A Comic Book Resources interview with David Walker reveals he will write and Bilquis Evely will illustrate the first Shaft comic book due to be published in December by Dynamite, who recently purchased the rights to Ernest Tidyman’s character.
Walker will be using Tidyman’s novels, rather than the films, as his basis for the character and bringing into focus Shaft’s Vietnam service and the impact this had on his life. This is good news for fans of the books, such as myself. Effectively Walker’s series will be an origins story set a year before Tidyman’s first novel.
Walker says, “With Shaft, the biggest difference between the films and the books is that the character in the books is simply more badass. He’s also more complex. It is that complexity that drew me in, and it is what is driving my interpretation of the character. In the books, there are these very brief passages about his youth and his time in the Vietnam War. If you took all of this stuff, from all seven of the books, you’d have only a few pages of material, but it is all gold. Tidyman created this character, and gave him just enough backstory that it really sparks the imagination.”
The site shows a number of variant covers for the first issue of which Denys Cowan and Bill Sienkiewicz’s (above) is my favourite.
David Walker has his own site on which he will be posting updates.