Sombra #1

Written by: Justin Jordan
Illustrated by: Raúl Treviño
Colored by: Juan Useche
Lettered by: Jim Campbell
Publisher: BOOM!

I'm Mexican and I've lived in this country for most of my life. I was 11 when the Drug War started and that is most likely the one factor that has influenced my generation the most. I don't think you need to know about my life like that but this is a book that's ostensibly about the violence that's shaped my environment for nearly a decade and I'm assuming this site's readership comes from a different background. I want to be really transparent with my thoughts here because writing this review will pretty much be me trying to unpack why I thought this comic book was awful.

Sombra follows a DEA agent who is deployed to Mexico to um… seek revenge. She hears about a journalist and makes phonecalls trying to find him for a whole page, she then meets one person and finds the journalist. The plot doesn't make a ton of sense and it's not exactly a thrilling read. This could be a really mediocre unremarkable book. But there's a really upsetting aspect to how brown bodies are constantly treated as something to be maimed for shock value. Halfway into the issue, a kid bites off his fingers, I guess to establish that this is a violent setting. There's a few panels of people gruesomely murdered. No attempt is made to humanize these bodies. Choosing to focus entirely on a white DEA agent, this feels like an empty power fantasy projected into real life, where most people are disposable and relegated to being background characters. The appeal of the book might be escapism and I fear that might be lost in me because I can take a subway ride to the very touristic locations in which Justin Jordan tells his story.

The art flows well enough and the layouts are really dynamic. However, even when discounting the dehumanizing violence depicted, the book is cheapened by the otherization of its characters through its art. Aside from the DEA agent, a mysterious journalist (a dude who apparently hangs out in empty churches late at night) has the more complex inner life in the book and it's really interesting that Treviño depicts him lighting a cigarette with a church candle. Aside from how schlocky that image is, Catholicism is closely tied to the Mexican identity and by that image, the book distances that character from his nationality and establishes as an individual separated from his identity. The other featured characters are the vaguely corrupt cop, the kid who bites off his own fingers and another reporter. While the latter is presented as an ally of sorts to the DEA agent, he actually admits to being patriotic (with a litany of caveats) and he has to be bribed to help our white protagonist. Because bribery. Hmm. Anyways.
 

It's unfair to judge the book by these standards but by choosing a real, very politicized setting Jordan invites this critique. Sombra #1 is not a smart book, and the fact that so much of it is comprised of really boneheaded dialogue drags the whole thing down. I would be interested in reading the rest of this mini-series and maybe some of my gripes with this issue would be resolved but based on this issue, I don't recommend this comic book at all.