The Shadow Volume 4: Bitter Fruit

The Shadow (Dynamite) #4

by Chris Roberson, Giovanni Timpano (Artist)

Without the aid of his agents, The Shadow attends to a globetrotting solo-mission that takes him from the concrete canyons of New York City, to the snowy wastes of Siberia, to the peaks of the Himalayas, to the steaming jungles of Guatemala. The goal: to at last learn the secrets behind the girasol! Then, when The Shadow returns to Manhattan, he finds the authorities are baffled by a rash of unexplainable deaths in Chinatown. But when the recently deceased begin to rise from their graves and plague the living, it is clear they are out of their league. Thankfully The Shadow is on hand and ready to stand against the Zombie Queen of Chinatown! Collects issues #19-25.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Historical Fiction, Thriller, Crime, Adventure, Action

180 pages, Paperback

First published September 16, 2014

About the author

Chris Roberson is the co-creator with artist Michael Allred of iZombie, the basis of the hit CW television series, and the writer of several New York Times best-selling Cinderella miniseries set in the world of Bill Willingham’s Fables. He is also the co-creator of Edison Rex with artist Dennis Culver, and the co-writer of Hellboy and the B.P.R.D, Witchfinder, Rise of the Black Flame, and other titles set in the world of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy. In addition to his numerous comics projects, Roberson has written more than a dozen novels and three dozen short stories. He lives with a teenager, two cats, and far too many books in Portland, Oregon.

Reviews

[Chad · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Shadow goes globetrotting again. This time in search of someone from a secret society Kurt Allard used to belong to, but is never significantly explained. The story is OK even if there's not really a point to it, but not really what I'm looking for with The Shadow. Then there's a story about The Shadow fighting zombies that's just dumb. With this volume, it felt like the series ran its course.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

The main tale is a shaggy dog that goes until it just...ends, and the B-story is a bit to broad and public, but both are entertaining. To bad it's the last volume.

[Jimmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you like graphic novels with a pulp, noir and historical feel of the 1920s-50s you ought to give the character “The Shadow” a try. This is my third volume I read that featured the Shadow because I have come to really this character. Here’s my thought on this specific volume.


The story begins with the Shadow breaking into a place where kidnap hostages were being held. After eliminating the threat posed by the criminals and finding the hostage safe and sound the Shadow goes through the crime scene and found a box that led him to go on an adventure to different locations around the world in pursuit of answers. While the narrator of this opening chapter, Margo Lane, did not know what it was that the Shadow found the readers will see what’s in the box (don’t want to give it away in the book review). The Shadow travels to Siberia under Communist control to look for clues from men from the past of the Shadow’s old life. The Shadow then goes off to Tibet and the jungle of Guatemala before heading back to the United States in New York City where he finally found the man he is looking for. Of course the Shadow fights other evil men along the way. As with other adventures with the Shadow, I love the historical feel of this graphic novel in which you get a window into the past. Here specifically the graphic novel was situated in the 1940s and there’s references to the political climate of the times and historical phenomenon impacting the characters.

I thought this book had an interesting way of storytelling in which different issues or chapters were narrated by different characters. Here we see the perspective of some of the agents of the Shadow and those whom the Shadow was looking for. I appreciated that the characters were not just Americans but Russians and Chinese and even villians.

Overall in comparison to other works on the Shadow I did not think it was as impressive. Also I felt there were two stories in one; which is not a problem necessarily but it felt rather abrupt without a lack of a good transition in the second half of the book to a zombie tale in Chinatown, New York City. I also felt the latter story was more out there than other stories of the Shadow that I read. This graphic novel was also more brutal. For these reasons I give this story a three out of five.

[Alex Sarll]

I've been listening to the Orson Welles radio Shadow lately, and while obviously he has the voice and the laugh down absolutely right, there's still something not quite as it should be. No, not the ads awkwardly extolling the health benefits of anthracite - but the way his Shadow thus far seems never to pull the guns and start blazing away at some deserving target. Rather, he uses his powers to incriminate malefactors for the cops, or scare them into ending their own sprees. Here, on the other hand, the dark avenger is shooting and laughing like a good'un, but for the most part the stories don't feel like they suit him. The chase around the world's hotspots during the last Great Depression is too far removed from the dark streets where the character's at home, and once he is back in New York even the Chinatown zombie story spends too long feeling like too much of a genre collision. I think the problem is that while some characters are hugely adaptable, I hold in my head a Platonic ideal of a Shadow story - which would of course soon grow repetitive if it were done regularly in any medium. Yet I still look suspiciously on deviation from that set of noir era tropes. All of which said by way of caveat, one does sense a certain straining for ideas here - not least because, within seven issues, two entirely separate plots use variations on the same extremely unusual vector of attack.

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Shadow and his crew broke up a Russian kidnapping ring and rescued the dames who had been taken. But a very strange ring found in the hands of the kidnappers leads The Shadow on a world tour of Russia, Tibet, and Guatemala into his past before he confronts it back in NYC. The second tale enclosed in this volume involves a scheme to take over NYC by a very greedy evil woman who almost succeeds. It seemed a bit rushed, but a good tale anyway.

[Art · Rating 4 out of 5]

The whole glode hopping thing was really well done. We got to see parts of The Shadow's past that have, up until now, been a total mystery. The multiple perspectives made it more interesting. Still a little hokey, but that is the whole thing with The Shadow. It's overly melodramatic and meant to be.

[I. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Man did this series ever go downhill fast. Ending on another lane globe trotting adventure and a ridiculous 2 issue zombie story that never should have gone past the brain storming session, this once promising book ends on a sour note. Too bad Ennis didn’t stay longer...

[Timo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kinda sad to see The Shadow go back to the shadows, but if the whole thing was turning to be something like the latter part of this collection, not so sad after all.

[Shawn Manning · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nicely done. I wish they would do just as good a job with the Spider.

[Jared Hammaker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some corrupt pages

Good stories, maybe not quite as strong as prior volumes. Several sections of pages that wouldn't display. Hopefully that gets fixed.