StraightForward Reviews: Legend of the Shadow Clan issue 4

Welcome to what I, xaos aka Jeremias de Leon, will now be calling StraightForward Reviews for all my comic reviews. This time I'll be looking at Legend of The Shadow Clan issue 4.

review by Jeremias de Leon

Story

This issue sees the young members of the Himura family finding out they used to be ninjas. This would be cool if the way they found out if the young Morgan Himura wasn't being attacked by armed people. The rest of the issue sees her and her other family members try to deal with this information and try not to get killed. Just as you would expect if this happened in real life (because this happens all the time right?) they are more confused and questioning than accepting. All this of course leads to interesting fight and chase scenes.

Art

If nothing else about this comic catches your fancy the art will. This comic is all about action sequences and they are all done spectacularly. The characters movements look great and impacts from hits look believable. The character designs are nice to look at as well.

Verdict

At the end of the day this was a fun comic. If you decided to just jump in from this issue you might want to hold off on that and buy the previous 3 issues first. I usually don't mention buying previous issues in my reviews but for this series I believe that you should buy those issues to really enjoy this comic not to say that it isn't enjoyable on it's own. I give this an issue an 8.5 out of 10

Legend of the Shadow Clan #1 Review

Legend 
of the 
Shadow Clan #1
Review

A new title from Aspen Comics, Legend of the Shadow Clan hit the ground running and packs a good punch. Its a nice departure from my regular repertoire of comic reading and brings a nice modernization to the contemporary 'ninja/assassin for hire' origination.

The issue opens like a movie; introducing viewers to the mysterious yet to be fully revealed plot aboard a yacht turned laboratory. This scenario is accompanied by some awesome ninja gunplay and a narrated view into the lineage and history of (presumably) the Shadow Clan. The narration is rich and interesting, it keeps pace with the scene that unfolds.

But as the scene and location shifts to an  urban school yard, so does the telling of the tale. Now following underachiever, Brayden Himura the story takes a slower pace. We watch as he reveals some surprising athletic talents and sigh and shake our heads as he deals with the timeless family issues at the dinner table. All  accompanied by third person narration (through captions). This issue is heavily narrated, but it doesn't become an issue until the next scene.

As things begin to pick back up, there is an alarming and mildly predictable happening at the software company where Brayden's father works. The action kicks in, but it fights with the narration. The play by play from the captions actually slows down the otherwise, frantic and swift encounter. It cheapens it somewhat and leaves you with less of an impact than it could have. But in the end it still closes with a great set up for issue #2.

3 out of 5