The Shadow #5

Written by: Si Spurrier & Dan Watters

Layouts by: Daniel HDR

Art by: Daniel HDR & Ricardo Jaime

Color by: Natalia Marques

Published by: Dynamite

When you write for a classic pulp hero from the 1920s and try to bring them forward to modern times, it isn’t always easy. How they were portrayed back then cannot always properly translate into a modern story. However, what Spurrier and Watters have crafted with this take of the Shadow does indeed bring him into the modern era, but they also find a way to make him fit within the confines of today’s society.

How they do this is quite simple: make him a man out of time and a myth that only really appears when his brand of justice is required. But, the great thing about this series, especially this issue, is the fact that the Shadow, himself, believes that he has not only become irrelevant, but that he may now be the cause of some of the world’s misfortune. As he says in the issue he became lost “Lost in a shifting of spotlights that case no shadow.”

However, that is clearly not the case within the confines of this story. As the issue begins, we continue to follow our eyes into this world, Mary as she tries to continue to make sense of everything that is happening around her. In the last issue, her sister Luisa was hurt after she tried, posing as the Shadow, to save Mary from a potential attacker, and now isl trying to figure out the mystery of the HeKnows.com website that seems to be the mecca of all things Shadow related.

Mary herself has a special rendez-vous in the form of confronting the school shooter that almost killed her, and that the Shadow stopped all those years ago. This scene seems to be included for a few reasons: one, to show the reader that the Shadow has a lasting effect on the ones he “touches” and two, to show us that Mary is starting to change herself. Being a doctor is her chosen profession since she wants to “cure” the world, but now that the Shadow is in her orbit, she begins to second guess what the “cure” should actually be.

And that is essentially the crux of this series: ordinary people get changed when in the presence of the Shadow. Sometimes for the better, but also sometimes for the worse. The entire middle sequence of this issue explores this exact subject as we get to see the Shadow reflect on his past, and get that gem of a quote above.