Shaft: Imitation of Life

/ Alex Good

Shaft: Imitation of Life

No, this comic doesn’t t have anything to do with the 1959 Douglas Sirk melodrama of the same name. Instead, it takes its title from a long interior monologue our hero Shaft has over the question of whether art imitates life (mimesis) or life imitates art (Oscar Wilde). Doesn’t that seem a little heady for Shaft? Well, in my review of the 1971 film Shaft I did remark upon the well-stocked bookshelves in his apartment. He’s not just a complicated man but a  guy who reads!

That monologue has a point here because Shaft is looking for a missing person and his investigation takes him (as per usual) into the seedy underbelly of a rotten Big Apple, specifically a mob-run porn operation. But at the same time some indie filmmakers, financed by the same mob outfit, are making a movie about Shaft’s adventures (called The Black Dick, if you can dig it) for which Shaft has been hired as a consultant. So before long it feels like the line is being blurred between what’s real and what’s movie moonshine.

It’s a simple story, of the kind that was popular at the time (that time being the 1970s). Think of movies like Hardcore. The bit of a twist they give it is that the missing person is a young gay man rescued by another gay man who teams up with Shaft. But to be honest, I didn’t find this part that interesting. It does benefit though from keeping things simple, and Dietrich Smith’s clean artwork is an incongruous but oddly effective fit with the sleazy proceedings. With his skin-tight turtlenecks showing off an overdeveloped chest that casts a pronounced shadow in any light, Shaft himself seems more than a bit like a plastic action figure, but that works too. They could have gone with a generic look, which is what I was expecting, but I like how they went with a more cartoonish change-up. Yeah, I could dig it.

Graphicalex

23 thoughts on “Shaft: Imitation of Life”

Leave a comment