Reconstruction of the Fables

Justice Inc. (2014-2015/ Collected 2015): based on characters created by Lester Dent, Walter Gibson, Paul Ernst, and others; written by Michael Uslan; illustrated by Giovanni Timpano and others: I mean, if you're going to resurrect the three most popular heroes of America's pulp era of the 1930's and 1940's, you might as well get a writer who knows the characters and is willing to have fun with them. Michael Uslan (sometime comic-book writer and listed as one of the producers of every Batman movie since 1989) knows Doc Savage, The Shadow, and The Avenger.

Maybe a bit too well: a recurring meta-joke about the young Doc Savage's haircut looking like Clark Gable's hair recurs a couple of times too often, as does a bit in which various people react to Doc's 'skull-cap' haircut. Both jokes stem from things exterior to actual Doc Savage stories: the illustrators of Doc's pulp magazine novels in the 1930's were told to make Doc look like Clark Gable; the tremendous, iconic Jim Bama cover illustrations for the Doc Savage reprints from Bantam books in the 1960's gave Doc a skull cap/widow's peak hairstyle based on a misreading of the novels (Doc had a close-fitting helmet that looked like this, but it wasn't actually his hair). See what I mean about knowing too much?

But anyway, Justice Inc. is actually fun. Its revisionism makes sense within the bounds of the story. And the revisionism doesn't fundamentally alter the characters of these three heroes. Doc and the Avenger still believe in the rule of law; the Shadow still has a tendency to act as judge, jury, and executioner. Together, they're a fun, occasionally bitchy team.

And they face villains familiar to fans of Doc Savage and the Shadow, slightly revised in what's really a very Marvelesque attempt to create links among characters who were never linked in the pulps. Both the Doc Savage and Shadow villains behind the potentially world-shattering conspiracy that drives the plot now share part of an origin with the Shadow, at least when it comes to the Shadow's somewhat murky and plot-convenient mental powers. 

Originally published as a six-issue miniseries from Dynamite, purveyors of ancient copyrighted characters for ancient fans, Justice Inc. isn't a mind-blowing super-epic. It is very entertaining however, which is more than I can say for a number of recent efforts to breathe new life into Doc, the Shadow, and the Avenger (DC's depressing Firstwave, I'm looking at you!). 

Giovanni Timpano's art has just a touch of the illustrative retro feel that such a project requires. His renditions of the various iconic characters are mostly swell. Somewhere in the Uslan/Timpano collaboration is an occasional difficulty with smooth panel-to-panel and page-to-page progression. It's not jarringly off-putting, though it occasionally causes one to struggle making sense of what has just happened.

My only other real complaint isn't actually a complaint: Uslan understandably limits the roles of the various sidekicks and helpers of the three great pulp heroes. Many of them make cameos (Monk Mayfair, Margo Lane, and Pat Savage most prominently), but there clearly wasn't room for both the crossover and an encyclopedic use of all the major characters from three different pulp-hero rosters. Especially when Albert Einstein, Howard Hughes, and H.G. Wells make relatively major appearances. So it goes. 

If this is the last time we see a new Doc Savage comic-book adventure, he goes out on something of a high. And I'd imagine the Shadow and the Avenger aren't far behind him. Well, probably. All three characters have been remarkably stubborn about shuffling off the pop-culture coil to this point. Recommended.

Weed of Crime

The Shadow Volume 3: The Light of the World: written by Chris Roberson; illustrated by Giovanni Timpano and others (2013): Dynamite's regular Shadow series, set in the 1930's and 1940's, continues to be an enjoyable pulp adventure in comic-book form, with a lot more psychology and character development than the old radio and pulp-magazine Shadow.

The major difference between the comic book and the original pulp novels lies in the focus on the Shadow himself, who was often a supporting character in a book that focussed on his various lieutenants as they investigated whatever case the Shadow was pursuing. This left the Shadow as a mystery man. Dynamite's comic books have put him front and centre, to generally good effect.

Giovanni Timpano's art on this latest arc is fairly strong, especially when he gets to do sweeping long-shots of the Shadow on rooftops and bridges and what-have-you. Chris Roberson comes up with an interesting new villain who, like this revised Shadow, appears to be working for some mysterious organization aimed at punishing criminals.

However, the Light is fine with killing people before they commit crimes: she's pretty much going with the Biblical concept that thinking something sinful is the same as doing it. Oh-oh. Enter the Shadow: he may kill a lot, but he only kills killers.

The series (like the radio program moreso than the novels) continues to be very Shadow/Margo Lane-centric, for good and ill. I wouldn't mind seeing the Shadow step back into the, ahem, shadows for an arc or two, so that we can spend more time with lieutenants such as Harry Vincent, whose recruitment by the Shadow features in the first scene of the first Shadow pulp novel. Still, a very enjoyable series. Between this and the new Doc Savage series, Roberson is having quite a pulp-tastic year writing comic books. Recommended.