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.
That’s why his opening monologue feels rather unusual for him. A good storyteller should know better than to tell his readers what to think about his tale, let alone break down his themes for them. It’s thus disappointing that Shade spells out the major motifs of the previous arcs in such bare bones: “blood,” “family,” and “the past.” It not only feels patronizing—which, I suppose, matches his character completely—it’s also redundant given how clear these underlying elements have been all along in this series.
Aside from this initial departure from form, the rest of the issue delights with its unique mixture of fantasy, drama, business intrigue, and superhero conventions. It’s the last of those items where Robinson really impresses. While the rest of the DCU has been struggling to create new characters that have enough personality of their own to stand against the classics, Robinson has delivered one after another like it’s no big deal. Adding to his already multicolored roster of international heroes is Silverfin, your average Irish Joe who uses Romani magic to get his crime-fighting done. How is it possible Robinson parades these folks in for all of four pages and you want a mini (at the very least) out of them?
At the end of the day, however, Shade always ensures he takes center focus, even when his own attention is fixed on others. It’s very interesting that after so many issues devoted to softening his character, either by his devotion to his family, his unquenchable love for his once-upon-a-time wife, or his sudden moments of compassion, we now get a lot of talk about his moral ambiguity. He rejects the idea of being a hero, referring to it with no little disgust as “ordinary,” and he freely admits his occasional enjoyment of killing. That’s really one of the big questions we must ask: how exactly does he define the boundaries of what’s justified and what’s not?
The other big question: who is the Shade when he is not the Shade? Every arc has shown us the far reach of his powers, allowing him to manage assassins, demons, and even gods without much sweat. So far as you can tell, he has never really been threatened since he became what he is now, and as a result, he has the luxury to calculate his every word and move. If all that power is removed, what will Richard Swift the ordinary man at risk do?
Irving is a very specific talent who requires certain projects to do his best work, and The Shade is clearly one of them. Most other artists have portrayed our star’s powers as inky, but Irving employs a smoky look which I say is the best representation of living shadow yet; it lacks all texture and mass, yet somehow you can believe it can catch and hold a person in a deathly grip. And the colors—yellows that glow sun-surface hot and blues as blue as a chill evening—what Irving lacks in accuracy, he more than makes up for in pure mood alone.
Conclusion: Another rock-solid issue with only a couple hairline cracks in the writing, glossed over with eminently suitable imagery from the latest guest artist.
Grade: A-
– Minhquan Nguyen
Some Musings: – Boy, Dudley just is a name that never gets attached to nice folks, huh?
– Mission control to Michael Green and Mike Johnson—read this issue as a lesson on how to write Irish dialect with some actual credibility, not just plain English with some embarrassing stereotypes thrown in.