The Shade #11 – Review

By: James Robinson (story), Frazer Irving (art)

The Story: Now where is Dr. Who when London needs him?

The Review: As we get near to the end of this series, it’s worth reflecting back on the reasons why Shade embarked on this journey in the first place.  At the time, he seemed like a man who wanted for nothing: an endless supply of wealth, a penthouse in his favorite city, a girlfriend he loved, even some begrudging respect in the superhero community.  Yet something made him feel unsettled enough to leave.  The quest for his blood just gave him the excuse to do it.

So what was he really looking for?  If you thought his story is about the unbreakable bonds of family, the last panel of this issue makes it pretty clear that such bonds are anything but.  Considering the enormous amount of deference Shade has given to his descendants in the past, his actions seem a bit shocking, but no more than a bit.  Robinson throws the twist at us at the very last second with no build-up, and Shade seems no more blasé about it than usual.

The Shade #10 – Review

By: James Robinson (story), Frazer Irving (art)

The Story: By now, the Shade views restraints as nothing more than foreplay.

The Review: In my estimation, Robinson runs middle of the road when it comes to the sheer originality of his ideas.  If Geoff Johns basically takes classic yarns and makes them like new, while Grant Morrison continually spins new concepts and structures in comic book storytelling, then Robinson does something in between: he’ll take an old concept and buff it up, add his own zany take on things, but he doesn’t quite play any of it out in a radical way.

I think we can all agree that if nothing else, Robinson has made Shade a powerfully compelling figure, which is an impressive step up for an obscure Justice Society (sigh—remember them?) villain.  And certainly, Robinson hasn’t exactly been lacking in unusual material (e.g. religious vampire vigilante in Spain, cosmic Egyptian gods enslaved by a cabal of naked businessmen, etc.).  But he has a bit of difficulty pulling off a climax or resolution that truly surprises you.

The Shade #9 – Review

By: James Robinson (story), Frazer Irving (art)

The Story: Aren’t you guys too old to be playing the Egypt Game?  (And yes, that is a reference to the Zilpha Keatley Snyder children’s novel, which is awesome.)

The Review: For anyone wondering why of all characters DC would choose the Shade to star in its first wave of miniseries, the last eight issues should’ve given you the answer: this foppish, elegantly-spoken man is quite unlike anything you see in comics nowadays, and his life and history is filled to the brim with interest.  If he was real, I have no doubt in my mind he’d be advertising for Dos Equis right now—and selling twice as much as Jonathan Goldsmith.

Yet the one area where Goldsmith beats out Shade is in brevity.  As a lover of words, I can’t help but admire the top-hatted man’s turns of phrase, so elaborate they practically have lace on the edges.  Even so, I can see where his particular voice, a mixture of Henry James’ highly involved syntax and Oscar Wilde’s sardonicism, can become a weary fog to navigate through.  But it’s precisely the loaded nature of Shade’s narration that allows him to offer exposition, character, and action all at the same time.  In other words, Shade himself knows how to tell a story.

The Shade #8 – Review

By: James Robinson (story), Jill Thompson (art), Trish Mulvihill (colors)

The Story: Yeah, I’d say a drug-addicted demon summoner defines a bad romance.

The Review: One thing that’s come into focus over the course of this series is that the Shade has a much more complicated acceptance of his own nature than we’ve been led to believe.  In fact, he himself doesn’t seem aware of how troubled he is at heart about what he’s become.  Although he puts on a cool show of lackadaisical whimsy, as if he couldn’t care less about anything even remotely linked to his former humanity, all his actions demonstrate otherwise.

This issue centers on that particular contradiction in the Shade’s character.  He emphasizes more than once that he wanted only to “distance myself from the sad thing I now regarded my prior humanity to be,” and yet he can’t seem to stop himself from diving in headfirst when anything related to his prior humanity appears.  Like a mafia boss, he may be capricious, “murderous even at times,” but his loyalty to his family is undeniable.

The Shade #7 – Review

By: James Robinson (writer), Javier Pulido (artist), Hilary Sycamore (colorist)

The Story: Just your usual father-daughter demon-slaying outing in Spain.

The Review: Of all of Robinson’s international creations thus far, La Sangre has quickly become the most fully developed and compelling one yet—yes, even despite the fact she’s a vampire in a DCU that’s quickly being overrun with vampires.  Part of what makes her feel so substantial compared to the other guests on this mini is her enmity with the Inquisitor.  Their acidic relationship has as much history and passion as even veteran hero-villain dynamics.

Too bad Robinson doesn’t have the luxury to explore this relationship at a more suspenseful pace.  Instead, he’s forced to squeeze the decades of contempt between the Inquisitor and La Sangre into three pages.  Even then you only feel the heat of their mutual hatred around the edges of their massive blocks of text.

Make no mistake: this is an incredibly talky issue, and much of the talk has either to do with the Inquisitor’s rather complicated plan to steal all the souls in Barcelona, or with his and La Sangre’s opposing viewpoints on faith and morality.  While most of this material feels heavy and abstract, it does reveal the Inquisitor’s true motives.  Maybe he originally desired Sangre’s banishment because of her seemingly demonic nature, but now it’s an obsession with bringing her down to his level, to make it clear that even when both are damned, he has the higher ground.

Much more successful is the Shade’s monologue regarding his past, in particular his long late wife.  Strange circumstances for such reminiscing, considering he’s fighting a demon embodied with the might of Hell itself, but that makes his reverie no less touching and beautiful: “My wife made a mutton stew like no other.  My wife loved the gray-green color of a pigeon’s breast.  She was always first to the door, delighted, upon hearing carolers outside at Yuletide.  She loved bread and dripping with a hot cup of tea.”  Even though she’s obviously a product of her time, Robinson’s choice of words (no imagery, mind you—we never actually get to see her) allow us to understand why she resonates so deeply with this ostensibly soulless man.

The Shade #6 – Review

By: James Robinson (writer), Javier Pulido (artist), Hilary Sycamore (colorist)

The Story: There seems to be some bad blood between you two…

The Review: Every now and then I’m reminded with a start just how many British writers there are in the comics business.  It’s not something you think of often, since they spend all their time writing American characters in American settings with an American audience in mind anyway.  Ultimately, too, the distinction is somewhat irrelevant as the variety of writing styles among the Brits and Yankees is so broad that you can’t really tell them apart by text alone.

I say all this because The Shade may be one of those rare exceptions, a title that reads with an inescapably British flavor.  Yes, yes, the title character is of English origin, and his proud Victorian foppery gives him away long before he even begins to speak, but that’s not it—not entirely.

Compare with Paul Cornell’s Knight and Squire; in that series, the pride of British culture was on full display, but a very modern, sarcastic, bombastic type of culture, where even as the characters engage in that famous understatement, they reveal the heat of their feelings nonetheless.  Not so here.  Shade comes from an earlier, much more reserved period, so no matter what the situation, his voice rings with a light, even airy timbre that is at once amusing, perceptive, and intelligent, never clearly showing emotion.  For example, to the raging Inquisitor, he remarks, “How very uncivil, sir.  How very rude.  Why, I’ll have you know…some of my best friends are sodomites.”  Only timing and context hint at the threat veiled within the joke.

Another quality that reveals the Britishness of the writing is how easy and enjoyable it is to read even the exposition.  At my grad school commencement, we had a very petite London lady deliver a speech, and I remember the entire audience was held spellbound by her rich choice of vocabulary, her sparkling accent, her class, and most of all, the even rhythm of her dialogue.  You can feel that same effect in the script here.  Robinson manages to fill whole pages of nothing but talking heads and still make it gripping, largely because of the almost poetical turn of his writing: “Commissioner Cervantes’ father.  Tough, tight-fisted detective.  ‘Quixote’ was the nickname everyone called him.  He fought crime from the 1940s through the next couple of decades.  Devastating right hook.  Died of cancer in ’68.”  In a few sentences, Robinson gives a compelling impression of a man whom you never see, yet gets you interested in him anyway.

The Shade #5 – Review

By: James Robinson (writer), Javier Pulido (artist), Hilary Sycamore (colorist)

The Story: Vampire pirates—you all knew it had to happen at some point, right?

The Review: Even though the current line of DC titles has a lot of variety to it, you can’t help noticing how much of the storytelling is confined to the U.S. of A.  Of course, comics across the board from every publisher tend to be America-centric, which is mostly fine by me, since I love America (wink!).  But you know, there is a whole rest-of-the-world out there, and it seems a waste for the vast bulk of titles to use it for nothing more than the occasional backdrop.

So by far the most exciting feature of The Shade has been the opportunity afforded us to not only visit different periods and countries, but actually stick around for a while and get to know the place.  What Robinson has been doing brilliantly is establishing settings outside the continental United States that feel like living, breathing, fully-realized worlds all their own, as if they’ve been in existence all along and we’re only just now dropping in to see them.

Nowhere is that more apparent than Robinson’s handling of the foreigner superheroes he’s brought into his story.  Now, it’s one thing to conceive a character, attach a few random powers, and call him/her a superhero; it’s another thing to give them depth and roundness, with enough interesting substance to make them compelling by their own rights, not just as ciphers to your protagonist.  On Batwing, Judd Winick popped out a new hero, one after another, in nearly every issue, and not a single one felt accessible or succeeded in resonating with you.  Here, within a few pages, Robinson makes La Sangre a heroine so fresh, fascinating, and just plain cool that it makes you want to search desperately to see if she has a secret ongoing feature somewhere.

The Shade #4 – Review

By: James Robinson (writer), Darwyn Cooke (penciller), J. Bone (inker), Dave Stewart (colorist)

The Story: A cover on Life magazine?  You’ve really made it.

The Review: It’s not usually my style to start off a review with bias, but I’ll make a rare exception to say that this series has one of the freshest voices of all the titles coming out of any publisher right now.  A lot of it has to do with the unique qualities of Shade himself: erudite, wry, witty, and not a little bit of a romantic, a mix you don’t often hear from comics characters.

Even more than that, the title offers a great combination of different tones and running plotlines, making it a grab-bag of genres that can’t be perfectly qualified as just one.  Over the course of the series, we’ve had bits of spy-thriller, romance, supernatural, sci-fi, pulp, mystery, and drama, all of which Robinson weaves together with wonderful credibility.  Furthermore, Shade’s long-lived existence allows for a wide range of periods and settings as well.  In short, this book has the opportunity to tell almost any kind of story it wants in any way it wants.

This time around, we get a WWII tale of conspiracy and patriotism, involving not only the already surprising intervention of the Shade—given his general indifferent to greater world matters in general—but also the two-gun, motorcycle-riding Vigilante and the cross-dressing Madam Fatal, also known as one Richard Stanton.  You’re never going to have a weirder set of characters than that, and that alone makes this issue a standout from the year’s releases thus far.

Honestly, the plot is nothing much, being one of your typical “Who’s the mastermind scheming to kidnap/kill the Figure of Importance in question?”  The reveal of this individual also proves a bit cliché and predictable, both as to his/her identity and how it happens.  What makes it an entertaining read is Robinson’s use of Vigilante and Madam Fatal (and if you’ve never heard of either before, I imagine the surprise will be even greater), and the timing of Shade’s appearances.

The Shade #3 – Review

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

The Story: To beautiful Australia, Shade just wants to say a happy g’day, mates!

The Review: Shade’s transition from villain to something of an antihero has been a gradual, uneven process and even now his motivations are somewhat questionable.  He doesn’t exactly go out of his way to do good in the world; he tackles evil and crime only insofar as it interferes with or promotes his interests.

So when you see Shade arriving in Australia to take down the Idle Hands, a gang on rocket scooters, he doesn’t do it out of the goodness of his heart, but rather does it in exchange for further information on the Caldecotts, one of whom has apparently taken up residence Down Under.  Shortly afterwards, he seeks the advice of Diablo Blackshade, a magician he once confronted back in his high larceny days, who very brusquely makes it plain that he has not forgotten the incident: “I’m not your friend.”

Still, Diablo does offer some valuable insight into what Shade’s up against, and he reveals something even more important: “I see your soul, Shade.  Here, now, I see it growing.”  This will come as a bit of a surprise, as it’s been long assumed Shade ceased having anything of the kind a long time ago.  Obviously, his regained ability to love has something to do with this spiritual development, but it’ll evidently take something more to complete the process.

It’s encouraging to see that Shade doesn’t seem resistant to having his soul back.  In battling Mangar-kunder-kunja, a lizard god of the Australian Aborigines, Shade actually takes Diablo’s teachings to heart and channels his “eternal spirit-child,” in essence showing his true self, free of his usual flippancy and wit.  It’s a surprisingly vulnerable, even gentle act (“of faith,” he admits), one that leads Mangar to state, with some surprise, “Evil you are.  Good you are, too.”

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.