Art For Art’s Sake #291: The Shadow Knows Even More – Celebrating Howard Chaykin’s Shadow

by Richard Bruton

Another week, another Art For Art’s Sake, celebrating all that’s glorious about comics art. Although this week it’s another celebration of The Shadow in comics…

Okay then. All this started when I saw one Bernie Wrightson ad (that one above) for the 70s DC Comics version of The Shadow, the one written and drawn by Denny O’Neil and Michael W. Kaluta. So, I started grabbing some art from various artists doing the character. But then one Art For Art’s Sake just wasn’t enough, as I wanted to do one just with all that gorgeous Kaluta artwork.

And of course, if I was doing that, then I had to do a separate one on my absolute favourite Shadow series, the Andy Helfer, Bill Sienkiewicz, Kyle Baker one from the late 80s. But if I’m doing the Helfer/Sienkiewicz/Baker one, I should really also do the Howard Chaykin Blood and Judgment series that brought the Shadow back in spectacular/blasphemous* fashion in 1986 – depending on your take on what Chaykin did.

Anyway, that’s why it’s all Shadow, all the time, for Art For Art’s Sake these past few weeks and a couple of weeks still to come. Sometimes a character has such an iconic look AND the good fortune of having so many incredibly talented artists as well.

Okay, back to Chaykin’s take on it – the 1986 DC Comics 4-issue miniseries – Blood and Judgement. As the first new Shadow comics for quite a while it was rather a big thing – AND rather a divisive thing. A lot of fans of the character hated it, some loved it, and some, me included loved how it looked and loved the energy of it back then.

It’s vintage Chaykin, all big and in yer face, all-out action, all-out characters, all-out everything. Taking all he’d done with American Flagg! and transposing it onto The Shadow, giving us pulp-plus, pulp-extra, big and bad nasty pulp adventures where you’re really not meant to like much of anyone. Chaykin’s avowed intent was to make the Shadow into an ‘arrogant S.O.B’ – and he did. It’s no wonder so many existing fans REALLY didn’t like this one.

For example, Harlan Ellison hated it. There was a radio interview that Ellison conducted with Frank Miller in 1986, where Ellison brings up Chaykin’s Shadow when comparing it to Miller’s Dark Knight Returns, describing it as a ‘loathsome Shadow revival that is being done by Howard Chaykin, which in my view is an absolute obscenity.’ And going on to add that it was ‘a really offensive, ugly, mean-spirited, violently pornographic piece of work.’

So yes, that’s one way of looking at it.

Now, I sort of enjoyed it when it served as my first experience of The Shadow in 1986, when teenage me was getting into a wider range of comics than just the trad Marvel fare I’d been existing on for so long. I particularly loved the look of it, and that’s primarily the thing that grown-up me, revisiting it a few years ago, took from it.

Chaykin’s just going magnificently over-the-top here, giving it a pulp ethos mixed with vivid neon art deco stylings, taking all that stylised storytelling from American Flagg! and doing exactly the same here – the TV commentary, the sharp, cross-cut dialogue, even bringing Ken Bruzenak across for letters, continuing the sort of lettering and sound effects you don’t so much hear in your head as feel reverberating in there, at volume. All of it resulted in a super-stylised version of The Shadow, complete with the sort of ultra-violence and sex that Chaykin was known for.

Like I say, I loved it back in the ’80s as a teen. Now, well, let’s just say it’s a great-looking, very ’80s kind of book, one that you read now with a different eye, where grown-up me can see plenty of faults with it. But the art, oh the art, it’s just pure ’80s over-the-top stylised brilliance… just like this…

Oh, in case you’re wondering what it’s about… here’s the current blurb for the collection of Blood and Judgment…

The laugh had vanished… the mocking, sinister laugh that signalled doom for the petty souls whose wrongdoing stained the world. It was gone, lost in the night that echoed it. Now, one by one, his friends and operatives are being ruthlessly murdered. Someone is trying to draw him out. Thirty-five years later, it is time for him to return. The laugh is here again. The Shadow is back! God help the guilty!

Yep, that’s all you need for this one. You can pick up The Shadow: Blood and Judgment in collection by Dynamite now. Like I say, glorious artwork for sure, as you’ll see below. But there’s more Shadow to come – in my view, the very best there’s ever been, as Helfer, Sienkiewicz, and Baker take over. Meanwhile, I take great delight in showing you all that glorious OTT Howard Chaykin Shadow artwork…