Broken Frontier

Frank ‘Monkey Boy’ Cho trades in the idyllic surroundings and ribald shenanigans of Liberty Meadows in favor of fiercer terrain by reworking Marvel’s Shanna the She Devil.

I must admit whenever I read an issue of Cho’s Liberty Meadows I always get more than a chuckle or two out of it. Cho has a way of bringing out the best quips and quibbles amongst the diverse set of characters populating that series. So after reading through the first issue of Shanna, I found this book did more than make me chuckle. In fact, it had me gasping for breath and wanting more of it.

Shanna the She Devil opens quickly, establishing the setting and surroundings just within the first few pages. It seems Cho has decided to get right down to brass taxes with this story, and pulls no punches with the introduction to Shanna. She’s found floating in an embryonic state in a tank of preserving fluids by a group of stranded American soldiers. They revive her, only to be attacked by the strange denizens of the Island they have crashed on. Now this is only the set-up to the story, and it may seem a little clichéd by resembling movies like Jurassic Park and Species, but Cho obviously likes to write about his passions. He’s able to make them work here, despite a lean script spliced into several action sequences for a first issue.

I found no true faults with the story in question, and if I did have any problems with Shanna it would come down to the censorship surrounding this production. It’s no secret that Cho has a preoccupation with a certain part of the female anatomy; one only has to leaf through an old copy of Liberty Meadows to understand why. In the beginning, Marvel comics agreed to let Frank re-envision the character in his own way, knowing the type of titillating visuals he’s known to produce. However, somewhere along the way that changed, after Marvel got cold feet with the idea of having Shanna seen in several gratuitous naked shots of a certain part of her anatomy. All of those scenes were exorcised out of the issue in favor of a more conservative approach. I know we are dealing with a mainstream comic, but I wished Marvel had the guts to put out Shanna as it was intended by Cho.

Cho is a capable writer/artist with a vision that is quite fresh and lacking in mainstream comics, and I am sure he would have set Marvel on its ear with the original story he intended. Nonetheless, the censored version of Shanna the She Devil is still quite engaging for 23 pages. Much of it has to do with the terrific line art he employs to illustrate the action taking place. His style is very simple, but affluent enough to get intrinsic details down, like facial gestures to engaging close-up shots of the characters in uncompromising situations. He paced the story really well and also managed to balance the few titillating moments that survived the chopping block once the issue was censored. I thank God Marvel didn’t go completely overboard and censor him to the point where Frank Cho stops being Frank Cho. It would have been a crying shame if they did.

Regardless of the censorship issue, Shanna’s first time out under Cho’s Guidance is an excellent read for those who like more action and less talk with their comics. I, for one, will wait patiently for the next issue to see how far Cho can go with the story, and hopefully a little more of Shanna will be revealed. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for that to happen.

-Kenneth Gallant