Dynamite's Shadow

[BentonGrey]

I have been hearing good things about Garth Ennis's ongoing Shadow series at Dynamite, so I finally decided to check it out.  I was extremely hesitant to read it because Ennis is one of my least favorite writers.  I know he's very talented, but his work is usually far too ugly and vicious to be worthwhile for me.  About the only times I enjoy his work is when he's kept on a tight leash (Dan Dare).  Still, I do love these old pulp characters (in case that isn't obvious by now), and I decided to give it a chance.  I thought that I'd share my ruminations here with anyone who is interested.

I'm a few issues in, and I think I've got a pretty good sense of what the book is all about by this point.  There is a lot here that I really, really like.  In fact, there is so much here that I like, that I really wish it was being written by someone other than Garth Ennis, someone with a little class and a little subtlety.  There is everything here to make a good Shadow ongoing.  You've got a great blend of the old pulps, the radio show, and even the interesting aspects of the movie.  You've got plenty of personality in the villains, interesting mysteries, good action, and a mostly solid 30s feel.  The art is serviceable, if a bit muddy, in the standard Dynamite house style, and it has some really spectacularly lovely and evocative Alex Ross covers. 

All of that is good, and all of that makes me really want to like this book.  The trouble is that Garth Ennis...well, Ennises it all up.  It's crude, ugly, tawdry, and full of the type of base material I just don't want in my adventure stories.  It's almost a foregone conclusion that Ennis would discard the radio show's classic romantic tension between The Shadow and Margo Lane in favor of a cynical, emotionally abusive sexual relationship.  That was disappointing to me, but hardly unexpected.  The repeated dialog reminding us that one of the villains is a child molester is something else altogether.  It's a dirty world that these characters inhabit, and one whose ugliness intrudes whenever I start to enjoy the setting.  I don't mind the warlord governed areas of China being violent and brutal, but some subtlety in the storytelling could accomplish the same ends much more enjoyably.  I'm reminded of the gritty realism of the excellent Green Hornet: Year One series, which dealt with the Ravaging of Nanjing and the brutality of Japanese occupation in China, but did it with a lighter touch.

In terms of the protagonists, they are like everything else in the book, both interesting and a little repellant.  I love the idea of the Shadow having a personal stake in his classic catchphrase, "who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?  The Shadow knows!"  I really like the idea brought up (to the best of my knowledge for the first time) in the movie, that he lived a terrible life before becoming the Shadow in an attempt to redeem himself.  Who knows?  He knows because he has been to the depths of human depravity, but he has dedicated himself to purging such evils from the world as recompense.  I think that's a great backstory for the character, and I love that Ennis decided to pursue it, just as I love the Shadow's preoccupation with redemption and atonement.  There is a compelling character in there, and Ennis does a pretty good job with it.  Nonetheless, the viciousness of other aspects of the character, especially his relationship with Margo, is troubling and unappealing.  The Shadow is downright emotionally abusive to her, and the dialog they share is almost enough to make me put down the book all by itself.

In the end, I don't think I'm going to really enjoy this series.  If you're like me and prefer a bit more class and hope in your books, this probably isn't for you.  If you don't mind the uglier aspects of Ennis's writing, then there is probably a decent book to be found here.  The grimness of these types of stories, the baseness of their content, well, it all just ends up being too much for me and, I would argue, too much for the character.

[daglob]

Too many of the writers of the previous Shadow comic series seem to feel that The Shadow has to be brutal, cruel, and sometimes downright sadistic. I'm not sure where they get this; I've read 40-50 of the original stories and listened to scores of the radio shows and I don't see it. Ruthless, yes; driven, sometimes; lethal, often; brutal, cruel and sadistic, never. It may be because modern writers feel that anyone as dedicated as Kent Allard had to have some character flaws. A friend of mine once said that Harlan Ellison described The Shadow as "A benign Dracula", and that was somewhat the starting place of Chaykin's version (but Ellison hated the Chaykin version). DC went on to print that version for years until they decided to start "The Shadow Strikes" and get it back to it's roots.

I'm reminded of the treatment The Hangman got when he was brought back in the '60s; they made him a villain. I couldn't see why, unless it was because he killed quite ruthlessly during The Golden Age. I also remember when they took The Punisher and decided that he was insane. That was changed by later writers to be the effects of a drug one of his enemies had given him, but I'm pretty sure that the original stories did not have that as part of the plot. It was that writers "take" on Frank Castle.

But some people feel that something like this deepens the character and makes them more "relatable". I dunno, but I've never been a sadistic abuser of women, and I just can't relate to it. I never did like it when the '70s version of The Shadow punished his agents, nor just about anything Chaykin came up with.

I won't even discuss Andy Helfer and Kyle Baker's take on The Avenger...

The thing is, I don't know why the writers do this. Why do they decide that the character has to start acting in was that he has never done before? And I'm not talking about just The Shadow.

[kkhohoho]

The thing is, I don't know why the writers do this. Why do they decide that the character has to start acting in was that he has never done before? And I'm not talking about just The Shadow.

I think it's actual fairly simple, if no less reprehensible. An author sees an old Pulp/Comicbook character dating anywhere from the 30's to the early 60's. The author likes the character, but feels that since they were created in a era where characters were supposedly not given much personality or had much depth, (nevermind that the Shadow had plenty of character flaws without being overly cruel or sadistic, and had enough depth if you picked up on the hints,) they decide to give them some. The thing is though, many modern writers seem think that for a character to be truly gripping or interesting, they need to be 'flawed', and I don't necessarily just mean somewhat flawed while still being overly heroic like Marvel either. I mean being a straight up Jerkass with maybe some heroic or redeeming qualities if you're lucky. This isn't something that's restricted to Pulp or Superhero stories, or even just old characters; this is something you see across the board these days, be it in Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad, and that's just how the writers seem to roll. This particular method of characterization, while maybe working well enough within genres or stories designed with ambiguous morality in mind, doesn't work so well with Superheroes or Pulp Adventurers because, shock of all shocks, it's nice to have our heroes actually be heroes every once in a while, or at least anti-heroes who are still fairly decent like the Shadow. But instead, the writers think that being massively flawed makes you massively interesting and that that's all you need, nevermind making them actually ''likeable.'' Of course, this can work with something like Watchmen, but most comics or pulps aren't Watchmen, and it should probably stay that way.

[HarryTrotter]

Havent read the run,but that does sound like Garth Ennis.Shadow being something of a proto-Punisher(and proto-Batman,I guess),you would expect Ennis to be in his element.Also,WW2.And being his work,villains are almost always "deviant" in one way or another.
The whole talk reminded me about Titans Elric.Where he went from anti-hero to bathing in human blood.

[daglob]

Read most of the Elric series; he's complicated enough (especially if he starts channeling his other incarnations) without much help.

Is it arrogance that makes some writers think that they can do better than any writer that has handled a character before, or is it confidence (misplaced or not)? The comment about The Shadow having foibles reminds me of Farmer's comment that if you read the whole series Doc Savage emerges as a whole human being. And how many people have read The Ghost Makers (I believe), and read the scene between George Clarendon and the woman, and gotten the idea that there was more going on under the surface? And there seemed to be a lot going on ON the surface.

The Shadow would sacrifice any of his agents if it were necessary, and wreck bloody vengeance against those responsible. By the same token, he won't waste those agents if he can save them. It almost looks like a paradox, but it's the same kind of situation that military commanders have faced for generations. Maybe this is where some get the idea that he is cruel. Or maybe they really want to write The Spider, for whom the case could be made that he was borderline psychotic... but which side of the border?

I've also read the modernized series by Dennis Lynds. They were very strange, kind of like someone who says the is The Shadow pretending to be The Shadow, and not doing too badly. Better than some other versions.

I've made the comment before: its seems like some writers think that the older characters need to be more adult, so they adulterate them.

[HarryTrotter]

Again pardon for sidetracking,but Elric related-My memory of the books is a bit foggy(at least the first three,which the comic adapts),but wasn't most of debauchery going on just kinda implied,instead of graphically shown?And you know,not really in Hellraiser levels?