FIRST ISSUES: An admirable first issue must, above all
else, contain such matter as will compel a reader to buy the second issue. At
the same time, while provoking curiosity through mysteriousness, a good first
issue must avoid being so mysterious as to be cryptic or incomprehensible. And,
thirdly, it should introduce the title’s principals, preferably in a way that
makes us care about them. Fourth, a first issue should include a complete
“episode” — that is, something should happen, a crisis of some kind, which is
resolved by the end of the issue, without, at the same time, detracting from
the cliffhanger aspect of the effort that will compel us to buy the next issue.
SHUDDERTOWN
Detective lieutenant Isaac
Hernandez (or maybe Harrison — he’s called both, probably a case of bad
proof-reading) has a problem: he has four open cases, all murders, each apparently,
according to DNA, committed by the victim himself, who has been reported dead
some time before. “Four dead perps, all before the fact,” as Hernandez/Harrison
cryptically says. A nice puzzle. Provocative. But there’s not much else here.
Just puzzles and provocation. That’s about all we know for sure. The rest of
the first issue of Shuddertown is
pure mysticism. Hernandez/Harrison drives off and crashes his car because he
wasn’t looking where he was going: he was, instead, trying to pick up the pills
he spilled on the front seat. The next day, having slept off his intoxication,
he canvases the neighborhood in which the latest murder was committed. He meets
a smart-alecky boy. To no purpose. Then he is apparently attacked by a hooded
thug, who knocks him unconscious and leaves him supine in the alley.
It’s hard
to tell exactly what’s going on or, even, who is being knocked unconscious
because Adam Geen drenches his
drawings in shadow, covering up all informing detail. This issue satisfies
almost none of the criteria for a good first issue. The hero is not likeable,
even if we knew him well enough to know anything about him except that he
drinks and takes pills. Everything else is mystery. Who are the dead guys,
really? Who knocks Hernandez/Harrison out in the alley? And the frustration at
leaving all these loose ends to be tied up in some future issue is all the
greater because this issue contains no completed episode: nothing with a
beginning, middle and end that would reveal either the competence of the writer,
Nick Spencer, or the personality of the
protagonist. And Geen’s art is terrible: all obscurity. Where there is color,
it is splashed across the page without regard for what it is coloring.
Here’s
the first page. Notice the girl at the bottom right.Is she showering in shades of pink and
sepia? Artsy enough to look nifty on a gallery wall, but it isn’t serving the
narrative purpose of visual storytelling in which clarity is more important than
mood. And who is the woman? She never appears again. Don’t bother with this
one.
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