Book review: The Shadow Hero

Usually comic books love the past and love to reimagine, reinterpret popular versions of the bygone. In that aspect, 2014 has been a very interesting year for graphic novels with two of this year’s best titles revisiting events that occurred almost half a century ago. With The Warren Commission Report: A Graphic Investigation Into The Kennedy Assassination, one of 20th century’s most enduring mysteries gets a fascinating graphic makeover. The graphic novel isn’t a whodunit and neither is it simply a dissertation on the most controversial political assassination ever. The passage of time has allowed the events of November 22, 1963, to be viewed from fresh perspectives, where one can see not just what met the eye but also stuff that was missed out in the killing of a sitting President. Dan Mishkin was inspired to embark on this project after he saw The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation that was illustrated by Ernie Colon, who illustrates this one as well. Both events were marred by a multitude of theories but here Mishkin, Colon and Jerzy Drozd explore the stormy decade and its impact on events as well.

The slew of books, and films such as Oliver Stone’s JFK, have all highlighted that most government agencies and even the Warren Commission was somewhere attempting to cover up the reality behind the killing of Kennedy as opposed to letting the truth out. This attempt is a major theme that the writers have explored through the graphic novel.

If you thought that you had seen it all when it came to superheroes, then 2014 sprung a very good surprise in the form of The Shadow Hero. Created by Gene Luen Yang, the author of American Born Chinese, The Shadow Hero takes off where the Green Turtle, a comic-book superhero created in the 1940s, had left. The Green Turtle was perhaps the first-ever Chinese-American superhero assigned to protect the US’ allies, the Chinese from the Japanese during World War II. The Chinese-American superhero had a very short life of just a handful of issues and would have remained forgotten had it not inspired the creation of the Shadow Hero, a young Chinese-American teenager in the 1940s to embark on a mission to become a superhero.

If you were to ask an Asian mother how a child could achieve greatness, she’d simply reply, “Push the child to be great!” And this is what Hank’s mother does. When she is saved by a superhero, she pushes Hank into all sorts of things — exposing him to radiation, getting him bitten by animals used as guinea pigs for scientific experiments — to transform into a superhero, but it is only when Hank comes in contact with a wish granting turtle that he is transformed into one. The Shadow Hero is a hilarious interpretation of the classic superhero mould juxtaposed with stereotypes assigned to communities. It will take you on a journey of discovering a sub-culture in a nation that is a cauldron of cultures. The more you know of a culture such as the Chinese, the more you realise that you don’t know anything… The Shadow Hero wonderfully addresses many such thoughts.

The passage of time makes certain comic book elements such as a Chinese-American superhero more palatable. In fact, passage of time is both extremely kind as well as generous to the comic book genre. Today, it’s quite easy to imagine a really dark, macabre Joker as seen in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Returns, but just little over a decade ago it was nothing short of a revelation. While reimagining superheroes beyond the perfunctory blacks and white began with Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns (1986), it was with Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke (1988) and more so with Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth that darkness got redefined. 2014 marks the 25th anniversary of Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth and if you are one for nostalgia then this is one title you can’t miss. The story features Batman being called in to enter the Arkham Asylum for the criminally insane in order to save hostages who have been taken over by the inmates. For some strange reason the Dark Knight feels only right about the demand as he’s been questioning his actions of late and perhaps thinks that he, too, like his arch villains be locked up in an asylum. Batman enters Arkham and confronts some of his worst enemies such as the Joker, Two-Face, Black Mask, Mad Hatter, Killer Croc, Scarecrow, Doctor Destiny, Clayface, and Professor Milo. The parallel stories of Batman saving the inmates and the tale of how the asylum came to be is one of the darkest superhero episodes ever and Dave McKean’s artwork make it more visceral. Enter at your own risk!

Gautam Chintamani is the author of Dark Star: The Loneliness of Being Rajesh Khanna. Tweet to him on @gchintamani