Shadowman (2021) #2

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SwiftMann
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Shadowman (2021) #2

Post by SwiftMann »

A really strong, creepy 3-page start. Then 10 (TEN!!!) monotonous pages of Shadowman and Semedi walking around a ghost town. Then a five-page fight scene followed by a two-page wrap up. This book has horrible pacing issues.

The art ranges from static to unclear.
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Sunlight on Snow
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Re: Shadowman (2021) #2

Post by Sunlight on Snow »

Hmm, in my copy there are phasing ghosts rushing through the scene beginning with the 5th page after the hitchhiker sequence/prologue, then Deadside-Alyssa shows up again--kudos to Davis-Hunt, this ghostly creature looks like Michonne with her 2 zombie pets, the skin of Iron Maiden's Eddie and Wonder Woman's or Angela's body armor (that's like 3 homages at once). The Samedi turns into a flock of half-rotten ravens which I think looks fantastic, too.

I am really enjoying the dialogue between Samedi & Shadowman and the rather slow setup. There's still so much going on.

The back and forth between Live- and Deadside is pretty neat, too. That Blight creature trying to catch one of those Thin Spots and Shadowman being the gatekeeper that he's supposed to be. For once we get to see what he's supposed to be doing. Jack/Shadowman being strong and fearless.

My only gripe is the constant silly frown look on his face that's only changing when he's going full-Loa.

4.5/5

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SwiftMann
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Re: Shadowman (2021) #2

Post by SwiftMann »

Glad you enjoyed it. In my copy those were hard to make out images that didn't add anything for me or change the fact it was 10 pages of repetitive dialogue in a 20 page issue.

But I'm not a fan of Bunn or Davis-Hunt work on general, so this execution wasn't likely to speak to me.
"If you think any of these [older comics/shows/movies] do not carry a political content and is not using the medium of science fiction to explore real-world ideas, than you have not been paying attention." - Dan Abnett, VCR #246

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Re: Shadowman (2021) #2

Post by grendeljd »

I enjoyed this second issue well enough - it’s nice to have a good Shadowman series in publication again. Another one-and-done kind of story as we were told to expect, but as with issue one it doesn’t entirely suffer from that element of soft-reboot-itis that always leads me to end up not feeling compelled to care about the current status quo.

These tales have had a great creepy vibe that entirely suits Shadowman, and while there is no strong, direct connections to the past published stories (normally a very disappointing thing to me), this manages to feel like the right kind of character development point for Jack after everything that came before, without actually mentioning any of it. It’s just a fun horror-tinged comic right now. I continue to enjoy this particular manifestation of Baron Samedi, I did not have an issue with the pacing as others have mentioned in this thread, and I also really liked the artwork once again.

I could quibble about some of the design choices for the Shadowman mask (it’s that odd shape in white near the ear, that can’t seem to decide if it’s an ear or a cheekbone at times), or observe that sometimes the hands seem to be drawn a little small compared to the general proportions of the figures - but these things do not bother me enough to distract from my overall enjoyment of the artwork throughout. There’s some really great stuff happening in there - I love the creepy demonic looks to the poor family taken over by demons, and that multi-headed demon also looks fantastic. The mystery Deadside lady/entity looks cool. Baron Samedi always looks especially cool, I love all the little details of his outfit and the general gesture of his character.

The one main criticism I have for this issue is in some repetitive elements of the dialogue… throughout the issue he seems to talk a little repetitiously about what Shadowman does and what his job is and what Shadowman does and what his job is… without doing it, until he does. And then we see what Shadowman does and what his job is. It feels like that thing that comics do where there needs to be a little exposition in order to explain things to potential new readers within every issue of a series. Which isn’t a problem of itself, except for the slightly clumsy, repetitive execution of it here. It felt like it rode along the borderline of being almost as bad as the current XO series where suddenly everyone is speaking generically about how Aric should “go be a superhero because you’re a superhero” because it’s a superhero comic and we need to drive in the point that it’s a superhero comic and he should go be a superhero. That is excessively clumsy over there in XO - not so much here, but at times it was starting to take me out of enjoying this issue.

All in all, I’d give this one a solid 4-out-of-5 “Flesh to cairn”-taimo’s (to resurrect the now-defunct VCR rating system of old :D )
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