The new creative team steps in with this issue, but is it a run worth following?  Read on to find out.

The official description from Dynamite:

The Shadow is known for the mystic power which allows him to cloud men’s minds and read their hearts. But what happens when this power fails him? After the Shadow fails to stop a routine mugging, he travels to the Far East with his pilot and sidekick WWI ace Miles Crofton. In Nepal, he hopes to reconnect with his old masters and to consult with them about what could be amiss with his powers. Instead, he finds opium smugglers. As always, The Shadow faces danger … but he must also look within himself.

If ever there was a time to run to your comic store and pick-up this series, this is it.  Yes we just wrapped up a somewhat lengthy but compelling story arc that offered some intense scenes and moral implications but now we have a stand-alone issue that flows with the tender juices of the pulp hero.

Victor Gischler scribes an extremely solid adventure in his first bow on this book, as he guides our hero on a thought provoking and interesting journey to the East.  Our protagonist is questioning himself and his purpose which conveniently gives new readers quite a bit of history and context about Lamont Cranston and his alter ego.  The end result is a rip-roaring adventure that occasionally gets bogged down from some rather heavy exposition but still manages to succeed in entertaining its audience.

Jack Herbert does a fine job on the art duties in this release.  I’ll be perfectly honest there were moments where I missed the highly stylized designs from the title’s first few issues but overall the pencil work on display here gets the job done.  The backgrounds and characters are detailed enough to carry some deliberately simplistic panels that more than match the flow of the script.

The Shadow #7 is solid first step toward the future for both this series and its rather compelling hero.  Recommended.

3.5/5