Shadow Thief #1

That's a really unfortunate placement for Catwoman's knee. But that's the kind of shit that happens when you just reuse the same backgrounds over and over again because you think nobody will notice due to Lenticular Blindness.

They've dropped the dash in Shadow Thief's name for The New 52 which seems to be something they're doing on most characters that has punctuation in their name. I can't think of any others at the moment but the thought is in my head so it must be true. They even cleaned up I...Vampire because who needs a fucking ellipsis in your comic book title? Just throw a comma in there! It'll save ink! But dropping the dash, does that now make the name a little less clear? Now is she a thief that steals shadows as opposed to a thief that is a shadow evidence by the dash connecting the descriptor to the noun.

Is that how that works? Who can remember the rules of your own language unless you've really studied a second language? I know how to put words together to, usually, express coherent thoughts. Am I supposed to be able to describe how and why it all works too? I suppose if I want to seem professional and maybe make money at it and possibly answer Tumblr asks in a slightly humble yet obviously super hoity-toity way like Neil Gaiman!

I'm fairly certain (not due to all of the research I have done but due to my cynical gut feeling and jumped to conclusions) that Neil Gaiman really wants people to "make good art" because he knows most people will just produce shit art and then he can look at it and laugh and laugh and laugh all the way down to the proverbial bank where he stores his laughter safely while earning a proper interest on it. Neil knows you have to make your laughter work for you.

Oh Neil Gaiman! You were lucky The Sandman came out before Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea was on the scene! But I'm here now, so you'd better hope The Sandman Overture is a masterpiece! Even if it is, I will be drawing dicks on Morpheus in Photoshop and posting them to Tumblr.

The writer on Shadow Thief #1 is Tom DeFalco. Hey buddy! I've missed you! I can't wait to see how much you've improved in your time away. At least you didn't begin the comic with, "My name is Shadow Thief." Although you did begin with a splash page. But to your credit, I think this one actually works as a good beginning point.

This is going to be a short comic book.

Carla Sands (or whatever her name was. Hawkman ended a long time ago! And I'm shit with names!) is a member of the Mossad (which you probably know if you read the tiny Narration Boxes in the scan above). I believe the Mossad are like Israeli Avon. Apparently the people in this high-rise really didn't like any of her products. As she's falling, she thinks about how she's fighting a war against aliens invading the Earth. I remember that and now I'm wondering why she's in Villains Month! Is it because she's like Javert and is entrenched in foundational thinking with no flexibility or leeway for exceptions to her darling rules? So she makes no distinction between Superman and Doomsday. Thus making her a villain. Or, at the least, a big stubborn racist jerk. Which isn't a great "least" but there you have it.

There may also be other reasons which I'd learn if I'd just sit down and keep reading the stupid comic book.

Earlier as she was hunting down the arms dealers that would eventually throw her out of a window, she notices the world has kind of gone to shit.

At least she's aware of her prejudices.

During her flashback, Shadow Thief gives a quick rundown on her powers. She can enter the Shadow Realm through any shadow on Earth. The Shadow Realm is full of portals that lead back to any place on Earth (I assume any place with a shadow). Her Shadow Skin allows her to become insubstantial and to create Shadow Weapons which she uses to kill aliens. She has a trust problem and only seems to trust herself. Inside the Shadow Realm are hostile, mindless (possibly) Shadow Creatures which attack her on sight and created her Shadow Skin. I think they created her Shadow Skin by growing it on themselves and then she took it. And most of this rambling, expository paragraph was just to put some distance between the last picture and this following one that I think Chad Hardin did an amazing job on.

I really liked his work on Demon Knights and couldn't be happier that he's working on Harley Quinn. Okay, I guess I'd be happier if Amanda Conner were actually drawing Harley Quinn. But Chad Hardin is a fine substitute.

Shadow Thief looks quite a bit like April Winchell in the next panel that I didn't scan. If you're curious about that comparison, you can think of it as a homework assignment and do the research yourself.

One of the men in the arms deal gone bad is an old acquaintance of Aviva (that's her name!). And by "acquaintance," I mean "spy fuck buddy." Those terms are nearly synonymous. At least the way I use them. From her conversation with her fuck buddy, we learn that Aviva is a steel stomached, cold hearted killing machine that does what (she thinks) needs to be done. No qualms. No worries. No regrets. Fire and forget. Kill and chill. These attributes might be the things that make her a villain.

Aviva continues to have flashbacks as she falls because they have some ridiculously tall buildings in Dubai.

Look at that panel border in the lower right corner! Goddammit, Hardin! You still haven't purchased that t-square I recommended back in Demon Knights?!

I bet Mister Q is Green Arrow! It's hard to tell by his looks because, and this is helpful information for people new to comic books, different artists draw people slightly differently. Or quite differently when they're drawing King Shark. Fuck me, how many versions of that character exist?

It turns out Mister Q is not Oliver Queen. He's the beginning of Aviva's origin story. I didn't realize the A.R.G.U.S. story was beginning after she had to flee the Mossad for killing her commander and initiating a missile strike on an area full of civilians. Mister Q sends her for a case which contains a biohazard and a suit. Her mother and brother (the family that fled to America with her) were biochemists and they decided to test the biohazard. It blew up in their faces and melted them down inside the sealed chamber where they were examining it. Aviva grabbed the suit out of the case and put it on thinking that it was protective wear against the virus. But it was the Shadow Suit and she accidentally traveled for the first time to the office of Mister Q where he called her a thief. So that's why the dash is missing! She did steal a shadow!

And to finish out her origin, the explanation for her hatred and mistrust of aliens!

While falling in her reverie, Aviva manages to change into her Shadow Skin and slip into the shadows of her trench coat to enter the Shadow Realm. I guess her momentum has no effect on her as she enters the Shadow Realm? She doesn't just splat on a wall or ceiling or floor as she hurtles through the Shadow Portal at 122 miles per hour? I know, I know! Comic book logic! She exits the Shadow Realm back in the room she'd just been thrown out of where she proceeds to kill everybody but her fuck buddy. Although all the blood and violence and gore has probably killed the mood a bit if she were keeping him alive for old time's sake.

Oh, Shadow Thief just disarms him and sends him back to the Mossad with a message to not deal with aliens or else.

Shadow Thief is the ginchiest. I think that's a positive thing you say about someone you have a crush on.

Shadow Thief #1 Rating: A Tom DeFalco story that I actually liked. He must have gone to some writing workshops while he was away. What I liked about this issue is that it really pretty much ignored the overall Crime Syndicate story and Shadow Thief had no real enemy because Hawkman was cancelled, so it was free to just tell her tale. And as an origin, it was well done in that I'm now fully prepared to enjoy Shadow Thief stories because I really feel like I know her. This was a really well done character portrait of a woman losing herself in paranoia, grief, and power. Plus Chad Hardin's art is not hard to look at. He draws an adorable Shadow Thief.

I wonder if I'm been in any lakes recently with brain eating bacteria because I just liked Scott Lobdell and a Tom DeFalco origin stories back to back. Although I liked DeFalco's story overall and I just liked Lobdell's explanation of H'el while the writing was kind of poo.