With Shutter #1, Joe Keatinge and Leila del Duca introduce a new, alternate Earth and to the series’ heroine, Kate Kristopher, formerly an explorer. She has a family history of exploring the worlds (plural) and did so for several years herself. At the time the series begins, she has stopped exploring and turned to photography. By the end, she learns that her family history is a bit more complicated than she thought, and she might not be through exploring after all.
Keatinge’s heroine is appealing, but still not in focus, showing primarily in a series of brief exchanges with a robotic alarm cat clock (Who doesn’t want a talking alarm cat-clock and organizer?) and with her roommate. She seems wealthy but seems to have pulled out of life. Her love of photography and memories of previous exploring are apparent, but current attitudes, responses, and true enthusiasms remain to be seen. The world she inhabits, though, is coming into focus quite nicely, from the casual comment on television that the aliens who created the Moroccan monoliths are returning to visit Earth and tourists are flocking to visit to the visual element the Keatinge and del Duca have designed.
Ultimately, it is the art that pushes the story into the “must read” terrain. It falls to del Duca to introduce the stranger aspects of this new world. There are pterodactyls nesting in Kate’s building, partly stone people sit chatting beneath the window, bulls read in the transports, and an eagle carrying a riding harness flies from between the buildings. Almost everywhere are signs of a new world, slightly sideways from our own. Del Duca also gives Kate an expressiveness that helps develop her character. Also, at this point, both del Duca’s art and Gieni’s coloring indicate a world at peace with itself. Everything is upbeat, colors are light and bright, and there is no hint of conflict until the end. Whether this is true of Kate’s world and Kate’s world only, or whether it is a facade even there remains to be seen.
Shutter has the potential to be a varied, unique series, and I look forward to seeing what Del Duca and Keatinge’s partnership creates as the series continues and as Kate and her world(s?) come more into focus.
Writer: Joe Keatinge
Artist Leila del Duca
Colorist: Owen Gieni
Letters: Ed Brisson
Variant covers: Dustin Weaver, Brandon Graham, and Emma Ríos