We've had teasers for awhile that the Shadow was going to be coming from Dynamite and now its been confirmed, but with even bigger news! Garth Ennis is writing the Shadow! This should be nothing less than fantastic.

For those unfamiliar with Garth Ennis, he's one of the best writers in comics. He doesn't really like superheroes all that much, but he loves the Shadow.

For those unfamiliar with Dynamite Comics, they are the only publisher who almost always gets iconic characters from past ages absolutely right! They have done the best Lone Ranger, best Green Hornet, best Zorro and best Jon Carter comics EVER, all in the last few years. When DC starting doing Doc Savage comics a few years back, I prayed they would *not* do the Shadow, so Dynamite would be able to do it instead, since they are much more reliable.

Aaron Campbell is the artist and he's already proven he's equally fantastic on Green Hornet: Year One. This was probably the best superhero / pulp comic of the last 10 years, and within Campbell showed a great ability to do 1930's era settings as well as the pulp feel of characters from that era. He's perfect for the Shadow.

This shouldn't just be good. This should be great.

Oh, and I barely even mentioned the awesome icon himself: the Shadow! I love all the obscure pulp heroes quite a bit, but there is no denying the sheer awesomeness of the Shadow himself. There was a reason he was #1.

It's been a long time since he was 'done right'. Hopefully that is about to change.

w00t!!!!!!!

Been looking forward to seeing who the creative team was going to be. Very happy.

That's good news. I love The Shadow, mostly based on the old radio broadcasts.

The last Shadow I read was DC's 1988 "Seven Deadly Finns" (with Kyle Baker art and Andy Helfer writing). It was a big disappointment to me, although it got positive reviews. I've usually loved everything Baker does, but not that. The story just seemed jumbled and weird, in a Grant Morrison way. At least, that's how I remember it.

I loved "Seven Deadly Finns", it was my favorite of the "modern-day" SHADOW stories from DC by a wide margin. The BIG mistake they made was deciding to do a "trilogy" of connected stories, and have the first one end with the Shadow DYING.


So the entire 2nd story had him DEAD, and his body being desecrated the longer the story went on. Sick humor is one thing, but I think this went too damn far. I have no doubt The Shadow would have been back up and running (in a NEW body) by the end of the 3rd part of the trilogy... except, utterly OFFENDED AS HELL, the owners, Street & Smith, PULLED THE PLUG on the book at the end of the 2nd part.


Later on, Andy Helfer & Kyle Baker did a JUSTICE INC. story as a pair of "prestige format" books (with really WEIRD and BIZARRE painted color style... which made it immensely difficult to follow the action, or the story). It just wasn't the same, and I suspect the whole debacle let to Kyle Baker going off further and further to ever-more "obscure" and bizarre projects.

Crazy thing-- right around that time, I ran into him at a comics convention in NYC. Nice guy... and it turns out he was a fan of THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN. With his "cartoony" drawing style, I shouldn't have been surprised.

I loved the Shadow mini by Chaykin which lead to the DC series, which I also loved, but yeah - I thought Baker et al went off the rails with dead Shadow and gorilla Shadow, or whatever they were doing at that point.

I even liked some of what they did in the "Shadow" movie. I think they may have taken it a little too tongue-in-cheek for my tastes, but there were some cool bits in there.

Chuck (who writes a blog I check out every day) reviews it in a non spoilery way. Gave it an A-

http://comicoftheday.blogspot.com/2012/04/shadow-1.html

I read the first issue and it didn't do much for me. Not bad, but not anything that really struck me as all that exciting.

So I thought the first issue was a pretty solid start! I liked it and see there is potential to become a series I'll eventually *love*. (I do admit though that I would not have recommended this comic to Eryk--I think I've gotten a good handle on what he's looking for and am like 5 for 5 at this point with my recs )

It was a good introduction to the tone & atmosphere of the series, and I liked the ever-present backdrop of the pre-WWII international tension. The Shadow himself is introduced on mainly a surface level, and I expect we'll see more underneath over time.

There is certainly a grim sort of perspective going on. Ennis is very intent on embracing the sensibilities of the "dark pulps" and that shows here. What he needs is at least one or two likable characters to show up now. Margo Lane was quickly introduced but not exactly in a way that made me all too excited for her.

Aaron Cambpell does a fantastic job on art, continuing to show he's the man for the job for 30's-era vigilantes.

I'm curious to see where this goes. I like the usage of the Shadow, though I found myself not really enjoying Lamont Cranston. Cranston, the character, isn't really trying to hard to differiate himself from his Shadow personna, which is at first jarring because the Shadow is so theatrical. It's a fine line but right now I'm not sure where Ennis is trying to place it.

All in all, it was good and I'm in for more. Ennis is a writer whose work I really admire so I have high hopes that over the course of the next few issues, I'll eventually be blown away.

All I know of the Shadow is his amazing tag-line and what little I remember from seeing the Alec Baldwin film years ago. I do love pulpy 1920s/1930s stories though so I might check this out at some point.

In the meantime, I never knew that the Shadow had appeared in the DCU before -

http://www.comics.org/issue/26834/cover/4/

http://www.comics.org/issue/27983/cover/4/

I'd be really interested to read those stories. I love that era of DC!

GREAT NEWS!!!!

Matt Wagner getting to tell the tale of The Shadow: Year One. This is on the list.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/10/12/matt-wagner-to-write-the-shadow-year-one/

That's fantastic news!!! Best I've heard so far actually!

Ennis' Shadow has been pretty good, but Wagner is just what the series & character need. He's been pure genius at Dynamite.

I'd go so far as to say Ennis' Shadow has been a HUGE disappointment! I honestly don't think that's the kind of Shadow plot we wanted from him. Overly complex and just not gripping at all. I gave up on it after the third issue.

Wagner may give us just what we were wanting in the first place. He certainly did a bang-up job on the Green Hornet: Year One project! Have they announced the artist? The pages they showed looked like Paul Gulacy. If so, that's a good choice!

I'm totally on board for a Matt Wagner Shadow!

This is the first I saw of it, and have not seen any name for artist yet. Will be watching though,,,

Yeah, if you look in that link, they show colored story pages, presumably from Wagner's series. If it's from that, I don't see why they wouldn't say who the artist was since the matter has clearly been decided. Again, the faces look like Paul Gulacy's style, but I could be wrong.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/10/13/nycc-wagner-explores-the-shadows-origins

According to this, the pages are from issue 7 of the regular series.

Ah, I see. Misleading, much?

I bet it'll be Aaron Campbell, which would be ideal. Though I'm a huge fan if Gulacy too.

So by and large the Dynamite Shadow series have been largely disappointing (even the Chaykin one, which was only okay). However, the current Batman / Shadow miniseries has been really great so far! It has all the elements that make the Shadow great and an intriguing plot that makes one question how the Shadow could exist in modern times (with Batman). Lots of nods to the Shadow's complex canon.

Riley Rossmo, an artist whom I've loved over the last few years, does the art. His art is very stylized, and I like it. One of things great about Debris, his series from Image a few years ago, was the way they utilized colors to make it pop more, and this mini uses some of those tricks, though much more judiciously as you'd expect for a series about Batman and the Shadow. Scott Snyder and Steve Orlando co-write and this has lots of Snyder's blueprints on it, which is definitely a good thing. Orlando has a good voice for dialogue, and I think he's probably doing that part of it.

All in all, I was hoping this would be good and have been pleasantly surprised.

I haven't got any of that crossover, but I will say that the Matt Wagner Grendel vs. The Shadow series was really good.