Comic Review: Shadow Hunter #1

So one of my new comics this week was none other than a title created by a former porn star. I am by no means a fan of Jenna Jameson’s *ahem* “body of work”, but I am a fan of Christina Z. Christina wrote the first forty or so issues of Witchblade, and I followed that series for quite awhile. So I figured I would give her new title, Shadow Hunter, from Virgin Comics, a try.

Now Virgin produces one book I really enjoy in Snakewoman and another I thought was decidedly above average in 7 Brothers. While this one tries to riff off the same vibe as those two titles, Shadow Hunter falls slightly short. The story’s not bad: a girl sees visions over her everyday life and as the story progresses she learns that they are more than visions; she has actually tapped in to some kind of second dimension of strange creatures and such. All this is brought beautifully to life by one of Virgin’s true artistic discovers, Mukesh Singh. Say anything about the rest of the book, but Singh’s art is beyond gorgeous.

Unfortunately, the story doesn’t quite live up to the art. It isn’t outright bad, but it is terribly cluttered. I can tell there was a lot of small characters and plot points in Jameson’s original idea. Even with 32 pages of story in issue one, you still don’t get a good feel about what’s going on. Sure our heroine sees things over reality, and she seems to have some kind of sword thingy she can manifest, but outside that we get introduced to about a half dozen characters without any idea of who most of them are or why they are here.

Like Witchblade, this book has the potential to combine story and art in to a solid package. It’s just not quite there yet.