In Review: American Gods #1

Synopsis: Shadow Moon just got out of jail, only to discover his wife is dead. Defeated, broke, and uncertain as to where to go from here, he meets the mysterious Mr. Wednesday, who employs him to serve as his bodyguard—thrusting Shadow into a deadly world of the supernatural, where ghosts of the past come back from the dead, and a brewing war between old and new gods hits a boiling point.

Review: Adapted from the book by Neil Gaiman. This first issue, which is penned by P. Craig Russell begins the story of Shadow Moon’s journey.

It picked up with Shadow Moon in prison counting the days till his eventual released. But when his wife dies in a tragic car accident. Release comes early and he has to journey home for the funeral and to put his affairs in order.

While travelling he meets Wednesday, which as many will know is Odin’s Day. Wednesday seems to know Shadow Moon better than Shadow Moon knows himself. He offers Shadow Moon a job and that is pretty much where the first issue leaves off.

The final few pages of this first issue is a B – Story involving the prostitute Bilquis who has seduced another client quite figuratively and literally into her loins.

The writing by P. Craig Russell is pretty solid. He does a fairly good job of condensing Gaiman’s story into bite size chunks and leaves plenty of room for Scott Hampton’s art work and colours to shine through.

The panels in the prison were suitably prison like and Shadow Moon’s conversations with his cellmate Low Key aka god of mischief were both quite grim and a lot of fun.

The way in which Hampton drew the naughty bits with Bilquis and her client in the final pages of the book kind of lent a psychedelic feel to things as her client got more and more into it.

For those like myself that have not tried to read the book American Gods. I’d imagine that this comic book adaptation, which Neil Gaiman has consulted on would be the next best thing.

It’s probably also a pretty good primer for the pending series, which begins next Sunday on Starz. But having already seen the first episode of that. I can tell you that there are a few small differences.

Over all. I enjoyed the comics story and the art work was of good enough standard that it showed you what you needed to see without pulling you out of the story.