The Shadow Thief has always been one of my favorite villains. He struck me as creepy and scary in a good way with his unique power set and appearance. I first discovered him as a member of The Injustice Gang in Justice League of America, and I soon devoured his adventures as illustrated by the great Joe Kubert in the pages of Hawkman. Maybe with Nth Metal becoming a major plot point in the DC books thses days, the Hawks and their arch enemy will be back at the forefront once again soon.
One can only hope, Ross. I certainly preferred his Silver Age origin to the Cartoon Network revamp that basically made him a superhumanized multi-personality sufferer!
ReplyDeleteI remember "discovering" the Shadow Thief in an old Hawkman/Adam Strange team-up story...there were some weird shadows in the background as hints, and then he finally made a proper appearance. It might have been a typical plot device to those who were familiar with how the character had been used, but in seeing him for the first time, I thought the foreshadowing (seriously, no pun intended) was the coolest thing. I should track down that story.
ReplyDeleteAlso, love the cover!
Whoever drew Hawkgirl on the original cover did an excellent imitation of Kubert's style. I had to look at the credits for this post to be sure it wasn't Kubert.
ReplyDeleteshadow thief needs to be in cw shows or on big screen and handled better than shade was on flash
ReplyDeleteHawkgirl was done by Richard Howell and Dennis Jensen for the cover of Hawkman #2, September 1986.
ReplyDeleteIt always bugs me when a writer comes up with a clever way to make a story a little educational, only to have it subverted by a later writer who didn't get the reference.
ReplyDeleteGardner Fox called Hawkman and Hawkgirl's wings "ninth metal," because only eight metals were known in ancient times. But some later writer decided that it didn't make sense, and that Fox must have meant it to be "Nth."
Another example: "parallax," in astronomy and optics, is the phenomenon that objects appear to shift positions when seen from different points of view. We see in 3-D because of the parallax between our left and right eyes. Hal Jordan was renamed Parallax because his viewpoint on "good" and "evil" had shifted. But "Green Lantern: Rebirth" made Parallax an ancient fear demon, ignoring that fact that the word actually MEANS something.
Agree 100%, these guys need to do their homework
DeleteLet's face it, Bob. Modern comic book writers are only a shadow of their more illustrious predecessors. Why, even Google failed to acknowledge Jack Kirby's 100th birthday!
ReplyDeleteThat was a shane and you are correct. THe old writers had interests beyond comic books and super heroes and it showed; writers from the last 40 years or so are clearly undereducated in areas outside recent comic books.
DeleteIt is not entirely correct that you can only see in 3D with 2 eyes.
ReplyDeleteMy right eye has muscle issue ("lazy eye") and I only see with one eye unless I cover good eye. I am legally blind in right eye. When I cover bad eye I have same view as I do with both eyes except for things I see in corner of eye very vaguely.
My mind however adjusted to this issue by changing focus of left eye automatically giving me 3D vision with one eye. The first time I saw 3D at movies i freaked out for 3D affects which try to trick your vision to see 3D do not work on me.
I liked the episode JLU S2.21 - Hunters Moon, Mystery in Space of JLU on the "nth metal asteroid" where it was explained that Nth metal is "tranurnamic" iron ore with atomic number of 676. Basically it is special iron ore.
The whole reincarnation theme could be done real well by a good director.
I've wondered if you'd include Shadow Thief sometime. He's one of my favorites too, great character. Should be used more.
ReplyDeleteAnd like Marvel does, I'd like DC villains to go beyond just one hero. At some point you'd think Flash's rogues would have enough and get out of Central City!