Review by Win Wiacek
Voodoo-tainted, New Orleans based daredevil Jack Boniface first became Shadowman in the early 1990s, and this collection reprints the first three issues of his ongoing series, and then the sixth. The un-included chapters are part of the company’s first braided crossover event Unity, but readers preferring a fuller accounting may want to head straight for the Shadowman Classic Omnibus, or all six earliest issues are collected as Spirits Within.
Shadowman premieres with ‘Jazz’, written by Jim Shooter and Steve Englehart, illustrated by David Lapham. The credits are a lot more complex than they appear, as editor in chief Shooter used a communal brainstorming system to create characters and stories, leading to four plotters being credited along with an additional three writers and three pencil artists over four chapters.
In that eerie introduction Boniface is a struggling session saxophonist seduced by Lydia, a mysterious woman he picks up in a club. Her sinister, trysting assault leaves him unconscious, amnesiac and forever altered by a bite to his neck. Unknown to Jack, Lydia is an agent of the Spider Aliens who form a covert keystone of the Valiant Universe, preying on humanity and responsible for many paranormal humans who secretly inhabit the world.
Alone in the morning light Boniface discovered that Lydia’s home was filled with half-digested corpses. Clearly he was to be her next meal, but has no idea how he survived or where she went. He cannot conceive of how her bite has altered him. He flees but later as darkness falls he feels agitated, restless, aggressive: he roams the streets and finds himself drawn back to Lydia’s home and stumbles upon a voodoo sacrifice. Attacked by the priest the once docile musician dons a Mardi Gras mask found at his feet and fights back with brutal abandon. Lydia’s has somehow turned him into a violent driven maniac, hungry for conflict – but only when the sun goes down.
‘Spirits Within’ has Jack’s hunger for answers take him to both experts in medicine and Obeah magic before his Shadowman self drags him into a confrontation with a Bayou axe murderer. ‘The Beast and the Children’ finds the increasingly off the rails music-man tackling mobsters and hit-men before destroying a well-connected super-powered child abuser.
There’s a big change in the fourth and final tale. It begins with Shadowman’s return from the far future and a distant dimension where the combined Valiant heroes experienced “Unity”. Whilst there Boniface fell in love and learned exactly when he would die. ‘The Family That Slays Together’ pits the Shadowman against a murderous clan of degenerate swamp-dwellers stealing women and children from local communities. Bitter, merciless and now completely reckless since he believes he cannot die – yet – Shadowman is now a relentless, remorseless, punishing force of nature. A neat touch is Boniface being a helpless witness to everything his night-self does.
Combining the best elements of conflicted lone vigilantes and dark avengers with an exotic locale and traditional horror elements, Shadowman offers a tense, dark underbelly to the shining heroism of Valiant’s other titles. He’s become a Valiant mainstay, surviving multiple reinterpretations, but his earliest outings offer heaping helpings of moody mystery and arcane excitement.
