Indie Feature: Shadoweyes

For a few years now Ross Campbell has been quietly cranking out unique stories of young women, horror, and general weirdness.  His singular artwork and deceptively understated writing style has been showcased in the zombie GN the Abandoned, Minx's YA title Water Baby, and the Twin-Peaks-by-way-of-art-school Wet Moon, as well as guest spots on a number of Image and Oni Press titles .  His newest work, the dystopic superhero series Shadoweyes, is out now on Slave Labor Graphics!

It's an unspecified year in the future, and the city of Dranac is a grubby, overcrowded, labyrinthine metropolis populated by people for whom genetic anomalies and health issues are the norm.  Mopey teen Scout and her best friend Kyesha have responded to the moral and environmental squalor by developing strong social consciences; unsatisfied with the level of crime prevention their neighborhood watch group is providing, they resolve to start their own task force.  Their first effort ends badly, however: Scout is hospitalized with a head injury, which becomes the catalyst for her transformation into something much much stranger. 

One apparent Shadoweyes influence is Eastman and Laird's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, where because of their inhuman appearances the heroes are separated from the very society they've sworn to protect.  Campbell approaches this conflict, as well as trickier questions about morality and responsibility, with a certain fearlessness- there aren't many easy answers here.  It's also nice to see a cast that's both predominantly female and predominantly non-white, without any semblance of tokenism, and refreshing that our heroine's character design deliberately avoids the oversexualization to which many distaff superhero titles unfortunately fall prey. 

A sequel, Shadoweyes in Love, is already in the works- get on board with this great new series today!