The Shadowmen #2

Sep 1990. Cover price £1.00.
28 pages. B&W contents.
Trident Comics

Cover by Daniel Vallely.

Contents:

 2 Credits / Indicia

 3 The Shadowmen, part two, Killing Time w: Mark Millar; p: Andrew Hope (pages 1,4,5) & Ben Dilworth (pages 2,3, 6-24), i: Ben Dilworth.

27 The Ultimate Confrontation - Saviour in-house advertisement for trade paperback collection.

Once again the cover references well-known visuals, though this time the subjects are taken from music rather than television - footprints dance across the cover from ska records, the main image recalls photographs in Smash Hits, and the slanted blocks of colours recalls late-80s pop (though I'm almost certain that there's an explicitly referenced album, the title isn't coming to me at the moment). It raises the intriguing prospect that further issues would pay homage to further genres and media, though with only the two published issues to work from such observations are mere speculation.

Once more we are presented with a disconnected scene from the life of a character unconnected to what has come before, with two men discussing politics, before a Man in Black approaches one of them. Bannen is informed that, due to his attempt to write an expose about the vice-president's 'unusual' sex-life, his wife and children have suffered horrible deaths.

The homeless woman is confronted by police, who intend to arrest her, though she refuses to raise her hands. She talks to the officers, convincing them to inflict injuries on themselves and each other...

Karen checks the locks on her doors and windows, terrified that the men will return, hoping that the two days until her husband's return pass quickly and without incident. Fed up with the real world, she begins constructing a fantasy in which she in the envy of every woman in the world - a reality in which an old-fashioned brass band plays 'Here Comes the Bride,' and a chorus of applause fills the streets. A reality in which she is to be wed to Rudolph Valentine. A reality which the mysterious men cannot permit to continue.

While, on the surface, proceedings continue to tumble along, plot threads which might have enlivened the series are abruptly and carelessly brought to a close. By the end of the issue Agnes Metcalf (the homeless woman) is dead, while Karen is facing imminent death. Try as I might, the first two issues don't conform to any storytelling structure which allows insight into the surrounding world, the characters' lives, nor any organisation which the Men in Black might be aligned with. The abysmal storytelling heightens awareness of the shortcomings in Dilworth's art, making everything more confusing than necessary.

Without a solid thread to follow through so many unrelated sequences, nor a solid and unfolding sense of inevitability to draw us further into the lives of the characters, there is little to appreciate. Shortcuts in Millar's storytelling badly affect whatever empathy we have with Karen's plight, and we aren't provided enough reason for the continued violence and (seemingly) petty behaviour.

This is one of the most frustrating comics to attempt to summarise. It's impossible to discern a manner in which so much incident can be resolved withing this alleged six-part mini-series, and with only these two issues seeing print, no means of properly foreshadowing the resolution in a way which could feel natural.

Men in Black, using the same shadowy figures of modern folklore, did this better. Even riffing on It's a Good Life from The Twilight Zone, with a crazy homeless lady in the role Anthony Fremont played in the episode, and using striped backgrounds to the art which recalls early-eighties magazine layouts, feels forced and tired. The rise in random supernatural events is unexplored here, with every strange event being the result of willful acts rather than surprising characters.

At no point, for example, do we witness anything close to the visual splendour of the masked dancers.

Added to problems carrying over from the first issue, this is a rather undignified manner with which to abandon the narrative, though it is impossible to imagine this being collected and completed without significant overhaul of plot, art, and lettering.

#01

The Shadowmen

#03

The Shadowmen #1

May 1990. Cover price £1.00.
28 pages. B&W contents.
Trident Comics

Cover by Daniel Vallely.

Contents:

 2 Credits / Indicia

 3 The Shadowmen, part one, w: Mark Millar; p: Andrew Hope, i: Ben Dilworth.

27 Saviour in-house advertisement.

The cover is a throwback to sixties television, which might entice people into purchasing the comic for nostalgic reasons. Which is a very risky proposition, given that the issue's contents are not entirely in line with storytelling techniques which are so beloved from such entertainment. It is possible to pick out The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits in its overall design, and the figure recalls Lost in Space's opening credits, with the spiral hinting at The Time Tunnel. Don't be fooled, as this is something entirely different.

Your hint is at the bottom of the cover, in stark white, reading "Suggested for Mature Readers."

Ignore this warning at your peril. The Shadowmen isn't a title which sits easily alongside... anything, really. Willfully obtuse, the story takes much more work to decipher than it really deserves, and should an unwary reader approach it with hopes of encountering a layered, intelligent, and compelling narrative, full of revealing insights, they will be extremely disappointed.

Opening with a man shaving his head in what appears to be a public convenience, replete with graffitti, there's no sense of where this story takes place. The next page shifts location, where Karen (whose home it is) and Joannie are watching an adult video. Karen excuses herself to use the toilet, and on walking through the door finds herself confronted with a group of people who look as if they belong in the seventeenth century, who are dancing while blindfolded. Once more the action shifts, and we get to see a television evangelist deliver a speech on casting out demons.

In the space of seven pages we are introduced to three distinct settings, each raising their own questions as well as encouraging debate on how they are interconnected. There's no indication that answers are going to be forthcoming in the immediate future, so we are free to ponder the meaning of these disparate elements - the most resonant influence seems to be what has come to be known as the Moberly-Jourdain incident, or the Versailles time-skip. It isn't a one-to-one recreation, imbued with a dream-like sensibility thanks to the blindfolds which the dancers wear, but it speaks to the overall story.

We are deep in territory which Fortean Times, Alien Encounters, and other titles (many from the nineties) would cover, mostly in the wake of The X-Files. As such, this is slightly ahead of a pop-cultural phenomena movement. Only not as well written as most exponents of Forteana.

Black-suited gentlemen, wearing hats and dark sunglasses, arrive at Karen's home to warn her about telling the story of her supernatural encounter again, as it is causing a scare. To mae sure that she follows their instructions, she is left with broken bones and teeth. When Joannie arrives unexpectedly, hearing the commotion inside the house, a suited man is forced to shoot her.

It never snowed when I was a girl.

It never rained either.

Wasn't even cloudy. The sun used to shine every day, and you could get into movies for a cent.

Standards have dropped.

A homeless woman, pushing her shopping cart along the street, is accosted by a youth - whom she uses undefined powers upon in order to make his eyeball explode. She then goes to purchase gin, and decides that it is time people listened to her...

An early work, with a number of storytelling problems and artistic missteps, this nevertheless contains a couple of interesting ideas, though so swamped under hesitant scripting and uncertain artwork as to diminish the power of its concepts. The lettering here is poor, making dialogue and text boxes throughout a chore to read, though this is hardly the most pressing concern. Unsubtle is hardly an adequate description, with homophobic and misogynistic elements clear from the start, making the text more problematic than entertaining - entirely unnecessary for dramatic purposes, as is the level of violence.

Suggesting something awful is more powerful than explicitly delineating events.

At the conclusion of the first part we are no closer to identifying the protagonist of the story, nor identifying the primary antagonist. There are three main threats shown, though the underlying danger - an increase in supernatural activity - is given as a root cause of events in the title.

It is difficult to care about these events when they are so casually revealed, one by one, without establishing any real humanity. We don't spend enough time with the people in the story to see them as anything more than chess pieces being moved across the board, playing out their roles in a game which we aren't given the rules to understand. Worse, we are actively discouraged to draw conclusions from prior depictions of similar-looking individuals - the suited men aren't the Men in Black of popular lore, as their violent natures sit at odds with accounts in both fiction and documented events.

The Shadowmen

#02

Strand #1

Nov 1990. Cover price £1.25.
36 pages. B&W contents.
Trident Comics, Ltd.

Edited by Martin Skidmore.

Cover by UNNOWN.

Contents:

2 Strand contents page. / Credits / Indicia
3 Strand, part one, w: John Kaiine; a: Gary Caldwell, lettering by Ben Dilworth.
15 Where Angels Fear to Tread w:/a: Daniel Vallely.
23 Under the Bed w: Eleanor Hughes; a: Simon Fraser.
27 Tulpa, part one, w:/a: Richard Elson.
34 The Ultimate Confrontation - Saviour in-house advertisement for trade paperback collection.
35 Legions of Hell in-house advertisement.

Anthology comics, especially horror ones, are always a welcome sight, and Trident's offering - while not as polished or immediately enticing as some - is actually quite good.

Eternity smells of hot water bottles.

...warm and rubbery.

The smell of eternity makes you want to cough.

Infinity is coloured yellow.

The nicotine-stained fingers that have held a life of woodbines.

And its texture is that of dried spit in a tobacco tin.

The titular serial which initiates the title begins in a bar, where a patron reads a newspaper which reports killings in the Strand. One of the men who frequents this particular establishment is not like the others - he is immortal. Elsewhere, a man performs an occult ritual in order to attain demoniac power.

Much occurs, and is referenced, in the first installment, though how much of this is pertinent to the murders is questionable. A woman is reported to have given birth to a pig (shades of Mary Toft), and a priest has choked to death on his own crucifix. There is much Forteana here, though little progression to a solid threat which might establish itself. While one can piece together elements familiar from other works - secret organisations investigating supernatural occurrences is a solid concept - there are minor oddities here.

The main drawback is the lettering, which takes a little shine off the strip. A finely drawn, if narratively unremarkable, strip, with no sense of urgency to proceedings. It might work better when read in full, but there's simply not enough here to make any determinations.

The first complete piece, Where Angels Fear to Tread, is less a story than it is a sequence of events connected by a narrative. Not wholly effective, the artwork is mostly satisfactory, but there isn't enough development to make revisiting it worthwhile. It feels, more than anything, like a sequence of illustrations pulled together with a perfunctory textual connecting thread.

Under the Bed is an intriguing, and extremely accomplished, tale of isolation, fear (real or imagined), and an overabundance of imagination. While it is only tangentially a horror story, it is a beautifully constructed examination of the psyche of the protagonist, containing a few remarkably acute observations which elevates it above the standard monster-of-the-week threat.

Tulpa, begins slowly, and with a real sense of who each of the characters are - during a night of drinking and talking, they discover a strange pamphlet which refuses to burn. Finding an English translation, they begin reciting the words... This is a very promising start. Plenty of questions are left for the reader to ponder, and the artwork is strong. Some very attractive lettering, with inventive balloons, is the icing on the cake.

There's a lot of things which marred Trident (the lack of series logos in their advertisements, the wasted back pages), but when creators were on form they could provide real surprises - this isn't a wholly positive introduction to the title, but there are enough good points to mae it worth a second glance.