3 out of 5

I keep waiting for a Gerry Jones book to ‘prove’ the writer to me.  Maybe if ‘Mosaic’ hadn’t grabbed my attention as a kid, I wouldn’t have the need to keep returning to Jones’ writing in the hopes of discovering my new favorite old book…  Re-visiting that series now, it’s both better and worse than I remember.  Better in that it’s an incredibly strange book for a mainstream title (and that’s, in part, what I keyed on as as yout’), but worse in that’s it’s pretty sloppy and preachy at times… huge-ass words blobs that I probably skated over with kid-eyes, but nowadays shrivel my nose a bit when trying to digest ’em.  Still, a unique experience.

Jones comes from a humor-writing background with National Lampoon, but his love for history and music often works its way into his books.  This has led to some fucking trash – I know that ‘Trouble With Girls’ was notable, but it just read like a series of poorly timed half-remembered jokes to me – and then you have his music-infused tales like ‘Score’ and some Batman minis that were pretty tragically dumb.  Damningly, though, Gerard’s stretching of what’s expected in a comic hero book still makes his work sound interesting from afar, and makes you want to give it one more issue to suddenly click.

As I mused on my ‘Mosaic’ review, it seems the dude works best when he’s forced into some confines (playing with a mainstream hero), but at the same time, working with something fringe enough that he has room to experiment.  The Shadow would seem to fit that bill, plus it gives him space to work his appreciation for time’s ebbs and flows into the mix.  Moody, early artwork from Ed Barreto absolutely helps, with some amazing, pulp-perfect painted covers by the same.  And I’d say flipping through the pages of this series (which went on for 31 issues, but I’m giving up after 6) bodes well – none of the dialogue screams of the soap opera found in Gerry’s headline books (Green Lantern), and the art and coloring are gorgeous, solid, making the pacing of the action and dynamics of talking heads just look appealing – you want to read what’s being said because you’re drawn in by the look.

But despite an awesome first issue with setting up a giddily pulp mystery of ghosts and severed heads, the series immediately begins to wander.  History comes into play right away with Rasputin, but something about the way Gerry writes the Shadow doesn’t quite work the character’s ambiguity as, I think, was intended, rather coming across as cocking its head at the reader and expecting you to know about The Shadow already.  The tone is off, in other words, and despite Barreto’s paneling skills, he can’t draw around Gerard’s lack of appreciation for panel-to-panel timing, with one page jumping back and forth between settings and characters, absolutely ruining the flow of the reading.  The Shadow’s network of contacts are here, and the series does occupy a good realm for the character of 30s sci-fi noir action, but Jones’ love for the era (waxed on in the first couple issues’ editorials) seem to sidestep a need to format the story for a proper comic book.  After the first history-heavy arc, things settled into a bit more of a pulpy formula (this observation based on some scattered issues I have from later in the run), but that also meant bringing back in the soap opera.

It sounds like this was a good series for Shadow fans who’d been a little shaken by first Chaykin’s ultra-80s sex-and-blood mini, then Helfer’s comedic run.  The books look pretty fantastic and are readable, with fun ideas lurking at the edges, but the tone is never really welcoming to the reader and so I don’t think its a run to settle in to so much as appreciate.