3 out of 5

Curious what the name of this series subtitle means? Don’t worry – theologian and co-writer / co-creator Andrea Molinari has you covered, in a dense afterword, expounding on the term and how it applies throughout Shepherd, the genesis of which Andrea explains in a similarly dense opening. …And before each chapter, we get a lengthy quote from Gregory of Nyssa – one of Molinari’s favorite theologians – further offering us concepts / themes which are at play.

Now, far be it from me to accuse anyone of using a lot of words to say a small thing, especially since I’m definitely glossing over plenty of nuance that Molinari has surely discovered in his field, but all of these “extras” don’t really add much to The Shepherd: the prophetic dream that inspires the series, encouraging Molinari’s son to tell his dad to write a comic about it, feels like a reed-thin idea – more a vibe than anything else – and all of the quotes and afterword explorations feel like they’re circularly restating the same thing, over and over. Though perhaps that’s all the point: that things are maybe less complex than they seem, and our lives can be a repeating cycle if we’re not paying attention.

In the meantime, it feels like a lot of forceful gravitas for a pretty simple story: in The Shepherd, when father Lawrence Miller loses his son, he chooses to travel to the afterlife and take retribution for wrongs he believes have been committed. It’s a very familiar vengeance tale from the start – the grieving wife who’s trying to process her son’s death but is left in the cold by a distracted Lawrence; the ghost who tells the afterlife-d Miller that revenge ain’t the solution; and the slow “I’m the bad guy!” lesson Miller learns as he works his way through a hit list.

To the Molinaris’ credits, though, despite all the added text, the book’s dialogue / narration itself is fairly succinct – if maybe a bit too rigid in its structure and thus dragging things out an issue or so too long – and Andrea’s religiosity is never used to proselytize, as long as you’re okay accepting a basic good / evil / afterlife setup. Main artist Luca Panciroli is similarly stiff, with colorist Pamela Poggiali sticking to a very unspectacular set of greens and greys and browns, but not much really happens to allow us to see how they could flex that combo for more excitement – they’re given mostly talking heads, and so the book isn’t all that grabbing visually.

This kind of works, though: The Shepherd isn’t concerned with blowing our minds, or delivering some ultimate thinkpiece. The initial dream was pretty simple, as is the basic definition of Apokatastatis, and so the Molinaris use that all as a springboard for a supernatural revenge story, with some quotes and backmatter if we do want to have a conversation about its themes. The book is not wholly original, but it is solid, and speaks to a respect for the genre by not trying to wow us unnecessarily.