Justice League of America #7.3: Shadow Thief Review

Apparently there's a new Shadow Thief in the DCU, and she's a woman? I dropped The Savage Hawkman long before this particular villain made her debut. But fear not. Justice League of America will tell you everything you could possibly want to know about Shadow Thief, and quite a bit more for good measure. While writer Tom DeFalco has an almost entirely blank slate to work with, he attempts to do far too much with this script and winds up accomplishing too little as a result.

Calling this comic over-written is putting it mildly. This one script has enough dialogue and narration for any two comics. Naturally, much of it is superfluous, with Aviva waxing at length about her tragic past, the nature of her powers, her hatred of aliens, her growing dependence on her Shadow Skin, and on and on. It's an information overload, and one that's made worse by the pointlessly nonlinear approach to the story. DeFalco cuts away from the present and back with little warning. With this issue presenting a new take on what is already a fairly obscure villain, the goal should have been to make readers care about Shadow Thief before shedding light on every tidbit of her past. Less is more in cases like this.

Visually, though, Shadow Thief is able to stand out among the Villains Month crowd. Chad Hardin brings a dynamic sense of energy to this world full of international spies and alien warriors. The pages where Aviva relies solely on her human abilities are often as engaging as those where she lashes out with her shadow powers. My one complaint is that the issue is oddly bright and colorful considering the tone of the story and the nature of this villain.

Jesse is a writer for various IGN channels. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter, or Kicksplode on MyIGN.

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