Review: Shadows of Spawn Vol 1

STORY

Shadows of Spawn (SoS) is a bit of surprise for a Western comic series getting the manga treatment. In most cases of this sort the mangaka are free to reimagine the property in their own way as long as they follow the basic premise of the character and major elements of their history.This often leads to a rather interesting non canon versions of popular characters from the perspective of acclaimed creators from the East. That is not the case here. Perhaps it was because Todd McFarlane has always been very hands on and protective of his OC, something that has served him and other creators like Mike Magnolia well, but this is not a new adaptation of Spawn with Japanese flavoring. Instead what we end up with is the tale of another Spawn that occurs within the continuity of the Al Simmons Spawn. This ends up being both a strength and a weakness of this particular manga.

On the pro side of things I think it is fantastic to have this parallel story going on with our new protagonist Ken in Los Angeles, while Al Simmons is raising literal Hell in New York. One of my favorite aspects of this comic is how events from Spawn are affecting the cast of SoS. The Clown/Violator appears to educate this new Spawn, Jason Wynn’s name is dropped, a new iteration of the character Tremor and even Zombie Spawn make an appearance and of course Malebolgia is often referenced. As usual Malebolgia has targeted someone with something to lose (someone they love) to become a Spawn, in the case of Ken its his little sister Mariko. Tooro uses the established Spawn tropes for Ken’s returning seven years after his death, with few of his Earthly memories intact. He has to learn the ropes of being a Spawn while protecting his sister from hellish machinations designed to serve Malebolgian’s purpose and struggling to keep his own soul intact. This all firs pretty well within the context of the Spawn mythos and even the introduction of demons outside of the original series find their place in this story. So on that score its pretty good.

Unfortunately trying to follow the original Spawn story is also something of a detriment to this comic series. The comic is very exposition heavy. It spends a lot of pages trying to catch you up on Spawn mythology and these pages just bog it down when I compare it do the mystery the McFarlane was able to build in his original tale. Even though Spawn was well established at this point I really think the Tokoro could have handed this more gracefully by showing the audience instead of telling us the relevant details. Its much better to have these things revealed in time as opposed to having them explained. I also think that Tokoro both in story and art (I’ll get to that below) tried to hard to reference the American comic. I’m a long time manga fan and I’m used to the Japanese way of story craft but this comic doesn’t feel natural to Western or Easter comics to me. It reads like a mangaka trying to purposely write in an American style, and for me it becomes a bit clunky in execution, lacking the sort of poetry of story craft I’ve come to expect from Manga authors.

ART

I have issues with the art for this comic. Part of the fun of a manga adaptation is seeing characters in the manga art style. We Western fans love the dynamic action, the expert use of speed lines and tones, the interesting panel layouts. Sadly I think Tokoro tried to hard to pay homage to McFarlane or perhaps Capullo’s techniques. Instead of the beautifully detailed and clean work I was expecting, I was instead bombarded by sketching and scraggly images. While gritty and grimy does fit the subject matter, it often became confusing, with over rendering and effect tones that only complicated the artwork. There were also issues with frustrating layouts forcing me to reread pages to correctly determine how actions were playing out.

Its not like the art is awful by any means, the faces and emotions are quite good and properly expressive. Characters and objects are well drawn but this comic unfortunately lacked the pow and wow factors I was hoping for. Even roughly rendered works like Attack on Titan and Gyo still have that manga epicness when they eschewing the cleaner style of an Akira or One Punch Man.

FINAL THOUGHTS:Â

Not what I was hoping for but still worth checking out.

SCORE: 3.5 out of 5

Creator:Â Juzo Tokoro
Published November 1st 2005 by Image Comics