Shadow Master Series Volume 2

Shadow Master Series #2

by Andy Helfer, Kyle Baker (Illustrations), Marshall Rogers (Illustrations)

Throughout the decades, The Shadow has served as a timeless agent of justice, bringing death and disaster to tyrants and criminals alike. During the decadent 1980s, this mysterious Master of Men faced perhaps his deadliest opponents yet: the Seven Deadly Finns, a crime family gripping New York City in a stranglehold. When The Shadow's network applies pressure to their vast operations, the Finn brothers push back, enlisting serial killers and terrorists into their ranks. The violence escalates, leading to an explosive confrontation atop the Empire State Building and a shock ending which no one - not even The Shadow - could know! This second volume of The Shadow Master Series collects the critically acclaimed "Seven Deadly Finns" storyline by Andrew Helfer and Kyle Baker, as well as Helfer and Marshall Rogers' prologue "Harold Goes to Washington," in which The Shadow races to save President Reagan from a most unlikely assassin!

Genres: Comics

196 pages, Paperback

First published June 17, 2014

About the author

Andrew Helfer usually credited as Andy Helfer, is an award-winning comic book creator best known for his work as an editor and writer at DC Comics, where he founded the Paradox Press imprint. Helfer joined DC in the 1980s, and was responsible for placing Keith Giffen and J.M. deMatteis on the Justice League titles; as well, he was the editor for The Man of Steel limited series by John Byrne. He also developed the Max Allan Collins-written series Road to Perdition and the John Wagner-written A History of Violence, both of which became successful films.

Reviews

[Alex · Rating 1 out of 5]

Gave it a second chance with issue #2, didn't win me over. The drawing style is too scetchy and the story is quirky and badly written. It's a pass.

[Mark Schlatter · Rating 5 out of 5]

[Note: My review of the first volume of this series can be found here.]

In my review of the first volume, I mentioned the gonzo, batsh#t nature of this title. To underscore that description, here's what happens in the first story of this volume:

One of the Shadow's operatives, a substitute teacher, needs more chaperones for a middle school field trip to Washington, D. C. Other operatives decide to help out. On that field trip, a student named Harold attempts to kill the President.

Yeah, that's a standard story... After that, you get a longer storyline where the Shadow battles the Finn crime family. Elements of that plot include (but are not limited to): grinding up stool pigeons in hot dog vats, a gang of Rastafarian taxi drivers searching for a Shadow operative and saying "I'N'I" a lot, female professional wrestling, a gang of psychopaths destroying the Prometheus statue in the Rockefeller Center skating rink, and the importance of monkey chow as a clue.

Helping all this is the wonderful artwork of Kyle Baker who channels just enough of Bill Sienkiewicz to keep the sketchy look of the series, but adds his own formidable talents of comic pacing and caricature. (This work is done about the same time as Baker's early magnum opus The Cowboy Wally Show.) In my mind, this is one of the best teams ever from the 80's and 90's, and Baker's stylistic choices just put the cherry on the top of Helfer's wit.

Easily one of my favorite funny reads and highly recommended.

[Bryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This series is just doing nothing for me. I wish it were otherwise, because I’m awfully fond of the artists. But it just feels like warmed-over Howard Chaykin to me. I own the third volume, but I think I’ll move that to the very bottom of my to-read stack.

[Sean · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe 3.5

[Alex Sarll]

I make no secret of my love for the Shadow, whom I generally describe as 'Batman if he weren't a scared little boy' or, for variety's sake, 'Batman with better tailoring'. But the main story here, Seven Deadly Finns, is a bloody weird take on him. Where his current outings tend to leave him in his original noir era, the eighties DC run set him loose on the modern world, with a flying car replacing the autogyro, the pistols upgraded to Uzis, and a motley new crew of agents supplementing the survivors of his old team. Which would be odd enough even before you get in the creative team of Helfer and Baker. Andy Helfer's best known to me as the editor of the lighthearted classic Justice League International, and while Kyle Baker has done some more overtly serious stuff since, the art here is very reminiscent of the work he was doing around the same time on his comedy books Cowboy Wally and Why I Hate Saturn. So even before you get into the emphatically larger-than-life story, with its outlandish crooks, monkey butler and baffling Rasta subplot, the whole business is teetering on the edge of being played for laughs. And without his air of menace, there are panels where the Shadow is just a guy in a hat and a coat, and it doesn't make sense that he can do the things he does. Yet elsewhere, especially when he's a shadow or a silhouette or a close-up, Baker utterly conveys the elemental power of the man - and either artist or letterer does some of the best 'maniacal Shadow laughter' effects I've ever seen in the comics. Taken as a whole, I honestly don't know whether this worked or not - but it certainly wasn't dull.

(I didn't read the collection itself, but the original singles - and the ads &c are a reminder of what an amazing time the late eighties were for DC. They have ads for the original DC publication of V for Vendetta, 'The Killing Joke', the launch of Morrison's Animal Man. Also, lest we allow the goggles to be too rose-tinted, such utterly forgotten new books as The Weird, New Guardians and Wanderers. Oh, and the announcement that a Watchmen film is coming "soon". Well, geologically speaking...)

[Reyel2107 · Rating 5 out of 5]

my shadow II