Author: Various
Publisher: Idea & Design Works, LLC
Rating: WORTHY!
Shadow Show is purportedly a tribute to Ray Bradbury in the form of a collection of short graphic stories riffing off Bradbury's own stories or related to him and his life in some other way, but I can't vouch for where the profits are going. There is a host of writers, artists, colorers, inkers, letterers and so on who worked on this, but it seems some of the work is adapted from other stories which may or may not have initially had anything to do with Bradbury. Most names I didn't know, but two of the writers were Neil Gaiman and Audrey Niffeneggar. You may have heard of them!
Ray Bradbury died in 2012 after a long and successful career writing novels, short stories, plays, and TV scripts. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. My first encounter with him was in The Golden Apples of the Sun which I really liked. I never did get into his Martian Chronicles, though.
The first story, By The Silver water of Lake Champlain, by Jason Ciaramella based on a short story by Joe Hill is derived from Bradbury's The Fog Horn which I first read in The Golden Apples of the Sun if I recall correctly. This story was good and faithful in spirit to Bradbury's own original. This is followed by Nail Gaiman's The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury which is little more than a list of Bradbury's story titles. This is followed by Niffeneggar's Backwards in Seville, which is a very short and rather disturbing story as it happens, and which wasn't bad. It's hardly more than an idea, though, not really a story!
Live Forever, adapted by Sam Weller, fell a bit flat for me, but I suppose in many ways it's more true-to-life (Bradbury's fictional life, that is!) than most of the other stories. Harlan Ellison's Weariness was uninteresting to me, and not even a graphic story. Dave Eggars's Who Knocks? is just plain weird. Earth, a Gift Shop by Charles Yu is horrible. Altenmoor, Where the Dogs Dance by Mort Castle was nonsensical.
One thing I didn't like was how the stories ran into one another, I don't know if this was intentional, but in a lot of cases, it was impossible to tell that one story had ended and a new one had started until you swiped a couple more pages and discovered the story title, and realized you were already reading it. This was irritating at best. The first story had no title until the very end, however, which was just plain ridiculous. The graphic novel itself had no cover. Note that this is an ARC (advance review copy) which we don't expect to be perfect or final, but in this day and age of ebooks there really isn't any excuse for not having even an ARC is pretty much in perfect and final condition. I sincerely hope this isn't how they plan on actually releasing the book. If so, they have problems!
I can't tell you who wrote the last story or what the title is because there is no title page at all for it. That's sad because this was the best story in the whole collection and is overwhelmingly the main reason why I'm rating this positively. The story is creepy and realistic, the dialog intelligent and engaging, and the art work and coloring wonderful. It makes great use of the white space and the lettering is crisp and readily intelligible. It also defines what it means to be a true friend.
It concerns dear friends Abbey and Cate, young and slightly wild small-town girls who encounter a new guy in town - someone who has a reputation for being a bad boy. Normally I detest love triangles and while this isn't one per se, it sure feels like it's heading down that road until the delightful twist comes. I loved this story and because of it I recommend this graphic novel.
