Early Image: Images of Shadowhawk

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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'.  

 

 

Images of Shadowhawk #1-3 (1993 - 1994) 

Writer and artist - Keith Giffen

Dialogue - Alan Grant

Colours - Clydene Nee & In-Color

Lettering - Ken Lopez

 

Shadowhawk was Image founder Vim Valentino's first venture for the fledgling company.  Following two miniseries written and drawn by Valentino himself, Images of Shadowhawk was launched as on ongoing series for the character, with a rotating creative team.  The first team to tackle the project was the duo of Keith Giffen and Alan Grant, and the story featured Giffen's own Image Comics character Trencher.  Shadowhawk is a mysterious masked vigilante who wears silver combat armour and has the particularly violent trademark of breaking the backs of the criminals he takes on.  Trencher is some kind of undead trash-talking mountain of a man, who's job is to 'repossess souls' at the direction of Phoebe - a voice in his head that is presumably an agent of whatever higher power is directing matters.  In this series there's almost no explanation about any of this, nor any kind of character arc or insight into their motivations and origins - but this was a feature, not a bug.

 

Getting in two comics veterans was a smart move by Valentino, as not only do they bring a technical ability over and above the other comics being published by Image at the time, they have a blast putting the boot in to those very same comics.  With Alan Grant - co-creator of Judge Dredd - on dialogue, and Giffen's history of irreverent comics, they play this firmly tongue in cheek.  The whole three issues are essentially one big fight scene, with the violence escalating to ever more ludicrous proportions.  It makes the likes of Youngblood, Bloodstrike, Cyber Force, etc, seem all the more absurd for doing the same - but with complete sincerity.   

The plot, such as it is, sees mob-boss turned informant, Carmen 'Blowhole' Oliveri, holed up in a hospital while Trencher attempts to kill him and Shadowhawk tries to protect him so he can live to testify.  Throw in a police SWAT team, rival mobsters, and hit-men who can jump from body to body, and you've got a recipe for complete chaos.

 

Keith Giffen's unique art style for Shadowhawk and Trencher

 

The real draw here though is Giffen's hyper-stylised artwork.  His impressionistic messy line-work fuels the chaotic nature of the story, and often characters are suggested through large blocks of colour with almost no details whatsoever.  It's a unique style and a real shame that we didn't get to see him use it on a more regular basis.  His work on the characters is a treat as well, Shadowhawk looks so much more interesting than when drawn by Valentino, and Trencher ticks all the boxes for this 90's Image pastiche; trench coat (hence the name), an unfeasibly large number of pouches and buckles, and stupidly large guns.  Fortunately, Giffen doesn't completely embrace that Image ethos, as his storytelling is clear and the page composition logical.

 

In true form for those early Image days, Images of Shadowhawk failed to live up to it's billing as an ongoing title. You can feel the endeavour slip away from Valentino in a series of editorial comments at the back of each issue.  In #1 he notes that they've already run into trouble with #4 (it will be delayed by at least a month and that they don't yet have a creative team for #7-9) in #2 he went further and said that there would be several months between #3 and #4, and by the time #3 was published he had no idea when #4 might see the light of day (the reason given was the unnamed artist falling behind).  No more issues of Images of Shadowhawk were ever published.  Speaking of which, in #3 Valentino announced he and Keith Giffen would be working on a new comic to be published in summer 1994 called The Galactic Legion.  This seemed to be a mix of their previous work on Guardians of the Galaxy (Valentino) and The Legion of Super Heroes (Giffen).  It was never published.  In 1995 Valentino put out three issues of a comic called The Alliance which, minus Keith Giffen, did seem to be based on The Galactic Legion concept.  Giffen for his part joined in the madness; Trencher #5 was advertised in the back of Images of Shadowhawk #1, but never saw print.  The character would be moved to short-lived British publisher Blackball Comics, popping up in a couple of comics before disappearing for good.

 

Mike