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.