Someone explain the Shadowman hate to a noob

[BloodShot]

The art suffered as well, and with those factors came delays (as well as 2 of the best VEI issues to date in the "filler" Shadowman #0 and #10). Then Jordan was leaving the title and tried his best to tie up as much as possible, but in doing so lost a lot of the characterization he was going for. When Milligan took over it was a soft reboot that felt unnecessary and jumbled up even more of the plots and characters.

Honestly, that was the last straw on that title for me. I was pretty stoked when Shadowman got his own relaunch, and was knee-deep into the storyline for the first five issues or so. But the longer it went on, the worse the art got, to the point the whole thing was just straight-up "cartoonish" and I just flat-out couldn't stand to pick up another issue .

Truly disappointing, and a waste of (and injustice to) a really cool V1 character.

[agent_graves]

One of the comments from both Jordan and Zircher was that there were "too many cooks in the kitchen" on Shadowman.

That. The book had too many different writers for such a short run.

With this in mind and using the #0 and #10 as an example does any wish Justin could come back and give it a go again and just see what he could do even if it was just a mini.

Absolutely!!

[leonmallett]

One of the comments from both Jordan and Zircher was that there were "too many cooks in the kitchen" on Shadowman.

That. The book had too many different writers for such a short run.

With this in mind and using the #0 and #10 as an example does any wish Justin could come back and give it a go again and just see what he could do even if it was just a mini.

Yes. I'd love a JJ "Darque Passages" mini.

Yep, me too - and a proper run at Shadowman.

[BugsySig]

One of the comments from both Jordan and Zircher was that there were "too many cooks in the kitchen" on Shadowman.

That. The book had too many different writers for such a short run.

With this in mind and using the #0 and #10 as an example does any wish Justin could come back and give it a go again and just see what he could do even if it was just a mini.

Yes. I'd love a JJ "Darque Passages" mini.

Yep, me too - and a proper run at Shadowman.

At least JJ has continued working with VEI on those shorts with Rafer Roberts in the various anniversary issues, so there's some hope he will get another shot at some point.

[jmatt]

Yep, me too - and a proper run at Shadowman.

Ha had a proper run at Shadowman, and it was just too stock superhero with none of the cooler noir stuff that followed. Mr. Twist and the cabal of evil industrialists? The Soma drug gang angle? Feh.

And I still recoil at the memory of the last panel of #1: "I'm Shadowman!"

He nailed it right with 0 and 10 but by then the damage had been done.

[leonmallett]

Yep, me too - and a proper run at Shadowman.

Ha had a proper run at Shadowman, and it was just too stock superhero with none of the cooler noir stuff that followed. Mr. Twist and the cabal of evil industrialists? The Soma drug gang angle? Feh.

And I still recoil at the memory of the last panel of #1: "I'm Shadowman!"

He nailed it right with 0 and 10 but by then the damage had been done.

Arguably with the co-plotting situation, he didn't really get a 'clear' run. That aside, I would take his tenure over Milligan's any day, but clearly the response to Jordan's tenure/co-tenure varies which is fine.

I don't imagine for one minute he would be given a Shadowman book by VEI; a Darque mini or ongoing maybe, but I don't anticipate a Shadowman book from Jordan, even if I for one would welcome him being given a clear run.

If the Shadowman movie goes ahead, I believe a new Shadowman title is a given, if not sooner.

I fully expect that Kindt or Lemire will be given the reins when the next Shadowman title appears, regardless of movie, with Van Meter having an outside chance. What I also expect is some hand-wavium to ignore the mess of a character Milligan left, with some token justification for Jack becoming or being reborn as a 'hero' - which may take place in Operation Deadside; any such reset in itself would suggest a deeper problem *if* it that indeed does come to pass.

[Shadowman99]

I'd actually read VEI's Shadowman before reading any of the previous stuff, so I think it's fair to say that I came at it with fresh eyes:
I think the problem for me was that the issue of WHAT a Shadowman IS or can DO was never really addressed adequately within what, 20-ish issues? That's a pretty fundamental point on the 'To Do' list when writing a new hero comic usually.

Also, across the entire run there were far too many clunky changes in direction of the story and characters that simply ended up making the whole thing fairly jarring. It's fairly common knowledge that VEI were a fairly unprepared with their introduction of Shadowman to the VEI universe (due to fan demand), and didn't really have all their troops in a line before launching into battle, if you will, which I think came across quite clearly in the final product and led to the ultimate dissatisfaction amongst the fans with the comic.

As I recall, some of the plot mechanisms were fairly lame too: the 'love' thing with Alyssa to keep Jack on the straight and narrow, Dox's 'fake' ghost, the industrial cabal...

The Loa introduced by Milligan were really cool though to be fair, although his whole 'redemption by apologising to the cripple' was pretty frustrating because of showing the same scene over and over... Boring.

[SwiftMann]

I thought the bigger problem was inconsistency. When Zircher left, the book began to meander as Jordan tried to tie in too many story-lines. The art suffered as well, and with those factors came delays (as well as 2 of the best VEI issues to date in the "filler" Shadowman #0 and #10). Then Jordan was leaving the title and tried his best to tie up as much as possible, but in doing so lost a lot of the characterization he was going for. When Milligan took over it was a soft reboot that felt unnecessary and jumbled up even more of the plots and characters. Finally, End Times ended with a total destruction of Jack's character.

If you search hard enough, there's a thread that Justin Jordan actually replied in and gave some very insightful comments as to what he felt went wrong with the title. Its worth a read if you can find it. (The "Hi I'm Justin Jordan" thread, I think).

This sums it up for me; it is not that Jack was not a hero or not able to live up the heroic mantle, it was the car crash of heavy-handed changes and character ret-cons that Milligan added over 8 issues that wrecked the viability of the character IMHO.

All this for me too.

It was never about the 90s character for me. It was the horrible inconsistency between Zircher's run and Jordan's run (still good though) and Milligan's run (awful) that made the whole experience bad. Two drastic shifts in six or eight months is too many. Honestly, if Milligan's issues never happened, I think people would have been fine with everything to that point and chomping for more.

[Shadowman99]

I thought the bigger problem was inconsistency. When Zircher left, the book began to meander as Jordan tried to tie in too many story-lines. The art suffered as well, and with those factors came delays (as well as 2 of the best VEI issues to date in the "filler" Shadowman #0 and #10). Then Jordan was leaving the title and tried his best to tie up as much as possible, but in doing so lost a lot of the characterization he was going for. When Milligan took over it was a soft reboot that felt unnecessary and jumbled up even more of the plots and characters. Finally, End Times ended with a total destruction of Jack's character.

If you search hard enough, there's a thread that Justin Jordan actually replied in and gave some very insightful comments as to what he felt went wrong with the title. Its worth a read if you can find it. (The "Hi I'm Justin Jordan" thread, I think).

This sums it up for me; it is not that Jack was not a hero or not able to live up the heroic mantle, it was the car crash of heavy-handed changes and character ret-cons that Milligan added over 8 issues that wrecked the viability of the character IMHO.

All this for me too.

It was never about the 90s character for me. It was the horrible inconsistency between Zircher's run and Jordan's run (still good though) and Milligan's run (awful) that made the whole experience bad. Two drastic shifts in six or eight months is too many. Honestly, if Milligan's issues never happened, I think people would have been fine with everything to that point and chomping for more.

Honestly, yeah, if they'd continued with the belt-pouched Buffy-esque thing that they started with I could have been happy with that vibe. Bit cheesy and all, but I enjoyed it

Milligan's repetition of that bloody teenage fight scene (seriously, how many times did we see the same thing happen in how many issues?!) and End Times... Just all went a bit wrong when he took the helm.