I don't really get books like Shanna the She-Devil.  And that's on a number of levels.

Shanna was created back in 1972 as an indirect knock-off of Tarzan. After a shortlived solo book, she spent a while as Ka-Zar's wife and sidekick.  This was, I suppose, marginally more interesting, since at least she got to stand next to dinosaurs.  The last we heard of her was in 2005, when she was revamped by Frank Cho.  This latest miniseries, "Survival of the Fittest", is apparently a sequel to Cho's effort.

Now, Frank Cho's version of Shanna is a genetically engineered thingummy with superhuman strength.  This is another way of saying that he created a completely new character, named her "Shanna", and recycled the concept of a jungle woman in a bikini - evidently the only feature of the original character that interested him.  (Or, looked at another way, Frank Cho wanted to do a miniseries about a virtually naked woman, and Shanna was a trademark in need of renewal.)

This time round, she's being written by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti.  They don't seem to find her a very interesting character either, because their story isn't about her.  Their story involves a bunch of pirates - the good sort, mind, who don't kill civilians - who steal some diamonds from a drug dealer and end up marooned on Monster Island, where Shanna is already stuck.  Shanna helps them get to safety.  The drug dealer is on their tail.  So the rest of the series, from the look of it, involves Shanna and the pirates trying to fight off the drug dealers, make it to the dealers' boat, and escape from the island.

Is this is a Shanna story?  Well, she's in it, but no, it's not really her story.  The main character is Dirk, the pirate captain.  Shanna just shows up to point the pirates in the right direction.  And to wear a bikini and have large breasts, obviously.  Frankly, she barely even has a personality, beyond looking stoic and dispensing practical advice in short sentences.

I really don't get it.  Leaving aside Khari Evans' obvious fan service artwork, it's not a bad story, exactly, but it's a mediocre one.  The title character is a marginal figure, and the rest of it is a stock plot populated by stock characters.  It's decently paced, it hangs together as a plot, it's perfectly okay, but there's nothing much to it.  It's just a background against which Shanna can wear very little and beat up monsters.  And it says a lot, when you think about it, that when searching for an excuse to feature half-naked Shanna, the writers didn't even come up with a story that was about her.

As for the art, it's certainly better than some books of this ilk.  The story is told competently.  The pacing's okay.  Evans draws some good monsters.   And Shanna... well, she's ridiculously overendowed, and for some reason, in most panels, she has the expression of somebody who's either bored or sedated.

Why do books like this get published?  From the way they're promoted and talked about, you'd think there was a big demand for this sort of art.  But as far as I can see, the sales figures don't really bear that out.  Is Frank Cho's work on Mighty Avengers outselling Leinil Francis Yu's on New Avengers?  Er, no.  Did the last Shanna miniseries sell especially well?  Not really.  What about Khari Evans' Daughters of the Dragon miniseries, or the T&A-tastic Heroes for Hire?  Again, not really.  This confuses me.  It seems to be taken as read across the board that this stuff sells.  Well, where are these high-selling T&A books, then? 

And even if they sold in comic book form, Marvel's business these days is heavily based on character licensing.  How are you going to licence this?  Most other media wouldn't even touch this sort of thing with a ten-foot bargepole - it's exactly the sort of thing people expect to see at comic conventions, clutched in the sweaty paws of obese stereotypes living in their parents' basements.  Okay, Witchblade got licensed as a TV show, but for all its sins, that book actually had a premise.  This is just a vehicle for T&A.  And in the grand scheme of respectability, the T&A comic ranks somewhere below the straight-to-DVD erotic thriller.  You're not going to get a movie out of this.  You're not even going to get a theme park ride.  Try pitching this as a kids' cartoon.  (Shanna the She-Devil and her Amazing Friends?)

Is it the love of art?  Seriously, now.  I'm sure there's a minority who really like this stuff - there's a minority who like almost anything - but it's tough to make a case for the artistic heart and soul of a generic "people trapped on an island with monsters" story with a large-breasted, personality-free blonde added on.  You can play the artistic merit card for something like Adam Warren's Empowered, which was a funny, tongue-in-cheek, self-aware sex comedy that made something out of its unlikely source material (a character Warren created for drawings privately commissioned by, ahem, specialist collectors).  Empowered is a book that transcends its unlikely roots.  Shanna is just a rather cynical exercise in formula - story plus tits equals dollars.  But does it?

I really did go into this with an open mind - I'd read a halfway favourable review of it before picking it up and I thought I'd give it a chance to prove me wrong.  But I just don't get it.  Why would you buy this?  It's a mediocre story, it's not especially funny, it's not really camp, and it's not sexy unless you have a thing for drawings of large breasts.  It's just a mechanical trudge through the formula.  I suppose that leaves the fans of the art, and I suspect they're a much more niche market than people think.

Now, this could certainly have been an awful lot worse - at least it has a story, and at least it's professionally told.  If you took out Shanna and replaced her with a generic character - and believe me, nothing in the plot would obstruct you from doing so - it would be instantly forgettable, but it wouldn't be offensively bad.  Does Shanna make it better?  Hardly.

Rating: C

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