Quoth the Razor

Razorfist returns, yet again, to The Shadow to discuss how the current reinterpretation by Dynamite Comics misses the mark. In doing so, he makes a case for a hero with black and white morality in a gray world.

The Shadow doesn’t serve the Law. He serves Justice. And on occasions when the Law has run afoul of it, he’s been unafraid to turn his twin .45s on them as well. He serves a binary morality. And while he will make an effort to redeem the legitimately reformed? (He even has an agent devoted to the reformation of former criminals) Once someone has shown themselves beyond redemption, their fate has been assured. It isn’t always destruction (in many cases, he leaves enemies to the police, or leaves them in an even more elaborate personal Hell) but it’s always just, and invariably of philosophical importance. 

More than anything else, that’s what Si Spurrier’s atrocious Shadow comic lacks. In today’s age of gray morality? All he’s done is add touches of gray to a character who, today, would be far more interesting… the LESS ambiguous he is. These flourishes of pseudo-complexity come across as stilted and forced, because that’s precisely what they are. 

Imagine the controversy, the outrage, and the SALES… if The Shadow was in a modern comic… willing to execute a corrupt or racist police officer… and… a BLM/New Black Panther activist who crosses the line to murder, as the Dallas shooter did? If he did so without personal conflict, asserting his moral prerogative, and giddily cackled of the evil in their self-righteous hearts all the while? This is a character who could have a profound relevance today, but instead, Spurrier’s dated attempt to ‘update’ the character… have left The Shadow somewhere around the year 2006. 

The Shadow gets more contemporary, the closer he is to his original incarnation.

Incidentally, the Destroyer series filled part of this role in the 1970s. And it looks to be time for another such hero to arise. Look for him in indie, though.