SHADOWMAN #2

Cover shows strong gloss and vibrant color with sharp corners visible in this photo; no major creases or tears are apparent. There is minor surface wear at the top left corner and slight softness along the spine area, with a small amount of edge wear visible at the bottom corners. Lighting and angle make it difficult to fully assess spine stress or color breaking, and the back cover and interior were not assessed.

Shadowman #2 continues "Deadside," the four-part opening arc of Acclaim's 1997 reboot of the Valiant property, written by Garth Ennis with art by Ashley Wood, colors by Atomic Paintbrush and letters by Dave Lanphear. With Jack Boniface killed off in the first issue, the storyline turns to the contract killer Zero as the reluctant successor, guided by the voodoo priestess Nettie and her Deadside intermediary Jaunty, against Tommy-Lee Bones and his escaped Dead Men. The run arrived during Acclaim's push to tie its comics line to the Shadow Man video game franchise, and it is remembered chiefly as an early American showcase for Wood's smeared, painterly figure work, several years before Popbot and Zombies vs. Robots made him a name in his own right.

Market-wise this is a back-issue book rather than a speculative one. Print runs for the Acclaim relaunch were healthy by 1997 standards and the issues remain plentiful in dealer stock, so raw copies move at retail bin pricing with condition mattering less than the buyer's willingness to pay shipping. Demand is driven by two collector groups rather than by any single event: Ennis completists filling in the period between Hellblazer and Preacher's later years, and Ashley Wood followers assembling his sequential output. The 2016 Valiant trade collection satisfied most readers, which caps upside on individual issues; conversely, Wood original art from this run commands strong four-figure prices, which keeps a thin but persistent flow of attention on the printed comics.

Certified examples are effectively absent from the market, so the high bracket functions as a slabbing-cost floor with a small premium rather than an observed trading level; a submitter would be creating supply, not meeting demand. Collectors buying this issue almost always buy it as part of the #1-4 arc, and complete short runs sell more readily than singles. Expect steady, unremarkable liquidity in raw grades, negligible spread between mid and high raw copies, and a certified market that would need a Shadowman media revival to develop real depth.