Shutter Vol 1: Wanderlost by Joe Keatinge and Leila del Duca

Shutter Vol 1: Wanderlost written by Joe Keatinge and illustrated by Leila del Duca is a comic I picked up after reading a free issue #1. The first issue set up a lot of questions... which were mostly not answered in the rest of the volume. It took me more than a week to get through the book... which given that it's a comic, isn't exactly a good sign.

INDIANA JONES FOR THE 21st CENTURY! Marvel Knights: Hulk and Glory writer Joe Keatinge teams up with artist extraordinaire Leila del Duca for her Image Comics debut in an all-new ongoing series combining the urban fantasy of Fables and the globe-spanning adventure of Y: The Last Man. Kate Kristopher, once the most famous explorer of an Earth far more fantastic than the one we know, is forced to return to the adventurous life she left behind when a family secret threatens to destroy everything she spent her life protecting.

Basically, this comic is pretty weird and not quite my kind of weird. It started promisingly with a flashback/memory of the crazy adventures the main character used to have with her father before he died, but quickly devolved into "people are trying to kill her for mysterious reasons". We get some point of view sections from the bad guys, which don't shed a lot of light on the matter, and do start to learn a bit of what's going on by the end of the volume.

The world Shutter is set in is really weird. At first I thought it was just the main character and her father going on adventures to weird places, but turns out the world actually is full of aliens, dinosaurs and mythical creatures. Also, she has a pet clock cat (see cover), who was probably my favourite character. Not that I disliked the main character, but I was pretty ambivalent about everyone else.

Basically, Shutter didn't really do it for me. It was just the wrong mix of weird, mysterious and violent. Your mileage my vary. But fair warning, this volume ends on quite the cliffhanger, if that's not your kind of thing. I don't think I'll bother continuing on.

3.5 / 5 stars

First published: 2014, Image Comics
Series: Yes. Shutter ongoing series. Collects issues #1–6
Format read: Trade paperback
Source: Real life book shop!