The Shade #s 2-4

writer: James Robinson
artist: Cully Hamner, Darwyn Cooke (#4)

This is a book that has sadly become lost in the New 52 mix, launching a month after the big buzz captured everyone's attention, and even for me has proven difficult to find on a regular basis (which is why I've got three issues listed here). Robinson had one of the biggest critical hits of the 1990s in Starman, but he hasn't often pleased readers since. This was supposed to be his big return to form, and it actually is, like a mainstream version of the stuff Ed Brubaker has been doing for the last few years with books like Criminal, Incognito, and the new Fatale, an almost film noir kind of story featuring a comic book villain who's only now getting around to explaining how badly he's been misunderstood, possibly because he's just getting around to revealing his mysterious origins. Aside from Robinson is Cully Hamner, an artist in the same vein as Raphael Albuquerque who may have found his own American Vampire (though Darwyn Cooke provides the art for the "Times Past" issue that may be the one to convince readers that the series is worth following after all). This one's running for twelve issues, which may be long enough to find an audience, and also the exact point where that audience will start wishing that it had been an ongoing series. DC will probably breathe easy knowing they already settled on the best of both worlds. Welcome back, James Robinson.