-something man 35 years after he left.
It turns out that the real Lamont Cranston has survived and is now known as Preston Mayrock, a wealthy businessman whose interests include legitimate and criminal enterprises. Now, wheelchair bound, Mayrock launches his ultimate plans, which include his son, Preston Mayrock, Jr., that the elder Mayrock paid twenty-five million dollars to be “specially bred.” Mayrock wants Allard to take him and Junior back to Shamballa where, he believes, the super-science will transfer his brain into his son's body. And if Allard/The Shadow refuses, Mayrock has a low-yield nuclear weapon that he will launch on New York City.
THE LOWDOWN: Howard Chaykin's The Shadow was controversial at the time of its initial release. The most noted critic of Chaykin's work on The Shadow was the late speculative fiction author, television writer, and essayist, Harlan Ellison. Chaykin basically brushed off his critics as being childish, although his response to critics of his work on The Shadow and of his work in general tended towards being childish.
However, the negative reaction to The Shadow is a classic pre-World Wide Web example of the insistence by a small group of fans that stories featuring particular fictional character are not just fiction, but those stories are also that characters' mythology. And that mythology is holy writ. Even if a fictional character is not featured in any story for decades, when that character is revived, the tellers of the new stories must treat the previous stories with reverence. For instance, if the old stories said that a particular character loved ice cream, the new writer cannot make him lactose intolerant. To do so would be an unforgivable violation of the (fictional) character and a betrayal of the fans who believe that they are the ones who have kept said character “alive” so that he could be revived.
When I first read Chaykin's The Shadow I had heard of the character, but had never read a word of the old pulp stories that Walter Gibson had written. I have read The Shadow: Blood and Judgment, as it is now known, a few times at different points in my life, and I have always enjoyed it. Whether it is dated on not is a matter of personal opinion. I love that it is gleefully violent, over-the-top, and ruthlessly sarcastic about what was then the contemporary culture of New York City.
I like Chaykin's drawing style, but his sense of page design and the graphic design in his compositions are what always drive me to his work. A Chaykin comic book is page after page of visually striking graphics, including Ken Bruzenak's dramatic lettering and spectacular sound effects. Bruzenak is so good at what he does that he seems to create a soundtrack for Chaykin's comics, especially the action sequences. Colorist Alex Wald makes the best of the techniques available to him at the time of this comic book's publication. His rich coloring makes Chaykin's illustrations pop.
There have been a few times when I have been asked about The Shadow, and I do not hesitate to recommend The Shadow: Blood and Judgment, as a comic book or as a trade paperback. I think that it is an excellent example of Howard Chaykin's work, and it is probably the best modern take on The Shadow. I think I'll read it again, soon.
I READS YOU RECOMMENDS: Fans of Howard Chaykin and of The Shadow will want want to read the miniseries now known as The Shadow: Blood and Judgment.
A
9 out of 10
Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"
[This comic book includes the essays, “The Shadow's Agents: From the private annals of the Shadow as told to Anthony Tollin” and “The Man Who Created The Shadow,” both written by Anthony Tollin.]
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