In the 1980's, you could easily say that DC went through a sort of explosion of creative talent and experimentation. During the decade the foundation of Vertigo was lain with Alan Moore's Swamp Thing and Karen Berger's continued advancement of writer-driven material, the entire DC Universe underwent a Crisis, Batman and Superman were both revitalised in Year One and Man of Steel, new and old ideas were cropping up in a multitude of limited and ongoing series, while watershed moments like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns hit the shelves. It was also the time when DC actively pushed into licensing, bringing some very old pulp and radio characters to comics once again, in the form of Doc Savage, The Phantom, Flash Gordon, and The Shadow.
Although DC had previously published a comics adaptation of The Shadow in the 70's, featuring the talents of Denny O'Neil and Mike Kaluta, it like many of the other incarnations was essentially treated as a period piece. In 1986, DC changed that with Howard Chaykin's revitalisation of the character. Instead of being set in the past, The Shadow was brought forward into the present, his old agents from the comics and radio shows allowed to age "normally", while he himself stayed relatively youthful through Chaykin's new origin story.
Essentially, Chaykin's take on the Shadow, the character himself, is nothing you'd exactly call original. Although the Shadow had always been a rather amoral hero, meting out justice at the end of a barrel and ordering around his agents like slaves, Chaykin's Shadow became a womaniser and more of a jerk, bringing his characterisation in line with other well-known Chaykin "heroes" like Reuben Flagg before and Harry Kraft after. Having read American Flagg! and American Century, you'd almost think Chaykin only knows how to write one dominant hero type.
Criticism of character patterns aside, "Blood & Judgment" is indeed an excellent reintroduction of The Shadow and his world, even though purists expecting a period piece may and did disagree. Someone is killing the Shadow's previous agents from before his "disappearance" in 1949 -- the ones from the old radio shows and pulps -- which necessitate his return. It's not played as a straight mystery, readers know almost from the beginning who's responsible, but on the back of this, we're introduced to the agents both new and old, a developing "sub-plot" regarding the recruitment of Harry Vincent's daughter, and a new origin -- or rather a variation on a few of them with some new elements added in -- is given for the Shadow.
In this the central conceit of the plot rests on the notion of "who is the Shadow?" In the original pulps, he was really Kent Allard, with "Lamont Cranston" being just one of his disguises, and this is partially the idea with which The Shadow mini-series runs. In some versions, Allard saved the real Cranston's life in Asia and as a "reward" was allowed to use the identity while Cranston globe-trotted as a millionaire playboy, not so here. Here, Cranston is wealthy drug-lord who employed a down-on-his-luck Allard as a pilot -- another favourite Chaykin character trait, I might add -- and is cold and ruthless in his pursuit of wealth and power. The plane goes down and they're rescued by the people of the secret Asian city of Shambala. Cranston, acting in typical villainy, poisons the Shambalan guards, steals some gold, kidnaps the "princess", and rushes off to retrieve his drugs. Suffice it to say, it doesn't go as planned for him. Allard doesn't save Cranston's life, rather the opposite, trying to kill him. Believing himself successful, Allard adopts Cranston's identity.
Cranston, however, didn't die, which sets up more than a simple revenge story. Cranston couldn't care less about The Shadow taking his identity, what's important is that after all the years and amassing new wealth as Preston Mayrock, the bastard is dying. Drawing out the Shadow was his attempt at re-attaining youthfulness -- mind transfer to a genetically enhanced clone -- through the sciences of the hidden society that helped Allard in the first place.
What's interesting here is that Allard and Cranston are essentially the same person, not literally, but in their approach and attitudes toward life. Both are concerned about power and longevity, both are stuck in dreadful moral archaism, they do whatever is necessary to achieve their goals regardless of the consequences, have little regard for human life, and could both be considered quite insane. The only difference is that The Shadow himself kills criminals, and so is seen as the "good guy".
I'll not belabour the arguments of vigilantism or the progression of the anti-hero, but it's interesting to note that The Shadow is ultimately facing himself when he finally confronts Cranston/Mayrock.
2. Into the Light
A year after Chaykin's Shadow limited series, an ongoing series began publication with Andy Helfer and Bill Sienkiewicz at the reins. There are a couple of ways you can view this initial story-arc, "Shadows & Light". The first is that it's an unfocussed mess with Helfer throwing ideas and villains at the wall to see what stuck. The second is a sort of planned chaos, constantly hitting the reader with characters and events in a literary equivalent to Sienkiewicz' artistic style.
Unlike "Blood & Judgment" or what would come in later stories, "Shadows & Light" almost isn't a story-arc but rather somewhere in between an arc and episodic storytelling. It starts as a continuation of the mini-series, following the moments after Mayrock's clone was thrown off a building. There's a brief confusion over whether or not the Shadow is injured, since he and Mayrock's clone look alike, that allows the appearance of many of the Shadow's agents new to Helfer's run on the title. This sparks off a final battle with the Mayrock clone, but this itself leads nowhere aside from the clash with Joe Cardona that seems like an odd attempt at comic relief that never ends up being very funny. The first two issues, essentially, are merely tying up the loose end of the clone from the original mini-series, and even then, it's just kind of there.
The book then divides into three different threads that seem like they're vying for attention. The first is the return of Shiwan Khan, the Shadow's greatest nemesis from the old pulps and radio shows. Today, he's given up his life of crime and become a wealthy and powerful businessman and philanthropist, which, of course, he's willing to throw out the window for the sake of a little mind control satellite. This satellite is what sets off the second string, tying up another loose end over the spa murders in the original mini-series with "The King is Dead. Long Live the Prince" written on the wall in blood. Turns out it wasn't Mayrock who did that one but Benedict Stark, another previous Shadow villain.
If that weren't enough, though, there's the undercurrent during the first two-thirds of the story-arc of the Holy Radiance Mission that leads into the Light, a new villain created by Helfer and Sienkiewicz. It's incredibly fractured, jumping from one focus to another, bringing in a new obstacle to replace an old one, setting a rather frenetic pace for the book, apt to leave some people scratching their heads. Just wait until you throw in the Shadownet, a group of hackers dedicated to the Shadow, yet ultimately end up helping the enemy.
Surprisingly, though, fractured as it might be, it's not confusing. Helfer keeps throwing things at you with the story, new people, new twists, and a new villain, but the overall action of the story doesn't suffer. The plot does, there's no central theme or flow to the story-arc, such that it's less a story-arc and more a collection of tangentially related tales -- as I said previously, but I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing.
--. We Now Interrupt Your Regular Broadcast for a Paid Announcement from the Holy Radiance
Toward the tail end of the "Shadows & Light" story-arc, the first Shadow annual was published presenting a prologue of sorts. "Fragment of the Sun" was a period piece, chronicling the origin of The Light, the new villain featured in Helfer's Shadow series.
The highlight of the annual is, of course, Joe Orlando's artwork, and as such the story is written with him in mind. Instead of being a straight crime tale, the story veers off into bizarre science fiction and atomic monsters, bringing forth an irradiated child in the form of the Light. The logistics aside of a "nuclear child" -- was every writer in the 80's obsessed with the nuclear threat of the cold war? -- the heart of the story centres on the idea of faith and manipulation.Many today would probably argue that a linear story-arc focussing on one objective -- such as just Shiwan Khan or just The Light -- is the better from a storytelling standpoint. It allows for greater exploration -- but not necessarily contains, I might add -- for a single track, like an expansion of the plot of the hackers, or greater explanation of The Light's rise to power, and what he did to the previous ministries. Yet, that doesn't seem to be the goal of the story-arc-that-isn't, it's episodic comics told in a collection of three two-issue arcs with a little bit of spill-over of each into the other. It's just a different type of crafting a larger story and gives the impression of chaos.
There are two fronts that the story operates on, the first is of an underground German party that still supports the Nazis and is attempting to extricate the prisoners held after World War II. This is the main plot that the Shadow and his operatives are working to solve in the first part of the story, set in 1046. The second, and the one that we follow into the second half of the story set in 1949, is of an evangelical group purporting to bring about a new messiah for the atomic age. It starts with a soldier irradiated in a nuclear blast, and tracks to his wife trying to bear his child in some misguided sense of loyalty to the evangelical group. His wife, of course, is clearly insane, and bears the "nuclear child" who will become The Light in the present day storyline of "Shadows & Light".
To me, the most interesting part of the story has nothing to do with the main plot whatsoever, but the "story within a story" that comes in the second half of the book. The original leader of the evangelical group, Julius Strait, ahs been usurped by the ex-Nazi scientist who has successfully given him a lobotomy. Strait has, however, gone back to following a modicum of the life he led before founding his own religion, writing terrible science fiction stories -- a rather overt analogue to L. Ron Hubbard. In continuing to write his terrible science fiction stories; he does try to communicate in his jumbled, lobotomised way what happened with the birth of "nuclear messiah". One of these stories winds up at a comics publisher, and it gets adapted into "Coming of the Atomic Man" and as an EC style weird science tale that we're presented in three pages of the annual.
We Now Return You to Your Regular Scheduled Programme, Already in Progress. --
I admit there should be greater focus on the character of the Light, it started as an interesting subplot of a serial killer crucifying people to "see the light", as well as little bits of seeding the mission here and there, but given the focus on making him out to be a huge villain and time taken to show his origin in The Shadow Annual #1, it's all really over and done with before anything large amounts from it. The Light, in other words, doesn't live up to the hype. All flash and no substance.
What adds greatly and makes everything come together just a little bit more is Bill Sienkiewicz, with his incendiary style of art bouncing off Helfer's fractured script and making it feel stronger in the long run. Despite sharing some similarities, Sienkiewicz' dark and scratchy artwork adds a layer of grit to the book that isn't present in Chaykin. His cover paintings themselves add so much to the book.
It should also be noted that it looks as though Sienkiewicz' illustrations of the Shadow agents, DeWitt and Twitch, may very well be the basis for Todd McFarlane's detectives, Sam and Twitch, even more than say, Laurel and Hardy, the resemblance of the characters is uncanny.
3. A Little Death
To set up more of the dissonance that would be felt between the Shadow and his agents, without his knowledge the agents went on a little field trip in "Harold Goes to Washington". As the introduction says, "This is the story of a bad boy. His name was Harold.", and so we follow a sadistic child without time to grow up to be a serial killer.
It's a bizarre self-contained story that Helfer tells here, largely veering away from anything but tangential appearances from the Shadow and his agents, about a misguided child out to assassinate the president. The reasoning, of course, makes perfect sense in kid logic. His father came back from the war a hero after killing many German soldiers. He also believes that it's the president who single-handedly keeps the whole world in peace. If he killed the president, a war would start, and in that war he could kill a lot of bad people, and thus become a hero himself. Twisted logic, sure, but this is a kid who burns bugs and kills dogs. He's not exactly the sanest doughnut in the box.
Although guest-illustrated by Marshall Rogers, I always get the impression that Rogers has a slight style of his own which is overshadowed by the inker over him. Here, his style veers closer to Baker's, in his work on Detective Comics his lines were cleaned and streamlined by Terry Austin, while more recently in Batman: Legend of the Dark Knight, John Cebolerro gave his work a more rounded, animated style, similar to Richard Corben. His work always looks different depending on who's inking him.
What is gorgeous, though, is the pen and ink cover. Even with Sienkiewicz' incendiary cover paintings on the first issues and many of Baker's pastels later on, the cover to Shadow #7 is the most visually striking.
4. Among the Deadly and Dying
For those who may complain about the lack of focus in "Shadows & Light", their complaints are answered in "Seven Deadly Finns". Instead of being a loose collection like the former story-arc, this takes you head-on against one group of villains, the seven Finn brothers.
It starts simply enough with a serial killer, something that seems to be a favourite of Helfer's, and in what is almost a standalone issue, we're introduced to the Finns and to the growing dissonance between the Shadow and his agents that will become vital at the end of the arc.
Although there is one overarching plot here, the Shadow trying to bring down the Finns, it's interesting how the arc is handled, throwing in a few different flavours just to keep things flowing. Instead of a large central strike on the Finns organisation, -- which we learn the Shadow has known that they meet on the floor below his own organisation, without telling his agents -- each Finn is systematically removed, through largely indirect action. The Shadow, of course, manipulates people, and does indeed take out a number of the Finns himself, but he doesn't just walk into a Finn meeting and blow them all away after opening the door.
As such, there are various nuances to the story-arc, including Harry and Margo's magic act, Twitch and his wrestler-nurse, Gwen, Ma Finn and her gorillas, Galen Finn's hot dogs, Dick Magnet's -- a character introduced in "Harold goes..." -- private investigation practice that gets dragged into Shadow business, Artie Finn's squad of madmen, and Rastafarians attacking Harry Vincent and his van. It's the last one, of course, that comes completely out of left field and makes utterly no sense until about the fourth part of the story-arc, you see, the Rastafarians are just trying to get repaid for the cab that the Shadow agents demolished in Shadow #6. It's not a bad twist, per se, but it is handled poorly in the beginning, treating them as though we should know why they're doing the things to Vincent beyond the assumption that they're an ill-conceived gang based on racial stereotypes. Otherwise, the various threads are well executed and add a greater sense to the whole.
You could also say that this is the story-arc where Helfer's bizarre and twisted sense of humour really came to the forefront, in the hot dogs, Ma Finn, the Rastafarians, and the insane people. The dark humour added something to the book, similar to what Ennis instilled in The Punisher, taking the horrors that the anti-heroes do not necessarily with a wink or with utmost sincerity, indirectly alerting the readers that "hey, it's okay to be a cold-blooded killer as long as you mow down criminals", but rather that these are sick individuals in a twisted world. It goes from being a portrayal of reality into being a reminder of surreality.
That's reinforced by the introduction of Kyle Baker as the series regular artist. If all you've seen is his artwork on The Truth: Red, White, and Black, then you're missing out. Among some of his first work for DC, his style here had yet to develop into the clean and crisp sheen that you'll see in his more animated style today. Back on The Shadow, his artwork shared more with the approach taken by Danijel Zezelj, with minimalist features layered under a charcoal shading system.
Then, of course, the unthinkable happened and the Shadow was dead because one of his operatives attempted to save the life of an insane man, hammering home the surreal nature of the work. It's gripping, forward-thinking storytelling.
5. A Brief Reprieve
Quite possibly the best issue of Helfer's run on The Shadow is also the most derivative. Although the story technically takes place around the second and third parts of the "Body & Soul" story-arc, referencing to certain things going on at that time, the second Shadow annual works better thematically as a bridge between the two arcs, certainly as an epilogue to "Seven Deadly Finns".
"Agents", the story being told in the annual, is, put simply, a pastiche of Citizen Kane. At the end of "Seven Deadly Finns", the Shadow's last word before dying was "Lenore" and so intrepid reporter and Shadow biographer, Rupert Tome, goes on a quest to track down its meaning in order to get a position on network television. In order to find out what the word meant, Tome interviews the Shadow agents, and, of course, instead of receiving any information about the word, he gets historical recounts of their time spent with the Shadow.
Despite being derivative, it's still a good character-driven story, illuminating the lives and experiences of the agents who aided the Shadow before the 80's series, as well as how the new agents were found and brought together before Chaykin's "Blood & Judgment". The MacGuffin is naturally never discovered by the character's themselves, but like "Rosebud", the audience is let in on the secret at the end of the piece.
6. Soul Cages
...and then the wheels fell off.
It didn't happen immediately. For the most part, "Body & Soul" was an incredible continuation of what had gone before: the Shadow was dead and his agents were trying to pick up the pieces while his sons took him back to Shambala. There were people outraged by the Shadow's death, but we all realised that of course he'd be coming back. No one really stays dead in comic books for very long, but this is before the "death of Superman" and it was happening on a monthly basis, but we knew that the Shadow would be back, in the mean time, there was a crime spree happening due to the Shadow's death.
In terms of how it was written, this story-arc was a bit of a cross between "Shadows & Light" and "Seven Deadly Finns", slightly more akin to what we're used to in present story-arcs. The arc starts out at a single point, the death of the Shadow and trying to figure out what to do next, and then breaks into two disparate threads. One story track follows the Shadow's agents in New York City dealing with the loss of their "Master", while the other follows the Shadow's sons as they attempt to return their father to Shambala.
Overall, up until the last issue, it's handled incredibly well. There's an even greater amount of dark humour present, along with the ridiculousness of Twitch dying himself green in order to become The Inoculator and carrying on the Shadow's legacy. It takes the surreality of "Seven Deadly Finns" and cranks it up a few notches, about to the same level we'd eventually see on Helfer's Judge Dredd series. You didn't even really mind that the Shadow was dead when you could follow what was happening in New York and the Shadow's sons' misadventures in Asia.
The stories were funnier than previous issues, sure, but they still held a certain amount of bite and were as enjoyable, if not more so, as the previous issues in Helfer's run. It featured two ingenious serial killing robbers, the Hi-Rise Killers, who would break into an apartment, rob it blind, and then toss its occupant off a balcony to see which one of the robbers got to keep the take depending on whether the victim landed heads or tails. It was sick and twisted, sure, but it was funny as hell, and honestly, the humour wasn't the problem with the book.
The problem came in The Shadow #19 and Conde Nast pulled the plug.
As you can tell from the cover, it was just a teensy bit of a departure. The Shadow's head had arrived safely in Shambala -- just his head, mind you, his body itself was kind of...well, indisposed -- and they were growing him a new one. ...but it didn't quite work out, a band of outlaws from a village that was essentially the antithesis to Shambala, appropriately called Malice, had followed the Shadow's sons and invaded Shambala. Unable to just sit around and wait as a reanimated, severed head while the invaders destroyed the city, the Shadow allowed his head to be attached to a robot body.
I know that this was more or less a parody of Robocop, after a fashion, but it took the ridiculousness too far, and turned what was a scathing dark humour book into the realm of cheesy, superhero camp. It just seemed a travesty to do this to the character, and I suppose other people believed so as well, given the series' quick cancellation following.
Honestly, given the progression of the character and the series since the first issue, the fact that it really seemed like Helfer and Baker really were managing to break some new ground with The Shadow, it was a shame to see the book end. What was even worse was the limp Shadow Strikes! series that DC launched afterwards to fill the hole, from Gerard Jones and Ed Barreto.
Next Week: Something shorter. I promise.
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