The Shade #2 – Review

By: James Robinson (writer), Cully Hamner (artist), Dave McCaig (colorist)

The Story: Doesn’t matter if you’re human or shadow—the British and French just don’t mix.

The Review: I spoke a little about this topic on my review of Resurrection Man #3, but when you have an unkillable protagonist, basically a whole layer of tension—some might say the most crucial of all—flies out the window.  Upon reflection, I suppose this doesn’t mean the character can’t die or perish; it just means a lot more work is needed to get there.  In the meantime, the writer has to fill that missing danger with something to keep us invested in the character’s fate.

Robinson goes for rich character work and substantial plotting to make up the gap, and more.  On the former, he devises some incredibly distinctive, believable voices, from Shade’s somewhat fussy syntax (“A one-eyed assassin, weighed down by chain mail and pride, is but a stroll in spring when I catalogue my journey to date.”), to William von Hammer’s cut-and-dry narration (“Rooftop chase with Les Diaboliques.  They died, I didn’t.”), to Jake “Bobo” Bennetti’s cool-cat lingo (“I’ll be oh so on the down below.  And you’re about to 23 skidoo…”).

Like other great writers of characters (Grant Morrison, Paul Cornell, Pete Tomasi, to name a few), Robinson has a knack for making his immediately accessible and easily likable.  It’s not just their entertaining dialogue, but how much information they reveal with it without ever feeling expository, like Bennetti explaining his connection to von Hammer: “Cat I crossed paths with during a crazy caper in Morocco a few years back.  Vampire gigolo hit men…don’t ask.”

Humor aside, Robinson also knows how to fine-tune a dramatic scene so it comes across moving, but not sappy.  Hope and Shade’s parting is a strong example.  The contrast between Shade’s forthright romanticism and Hope’s playful affection has great chemistry, and it becomes all the more potent when Hope lets down her offhanded manner.  “Dickie—no.  I’m sorry, I call you that ‘cause it’s funny, but what I have to say now isn’t.”  You can guess where she goes from there.  Suffice to say, it’s an affecting scene that never feels forced.

The Shade #1 – Review

By: James Robinson (writer), Cully Hamner (artist), Dave McCaig (colorist)

The Story: Props, man—anyone who can pull off a top hat in public today is pretty legit.

The Review: I mentioned not too long ago that while Robinson’s efforts at writing the Justice League left me completely unimpressed, I thoroughly enjoyed his work on Starman.  Aside from the tremendous development he gave to the titular hero, Robinson also wrote a formidable Shade.  As a result, the villain-turned-“hero” gained a background of mythic proportions and one of the more complex, inscrutable set of motivations among DC personalities.

This issue captures Shade’s appeal very well: erudite, rugged, and charming, living in the lap of luxury (Starman: “I could give [the tea] a warming nudge with my power gem.”  Shade: “Not with my best bone china, you won’t.”), and tops in the metahuman ranks besides.  For the Bronte fans, Shade is pretty much Edward Rochester with superpowers.  Be prepared, though, for some obscure references: “Why don’t we skip the tea entirely and watch an Ingmar Bergman film?”

The Rochester parallel comes even stronger in Shade’s scenes with Hope O’Dare.  While he projects a very private figure, a master of understatement, he has no qualms speaking lavishly of his affection for Hope, who, like Rochester’s Jane Eyre, doesn’t find that kind of romancing all that romantic.  She tells him, quite perceptively, that there’s nothing sexy about Shade turning into her neutered beau and that he ought to look into taking up some adventurous hobby.

It seems like adventure is out to find him, however.  Amidst Shade’s many scenes of quiet contemplation, we catch a glimpse of German agent William Von Hammer, who in Bond style singlehandedly dispatches a whole motley crew of killers.  It’s an impressive sequence, for all that it doesn’t feature our star.  Against a thug in a rocket pack, a beast-man, and several goons in nifty armor, Von Hammer takes them all down with a single pistol.