What You Are In The Shade
The Shade
This is a tricky one, because it's another miniseries (so it started a month after the regular New 52 and in the first three months had only gotten to issue 2) and also because it's a 12-issue miniseries. One sixth of a story is difficult to judge a story by.
The Shade used to be a villain for the Golden Age Flash, Jay Garrick. He had shadow powers. That was pretty much it until James Robinson created the series Starman in the 90s. A celebration of old and new, Starman was one of the best comics of the 90s, period. Definitely top 5. It introduced us to Opal City, and managed to make it feel like a real, lived-in city. It also managed to make it seem like Opal City was as old as Gotham or Metropolis, but nope. Original to the 90s series. Starman also reinterpreted a bunch of older stuff for a modern sensibility, and transferred The Shade into a rogue-ish anti-hero. Robinson's Shade has been a sort of break-out character: a seemingly immortal villain with a code and standards, always ready to protect his adopted city of Opal from threats, but not one to flinch when it came to killing people to meet his own ends. He had a complex backstory and was both sympathetic and cunningly amoral.
So he got a miniseries in the new 52.
It's only 2 issues in (at the end of the third month of the New 52), so there's not much to go on here. The art is nice, but a bit jarring on occasion. And it's James Robinson writing one of his most beloved characters (Robinson has his flaws, and his Cry For Justice was terrible on almost every level, but he's still a damned good writer). Get this comic if you love democracy!
Or well-written comics, whichever.
Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque; it managed to do more service to Deathstroke in just a couple pages than in his own stupid series, people! GET THIS COMIC.
This is a tricky one, because it's another miniseries (so it started a month after the regular New 52 and in the first three months had only gotten to issue 2) and also because it's a 12-issue miniseries. One sixth of a story is difficult to judge a story by.
The Shade used to be a villain for the Golden Age Flash, Jay Garrick. He had shadow powers. That was pretty much it until James Robinson created the series Starman in the 90s. A celebration of old and new, Starman was one of the best comics of the 90s, period. Definitely top 5. It introduced us to Opal City, and managed to make it feel like a real, lived-in city. It also managed to make it seem like Opal City was as old as Gotham or Metropolis, but nope. Original to the 90s series. Starman also reinterpreted a bunch of older stuff for a modern sensibility, and transferred The Shade into a rogue-ish anti-hero. Robinson's Shade has been a sort of break-out character: a seemingly immortal villain with a code and standards, always ready to protect his adopted city of Opal from threats, but not one to flinch when it came to killing people to meet his own ends. He had a complex backstory and was both sympathetic and cunningly amoral.
So he got a miniseries in the new 52.
It's only 2 issues in (at the end of the third month of the New 52), so there's not much to go on here. The art is nice, but a bit jarring on occasion. And it's James Robinson writing one of his most beloved characters (Robinson has his flaws, and his Cry For Justice was terrible on almost every level, but he's still a damned good writer). Get this comic if you love democracy!
Or well-written comics, whichever.
Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque; it managed to do more service to Deathstroke in just a couple pages than in his own stupid series, people! GET THIS COMIC.