It is a sad thing when a series is cut short, abruptly cutting off before it can be given a proper resolution: Firefly, Dark Angel, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the list goes on. The only thing sadder is the Lost Episode: the thing you like which was actually made, but subsequently destroyed and lost forever, leaving you with only hazy memories or secondhand recollections of what it was. You might think that this is a problem of the past, that in the new digital age everything is recorded and preserved forever. But even in the age of the Internet, entropy still claims its victims. That is why, with painful nostalgia, I will be reviewing Shadowgirls, by David A. Rodriguez and Dave Reynolds.
Synopsis:
At the tender age of fifteen, Charon McKay disappeared from the small coastal town of Innsmouth. When she turns up, nine month later, she is incoherent and raving; and slightly more surprising…pregnant! Fifteen years later, strange creatures have appeared in Innsmouth and awaken dark and terrifying powers within Charon and her daughter. Only the Shadowgirls can stand against this ancient threat — if the power doesn’t consume them first!
Source: Goodreads
SPOILERS BELOW
Now, Shadowgirls is a webcomic, and thus not the sort of thing I normally review for this blog. However, it was actually published as a print collection, called Shadowgirls: Season One; and I just so happen to own this print collection. That technically makes it a book; and this being a book-review blog, I feel it’s fair game. Plus, while my reviews have thus far focused on print novels, I’m kinda planning on branching out to include graphic novels – in case all the times I’ve brought up Umineko no Naku Koro ni didn’t give you a hint in that regard – and this can serve as a first step in that direction.
The basic premise of Shadowgirls is Gilmore Girls meets the Cthulhu mythos. In the town of Innsmouth, young single mother Charon raises Becka, her daughter of uncertain parentage. When Deep Ones in the service of the great old ones Dagon and Mother Hydra set sinister plans into motion, Charon and Becka discover that they have been blessed by the elder god Nodens with the power to transform into the Shadowchild, a supernatural warrior which is the only being capable of opposing the eldritch forces which threaten to tear asunder the fabric of reality. It’s a fascinating story with captivating characters, and told through beautiful artwork.
The real tragedy is what’s been lost. See, despite this print collection being subtitled “Season One”, there is no “Season Two” collection. The webcomic did in fact continue into what would have been Season Two, advancing the storyline a fair bit before the final cancellation. Except, those strips were never published in print form, and the website itself has now disappeared. Even calling upon the Wayback Machine, I found nothing but broken image files. And so, the story is gone forever, leaving me only my faint memories of some things which may have happened: I believe there was a story about Atlach-Nacha attacking Becka in her dreams; of Becka giving the Shadowchild a name because true names have power and she wished to recognize the Shadowchild as more than just a tool; of Chrissy being forced to confront her part-Deep One lineage and resulting powers; of a cursed artifact causing everyone at the police station to go crazy and start fighting one another; a flashback to the time when Deep One Prime met Howard Phillips Lovecraft; and, of course, the adorable escapades of Chrissy’s mother, the Little Deep One. Now, all these moments have been lost in time, like tears in the rain; it’s been long enough that I can’t even be sure I’m not partially imagining the stories or conflating them with plotlines from other webcomics. Like, when I think back to the dream-spider god-monster thing, I’m definitely pretty sure something like that featured in Shadowgirls, but maybe it wasn’t Atlach-Nacha after all; some trace evidence that I uncovered in my pathetic attempts to unearth some lingering vestige of the lost pages suggests that it may have been something called “The Arathian” instead. The point is, with the lack of physical evidence and the fallibility of memory, I can’t be sure anymore. Such beautiful pictures, such compelling storyline, gone forever. Let us pour a libation in memory of the Shadowgirls story arcs which have been lost, leaving only broken web URLs as cryptic gravemarkers: Spiderwebs. Back In School. Extended Warranty. Overwhelmed. Engine Whoring. Look Who I Found. Charon’s Research. Tempest. Shopping Trip. A Rock. The Practice. Interrogation. Investigations. Stay Classy. Tantrums. Two if by Moonlight. Definition of Good. Breaking News. Health Care. Entropy Rising. Psychofiles. The Dreamland Blues. Black Hole Entropy. Arathian Rhapsody. Lindsey and the Insiders. Flashing Back. I Need To Believe. The Terrible Span. Run Rabbit Run. Max/Machine Interface. Destakka. Snowfall. Cinco Diablo. Becka Of Green Gables. Underneath Your Mask. The Drywall Blues. I Am Providence.
…Ironically, I believe that one plotline was that Charon’s evil Dagon-cultist mother Moira had come to town and was committing nefarious deeds using a terrible eldritch artifact implanted in her empty eye socket – it’s official name was something fancy like the Icosahedron of Kadath, but all the fans just called it the Pebble of Doom. In any case, one of the terrible side-effects of using it was that it would doom her to eventually fade from existence and be entirely forgotten. And now, Shadowgirls has indeed vanished without a trace. That’s what you get for meddling with eldritch forces, huh?
So, with nothing past Season One surviving, what remains of Shadowgirls comes to an abrupt end: all those tantalizing mysteries, ominous foreshadowings, and dangling plot threads left hanging unresolved. The closest thing to closure it gets is a cameo appearance by Becka in the slice-of-life women’s wrestling webcomic Rival Angels. …I know, I know, it sounds ridiculous even just typing that; but it was done by one of the original Shadowgirls creators, so apparently it’s canon. It seems that five years after the end of Season One, Charon has married Sawyer and had another daughter, Susan Quinlee. Also, Becka is now using the last name Olmstead. Either she married (unlikely at her age), or the true identity of her father turned out to be Robert Olmstead (also unlikely, for a whole variety of reasons). Presumably it would have made sense with planned future developments in the comics. The world will never know.
Anyways, due to this review, I’m instating two new tags: “Sharp Knife of a Short Life” for series which are cancelled before their time, and “Forever Unknown” for works which I can’t give a final star rating because they’re incomplete. I’m going to have to be careful about using that first tag, because it’s always possible for a long-dormant series to suddenly spring back to life (see: Fred Saberhagen publishing the fourth book of Empire of the East 33 years after the third one); but as things currently stand, I think it’s pretty safe to stick a fork in this series and call it done.
Charon has a tattoo reading “Nunquam Alieno” – Latin for “Never Forget”. Shadowgirls may be gone, but it is not yet forgotten.
Final Rating (Season One): 5/5
Final Rating (Seasons Two and onwards): Forever Unknown
profmorbius 