Shadowland #2
Reviewed by Otomo
Shadowland started out with a mediocre first issue, not really anything as big as what Marvel had marketed it out to be. Matt Murdock has gone hard, and taken over the hand, declaring Hell's Kitchen to be under his domain and now protected by ninjas rather than police. Take a few years ago, where Matt Murdock declares himself the new Kingpin and change some of the details, we're back to the same place. Though the premise isn't anything innovative, there is still left room for something interesting, but so far the series has fallen flat.
I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be reading Daredevil, if that would give me some sort of clue as to why Matt Murdock has gone off the deep end and started packing cliche lines like "If you're not with me, you're against me," but in and of itself, Shadowland lacks depth and reasoning behind its premise. The characters all feel pretty two dimensional and generic, and Daredevil's set up to be just the kind of generic bad guy that's annoying. And I don't see a reason why.
This issue has the heroes dealing with their concern over Matt Murdock and breaking into his super ninja compound under false premises to figure out what's going on. Matt sounds absolutely insane, and I'm sure this will be chalked up to some "Hand brainwashing" or something silly to make the reasoning behind this plot float.
They broke in, there are ninjas, and that's about it. Not much more to the story than that. There are a couple of b-plots going on but nothing really concrete has solidified yet that shows much depth to the story.
The art isn't bad, and also isn't exciting. The dark palate of the colors actually mutes the tone of the book for its story as well, which leaves everything just feeling dark and flat. It's exactly what I'm not interested in seeing the Marvel Universe become, as it's been tried several times already.
Marvel has spoken of mini-events in the universe over the next couple of years, with this being the flagship title for their new way of going about events. So far, it hasn't been terribly inspiring, and I hope that as this series progresses there comes a reason to read and want to pick up titles like Daredevil, who has been pretty much the only protagonist and antagonist of the book so far. The other heroes shown in the advertisements have only had cursory roles, and from an outside perspective, this book doesn't do much for me. Shadowland so far has been average at best.
A Review by Jon Del Arroz / Otomo
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