The Shade #12 – Review

By: James Robinson (story), Gene Ha (art), Art Lyon (colors)

The Story: This is what you get for dealing in the black market of wild predator cats.

The Review: If there’s reason to be convinced of Shade’s lack of humanity, it’s not so much in his shadowy nature and godlike powers as his emotional distance.  He simply doesn’t seem to feel things the way us ordinary people would.  When his feelings hit extremes, you can be sure they’re at least some degrees below what any other character would feel in the same situation.  This sets him apart from the rest of the DCU, but it also makes it harder to get a handle on him.

This whole mini doesn’t exactly give us a defining image of the Shade, but that seems fair; even after twelve issues’ worth of globe-trotting experiences, he himself doesn’t know what to make of it.  We can’t expect to untangle all the complexities in Richard Swift’s development all at once.  We must all be content with gaining some slight understanding, a mere impression of how he came to be in his present state.  That’s life, you know.

The Unwritten #17 – Review

by Mike Carey (writer), Peter Gross (layouts), Ryan Kelly (finishes), Chris Chuckry & Jeanne McGee (colors), and Todd Klein (letters)

The Story: Lizzie/Jane’s past is revealed and Savoy and Tom make a daring rescue effort in a special “pick-a-story” issue.

What’s Good: Is have to give props to Carey and Gross for having the balls to even attempt a “choose-your-own-adventure” issue.  The experience of reading this comic is quite unlike anything I’ve experienced reading comics, the layouts are unique, and it’s all clearly the result of an extremely labor intensive creative effort.

Format aside, the story that Carey tells here is a good one, equally divided between exploring some of the series’ early moments in greater detail while also surprisingly trucking the plot forward.   The scenes detailing Lizzie’s past do a fantastic job of illuminating events from the Unwritten’s first issues that were clouded in mystery and completely puzzling at the time.  Now, Carey clarifies them, while also showing how much sense it all makes knowing what we know now, something that’s quite pleasant when recalling how mystifying these happenings were back when we read them.

Meanwhile, the present day events deliver a satisfying feel of the gang “coming together” as character relationships are stronger than ever.  Tom and Lizzie’s relationship has never felt more meaningful, even if it ends up being solidified by a fiction, while Savoy and Tom’s banter livens it all up.  An interesting parallel between these scenes and those from a Tommy Taylor novel also give everything a heavier and more significant tone.