Shadowlands

    (Writers’ Bloc, 2002)
™ and © Writers’ Bloc Comics

The cover says Shadowlands #1, but it may as well be #45,973 of any team super-hero book done in the past 10 years.

This is yet another convoluted, derivative idea within an already overcrowded, tiresome genre. There is practically nothing in the story that hasn’t been regurgitated dozens of times in other titles. A hero-villain battle with a voiceover of their origins, à la Claremont’s X-Men? Check. The hedonistic lifestyles of the team members, à la The Authority? Got it. The obligatory maximum-security prison for super-villains? It’s in there. But originality? Nope; look elsewhere.

Writer Shaun Behrens apparently feels the compulsion to create an entire universe in the first issue but succeeds only in overwhelming the reader. Behrens adds so much pseudo-continuity and other baggage that he has to take three pages of text after the story to explain everything. But most readers will find it a challenge to even make it that far. If such in-depth explanations are necessary, they should be shortened and put before the story. Better yet, maybe the story should be allowed to unfold at a pace that won’t give the reader mental indigestion.

Erik Lervold’s art is raw but shows potential. But there is little if nothing else to make this readable.

— Jim Johnson
Jump to issue:
  NotesWriterArtist