Letters 2

Wow...I had no idea there was a character in the V2 universe called 'Tommy Lee Bones.' *gag!*

I have no knowledge of what Fabian Nicieza had in mind for the Shadowman character once I left Valiant. As far as our original plans for the V1 Shadowman, we had every intention of killing off the character just as we predicted in the pages of Rai #0. How that was going to be accomplished was not exactly determined. Although we prided ourselves on making deadlines, few comic book companies ever plot four years in advance. But, if I had my way, Bob Hall would still be doing that title to this day. I think he was one of the few consistently good writer/artists working in the business and I was proud to have him calling the shots on Shadowman.

Since I didn't have a precise answer for you, I forwarded your email onto Bob Hall himself to see if he could shed some light on what he was planning on doing, had we gotten to that fateful day in 1999.

Bob was kind enough to take some time out of his schedule to send us his thoughts. Here is that talented Mr. Hall's replied:

Mike,

I hate to hedge, but I don't know for sure either. Like Bob, I would have, with a bit of a tear, killed Jack dead in '99 -- if I had had my way. But, I also tried to be cagey. The company was up for sale and we all knew that. I wasn't clear if the new owners would have let me kill Jack if the mid- 90s wave of popularity continued, so I brought Max into the twentieth century figuring that either I could kill him instead and say "They didn't mean Jack would die, they meant Shadowman." A bit weasely that, but it seemed better than not killing anyone. If I had stayed with it, and had my druthers though, Jack and Darque would have had a knock-down, drag-out and, at the point of death, the 'souls' of both (their bodies would have died for sure) would have been absorbed into a great pool of necromantic energy, dimensional gate, black hole, time arc . . . thingy. The absorption itself would have been what killed their corporeal selves. Maybe, they would have emerged years later with their energies combined into one hell of a zombie guy.

Had I gone back to the book before 1999, I would have had Jack's leap from the building screw him up for a while. No he wouldn't have died. He was right -- that couldn't happen until '99, but he would have broken every bone in his body. At night he would heal just enough to be Shadowman but in the day he would revert. He would have gotten a little better each day but in slow increments. In some ways he would have been for a while like Bob's Freemind -- an invalid with periods when he could be a hero.

As for the Garth Ennis version: that was all part of Bob Newhart's bad dream -- if you know what I mean.

Bob Hall
Shadowman Writer/Artist