Valiant brings Shadowman and Ninjak together for Operation: Deadside

The world of Shadowman is heating up as of late, and now the supernatural hero will be returning to the Valiant U with a special series of stories.

“I’ve been excited to bring Shadowman back for a while… He’s got a pretty dark past and some murky motivations that help him live up to his name,” said “OPERATION: DEADSIDE” writer Matt Kindt told Entertainment Weekly. “As a writer, it’s some pretty juicy stuff to sink your teeth into. I also think that reader anticipation and curiosity over the character is another thing that really makes him attractive… So picking up a character like that and catching up with where he is and what he’s done since is going to be pretty dark…and pretty fun.”

“We’re incredibly excited to be bringing Shadowman back to the forefront and thrilled to be doing it with Matt, Doug and Ninjak,” said Valiant CEO & Chief Creative Officer Dinesh Shamdasani. “The fans have been screaming for Shadowman to return. The last time they saw him we left them with an emotional cliffhanger. We’ve been slowly laying the seeds for his big return and I can’t think of a cooler, more exciting way to reveal what he’s been up to.”

I’m a pretty big fan of the character myself, so I’d love to know what he’s been doing. His return has been a relatively long time coming, not to mention the fact that his number one villain is the star of Book of Death, so this should be interesting to say the least.

Also kind of interesting is what Valiant’s been doing lately as to the makeup of it’s universe. It’s always had some mystical elements, but with the addition of Divinity, and the focus not he Geomancers, the Valiant U is really getting some magical intervention.  And that extends to Ninjak, a decidedly non-magical character, in Operation: Deadside.

The storyline follows a team of operatives sent through a rift to the astral plane, or Deadside, as it’s known in Shadowman lore. Something goes horribly wrong though, and the only one who makes it back is the mystic known as Punk Mambo. From there, Ninjak is recruited to head back in, along with Mambo, and find out what’s happened.

As Valiant Editor-in-Chief Warren Simons says, it’s a storyline that Ninjak has been building towards, one that will challenge everything about the character and what he brings to the table.

“Over the past year, Matt has built an intrigue-laden master plan for Ninjak, and many of the threads he’s set up – the secret of Ninjak’s training, the revelation of the Shadow Seven’s identities, and the fallout of ‘THE SHADOW WARS’ – will converge in ‘OPERATION: DEADSIDE,'” said Valiant Editor-in-Chief Warren Simons. “At the heart of it, ‘OPERATION: DEADSIDE’ is the story of a mission gone horribly wrong and what happens when someone who under any other circumstances would be considered a master of his element finds himself washed up – figuratively and literally – in a new environment that quickly outmatches the abilities of his mind and body. This is a tale of survival…and Ninjak is going to have to adapt quickly to what Deadside has in store to discover what secrets it has been hiding all along.”

Things kick off when Matt Kindt and Doug Braithwaite bring Ninjak #10 to the racks in December, and with it the first part of Operation: Deadside. Celebrating the spooky tale will also be a series of variant covers, all of them glow-in-the-dark. That’s probably one of my favorite gimmick cover feature of all time by the way, which pretty much assures me that I’ll be buying all of them.