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Valiant is debuting a new Shadowman design in the upcoming comic Ninjak #10 (launching Dec. 9) within the new arc for the series entitled ‘Operation: Deadside.’ Artist Clayton Henry crafted the new design. Matt Kindt is writing the upcoming comic that has interior illustration work from artist Doug Braithwaite. The story was revealed by CBR this […]

By David Nieves

J. Michael Straczynski isn’t one to mess around. Unless it’s an hour of sarcasm and announcements, which his spotlight panel, Comic-Con Saturday, had copious amounts of.

JMS as he’s know to his friends, enemies, and frenemies had a lot of updates on outhouse projects and something he announced at SDCC two years ago, Studio JMS. No doubt Joe wins the award for the self professed best in the world at being humble.

At the top of his update list was a full colored page from Superman Earth One: Volume 3. Not one of the most exciting pages from the book but it did show Adrian Syaf’s take on Earth One Superman. It doesn’t quite have the pulled back cinematic of previous artist Shane Davis but it looks to blend well with JMS’ direction for the character. The book comes out in February.

Studio JMS is shaping up to be a true multimedia one stop shop for comics, television, and film. This will spin out the “Joe’s Comics” imprint under Image. All the books announced during his stage presentation at a previous Image Expo are still on the way.

Ten Grand is currently in negotiations with a major network to be optioned as a TV show.

Sense8 is in production with Netflix for a 10 episode commitment. He talked about a run of meetings alongside his fellow producers, the Wachowskis’ (Matrix), and on their first one they met with Netflix and had the deal done after lunch. Daryl Hanna will appear on the show. You can see the entire cast list here. Several locations around the world from Chicago to the Arctic are being used. He’s selling it as the largest scope ever on television and it seems like that’s a promise he’ll keep.

JMS is a week away from finishing a second draft of the Shadowman movie

Because he doesn’t have enough to do he’s writing a pilot for Universal based on something by Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling.

Two Streets is a TV show he’s doing with Gale Ann Hurd of Valhalla and Universal is also set to produce. There’s nothing to talk about quite yet but he did show a title card for the show. It depicted a golden tinted city alley at night and what looked like a young girl draped in shadow. Could be a new age noir tale, if so I Derek Jeter tip my hat to JMS.

One of the big things he talked about was his current ties to Babylon 5. The original deal with Warner Bros will never show him anymore money from television. However he still owns the rights for a Babylon 5 movie. No studio will take the movie rights with another making money off the deal. The solution, Studio JMS. To the delight of everyone in the room he announced that his initial parlays through the studio would fund a Babylon 5 movie. In 2015 he’ll have a Babylon 5 film script done and WB has a year to make it, IF NOT in 2016 Studio JMS would spearhead the film.

After the announcements he told a story about him fraudulently acquiring his first degree. Apparently he was a terrible student with in his words “negative grade point average”. So in order to graduate from San Diego State he broke into the schools office and put his name on the graduation list. A trend he took one step further on his next academic step. He even put up a slide of his fraudulent Master’s degree.

The chairman of this board opened up to questions from the audience.

First question was about a musical from Studio JMS. He jokingly said, “it’s time.” JMS threw out the idea for Living Dead the musical with Irish step dancers. We’re 90% certain that was a joke but you couldn’t tell from his demeanor.

Another fan asked if anyone like Neil Gaiman would be writing episodes of his upcoming shows. JMS responded by praising Gaiman’s work but said all the episodes were already written by himself and the Wachowskis’.

One of the interesting questions was about if he’d crowd fund at least part of the money for Babylon 5. It took a lot for him to resist that lure. Straczynski joked how he came from “rank fandom and I’m just as rank as the rest of you.” He felt it would be taking advantage of the fans. Personally, I respect that. He even went as far as to say that between all the movies and merchandise, sci-fi and horror fans are the most exploited fans out there.

To close out the panel he gave the crowd some inspiring words of wisdom. “I come from poor, I come from the street, I come from San Diego. I see so many people defeat themselves.” He added, “create the lives you want for yourselves.”

Listening to JMS speak it was clear to hear just who he was deep down. A fan who came from nothing, equipped with some words and passion. Those same qualities that make him the realest guy in comics.

You can listen to the entire panel below

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The most recent book to return from Valiant, Shadowman started a second arc this week, with issue #5 from Justin Jordan and Patrick Zircher. The series has made an effective return, with some good character work and world-building – although the book is struggling to lift all the different storylines it has weighing it down. There are around four different ongoing storylines at the moment, all of which are currently working separate to one another.

This is only a setup issue for the second arc as a whole, but we have a lot of different things to keep track of here. Whilst lead character Jack Boniface learns a little more about the mantle of Shadowman, the villains make some moves – both on Earth and in a place known as ‘deadside’. Then there’s a new character, Dr Mirage, who also seems set to get involved in things somehow. The stories are starting to pile up, and it’s working fairly well so far.

Each section – Boniface, Dr Mirage, the villains on Earth and villains in Deadside – all have a different artist on them (I believe!), although there’s only one clearly different artistic style. That would be Roberto De La Torre, who is an inspired choice to draw the Deadside section. His work highlights something which has slowly come to dominate the book: the effectiveness of the villains. The fact the book is managing to deal with having several unconnected storylines at once is due to the way in which the villains are written. They plan against each other and with each other in unexplained and interesting ways, and are very hard to predict and track. That’s making for an unnerving effect on the book as a whole, and is the best part of this series so far. Here we get an opening section with one villain, bookended with a final sequence following a second villain, and tying him to the first.

It’s all very interesting, and the ways in which Jordan slowly connects bits of the story is making for a great ongoing narrative here. The book doesn’t get a chance to slow down, because so many people are involved in so many different things. The new character, Dr Mirage (who I’m told is a re-imagined classic character) gets a great showcase, with the best sequence of the book devoted to her. The writing doesn’t rely on readers recognising the name – we get to spend several pages with the character, to establish her role in the story going forward. There aren’t many character moments involved quite yet, but she fits so well into the overall tone of the series that it doesn’t really matter.

Characterisation is rather variable in this book so far. Some characters get to have fun and show off to the reader, while others are more restrained and held in place. Shadowman himself falls into the latter category, mainly filling a role rather than living as a fully dimensional character in his own right. After a first issue which built him into place very well, he’s mainly been stuck in an everyman loop, repeating his character definition issue after issue. He gets a few moments here, but is for the most part outpaced by the other characters. There’s a fairly abrupt sequence here which was designed to give him a bit more purpose and depth, but is cut off quickly by the need to fill in other stories – he’s the character most short-changed by the decision to stack so many plots on top of one another.

Actually, though, my only real concern with the book comes through in the colouring. Jack Boniface has been growing paler and paler in every issue of the series so far, to the point where he looks like a white man in this issue. Whilst Zircher is drawing a black character from New Orleans, the colourist doesn’t appear to be following through with that particularly well. I bring this up because Shadowman is one of the most well-known black characters in comics, and it seems a shame that he isn’t being represented as strongly as he could be. That aside, the work done in this issue is great, with some excellent work done in the Deadside setting in particular.

Shadowman is a fascinating series, with a brilliantly established central tone and style. The book is interesting, and three of the four stories here are great fun to follow. The lead character is struggling for space amongst the more interesting villains, but hopefully once he starts to cross over into the other storylines then things will spark up for him again. I’m really enjoying Shadowman as a whole, and it’s an excellent addition to the Valiant line. It’s wildly unpredictable, and very good fun.