Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: Joe Keatinge
Artist: Leila Del Duca
Release Date: 9th April 2014

Kate Kristopher is the latest in a long line of ‘World’s Greatest Explorers’, but it’s not a job she wants anymore. Set in a futuristic yet contemporary-looking city, Shutter #1 is all about setting up what she does next and as a result, feels fairly inconsequential as a comic in it’s own right.

There’s echoes of both Tom Strong and Top 10 in how Joe Keatinge depicts Kate’s environment. Blimps float through the air over hi-tech buildings, non-human bipeds ride the train beside commuters and mythological creatures are commonplace sights.

All well and good, but it’s the story itself that didn’t engage. A tale with all those elements (and space travel, spectral ninja assassins and robots) should feel completely POP, but Shutter just doesn’t. There’s just no joy to the script, no wonder and no fun, basically. The art doesn’t help, with Leila Del Duca’s style being more suited to the buildings than the people. One can only imagine what a Philip Bond or Glyn Dillon would do with this stuff.

It’s early doors with Shutter, so it might get going, but at the moment it’s not doing much.

Rating: 2/5.

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The writer of this piece was: Jules Boyle