2.141 (506) Shadowhawk vol 1 #1 ... Image ...

Continuing our trend from the previous few reviews, here is another first issue from one of the original Image co-founder - Jim Valentino. Now Jim has been the one that gets the odd critic approval more from his storylines rather than his artwork because he doesn't do much of that over-pouches, gigantic boobs with odd poses stuff (not that he didn't try every now and then)

Anyway he is one of my favorites simply because of the first 15 or so issues of Guardians of the Galaxy from before the movie with the original team. For some reason, when he started, before he developed his own signature style, the artwork is so cool with space faring types of people kicking all kinds of ass and the fast-paced action all the time

Unfortunately here in his own book, Jim lost all control and goes full fledged Jim. Now I loved his enhanced covers and I actually enjoyed the story but I think he would have benefitted from a good editor so that he doesn't come out too preachy

You see, Shadowhawk initially comes out like a tv series with a few limited series telling a larger tale which is great. And in this first issue, we are shown a number of sccenarios that hints at who Shadowhawk could be

At this point, we see someone dresses up, coming out and kicking the crap out of thugs of all sorts. And to ensure that Shad is a tough guy, his "thing" is to break the backs of the baddies ... here we mean literally he cracks the spine so that they will be paralyzed for life and can spend the rest of their lives regretting their action i.e. even less merciful than killing them. I guess that's grim and gritty, eh?

In the meantime, we all see all sorts of machinations but so far more or less, it's human level type of bad guys with a bit of low level supervillainy

Now allow us to skip the tale a bit ... basically if you follow this story, you will find that Shad is actually an African American who has been infected by some vicious asshole with the HIV virus. And as the story progresses he goes all over the Image Universe trying to find a cure ... yes ... it is that preachy ... regardless of what Valentino and team might say in the back pages of the books. Ah well ...

Rating: 5/10