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For
Season Two of the podcast we've taken an in-depth look at the
foundation and history of Image Comics. To accompany that we've done a
blog series on comics published by Image in their exciting and chaotic
formative years - 'Early Image'.
When Image launched, they faced a barrage of criticism from other comic book professionals, a lot of which was aimed at the low quality of the books that were being published. Whilst some of this was clearly jealousy at the incredible success of the fledging publisher, there is absolutely no doubt that some - if not most - of their work being released in that first wave was subpar. Characters were derivative of icons from Marvel and DC (usually the one's the Image founders had made their name on), stories were poorly written either by the artists themselves who had no real writing experience or by friends and family who clearly didn't have the chops. But the worst of those early Image comics was, by some distance, Shadowhawk.
Upon embarking on this project, I had in my mind that I'd read the original Shadowhawk miniseries when it was released, but reading it now I'm pretty sure that was never the case. I wonder what my opinion would have been in 1992, given I was a huge fan of other comics that really were quite bad, because I was quite shocked to learn how poor this comic actually is. After years of making indie comics, Jim Valentino made his name writing and drawing Marvel's The Guardian's of the Galaxy - no, not that one. Guardians was set in the 30th century and featured characters mostly unrelated to the regular Marvel Universe. It was an action-packed, inventive sci-fi romp that owed much to silver age comics. It didn't set the world on fire like the comics of his Image co-founders, but it was consistently decent. With his indie background, and ability to both write and draw, he seemed like a perfect foil to the inexperienced one-trick ponies of his Image peers. What could his imagination unleash without the creative restrictions of corporate superhero comics?
Shadowhawk is a nighttime vigilante, dressed in black and silver body armour. He has no superpowers, but does have an array of weapons and gadgets to assist in his crime fighting. So, yes, he's basically Batman. However Shadowhawk does have one USP - he breaks the spines of his criminal victims (ironically Batman would have his back broken a year later in the infamous Knightfall storyline, which was in part an attempt by DC to claw back market share from Image Comics). Why does he break their spines? Who knows. Definitely not the reader, who is given no motivation for such violence. We aren't even really given any insight into why Shadowhawk roams the streets, attacking muggers and rapists dressed as a bat shadowhawk. This is partly poor writing, but it's also a by-product of the 'mystery' of who Shadowhawk really is. In an editorial at the back of #1, Valentino invites the readers to solve the mystery and write in with their guesses. However, at no point are we ever given any in-story reason to want to know his secret identity. It plays no real part in the plot, and he's such a walking talking cliché of a badass vigilante, that it's difficult to connect with even the parts of the character we do know about. The mystery isn't helped by a ham-fisted attempt to make a police detective the obvious choice, to such an extent that he may as well be called Detective Red Herring.
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| Spawn drops in for a chat |
The four issues are loosely connected by the story of local crime boss, Max Boldd, who assembles a team of superpowered individuals and tries to add Shadowhawk to the mix. Because this was early Image, and everyone was still best friends and excited at the new venture, we get other founders' characters popping up in each other's books - here we get Spawn dropping in to check Shadowhawk is one of the good guys, and Savage Dragon, who's brought in by the local police to help with their supervillain problems and, of course, ends up tussling with Shadowhawk as well. Funnily, one of these villains - Arson, because, well, he commits arson - starts off in a very 90s armour casing but transforms into a man on fire who looks just like Inferno, a character from Erik Larsen's first few Savage Dragon issues.
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| A superhero showdown between Savage Dragon and Shadowhawk |
Unfortunately, the comic isn't much helped by Valentino's lacklustre art. His illustrative style feels very much in that late-80s superhero style that seemed so flat that it drove people into the arms of the new and exciting styles of Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane, and the other Image founders. In contrast to his stablemates, he does have storytelling that makes sense, his anatomy is fine, and he has people standing, sitting, and walking realistically (a low bar for sure, but one not passed by many other Image comics of the time). However, he does have a tendency to go for 'interesting' page layouts and panel shapes that don't seem to be done for any reason other than being different. Panels are layered over one another, dramatically curved or slanted, or zigzag down the page, but in ways that bear no relation to the content of the page/panel, the pacing of the action, the narrative, or the emotional state of the characters. I'll always applaud attempts to move away from a strict grid format, but there just needed to be a bit more thought applied to his choices.
I do have the two follow-up miniseries to read, so we'll see whether Valentino was able to take this idea somewhere more interesting, or stick with the one-note violent vigilante trope.
Mike
