The Dark Shaman

The Dark Shaman The Dark Shaman has a pretty awful explanation for why he won't let anybody leave Dorian Island. From his perspective, somebody already left him behind once. He spent years trapped between life and death, gathering the dead around him and looking for the one person he couldn't find. When that person finally comes back, he's not interested in hearing an explanation. Major spoilers for Dark Shaman #1–4. The person he's been waiting for is Colby Cinders. She doesn't know it when she arrives with her boyfriend and their friends, but she carries the reincarnated soul of his brother. That's what makes this more than a vacation that turns into a monster attack. The shaman knows who she's been before she does, and he turns the whole island into somewhere she has to remember. His powers get ugly quickly. The weather changes into a snowstorm, animals become killers, and feeding on the victims makes him stronger. When Valerie dies, we see energy flowing into him and his appearance becoming more monstrous. Later, he calls the buzzard back into his shadow after it attacks Marcus. He summons other animal spirits and draws them into himself. By the time he confronts Colby, the antlers and teeth aren't just something surrounding him. His body has become part of the threat. There's a difference between that and a man who happens to have dangerous animals following him. Those spirits are involved in what he's becoming. His eventual huge, antlered bear form brings their collective anger into the fight with Colby. But the explanation for how he got there is the part I think matters most. In the story's account of their previous lives, one brother became a chief and the other served as a shaman. They grew apart as their community changed and the chief pursued alliances. The shaman became more isolated. When crops were failing and people were getting sick, he left his body to look into the future. That was when the attack came. His body was destroyed while he was outside it. He could see the deaths happening, including the loss of his wife, but he couldn't simply return to his body or pass on with everybody else. He was caught in between. He gathered some of the spirits of his people, while others slipped beyond his reach. He couldn't find his brother, either. He interpreted that absence as abandonment. The brother's soul was actually awaiting another life. And there's an extra family connection here that's easy to miss. Colby isn't only the chief reborn. The comic identifies the shaman's own unbroken bloodline as the line that eventually produces her. His brother returns through his descendants. His rage is aimed at somebody who is both his lost brother and part of the family that continued after him. None of that makes what he does to the people on the island justified. The original attackers are long dead. Colby tells him that. His victims now aren't the people who destroyed his home, and capturing more souls isn't going to undo what happened. He's taking the role of somebody who once served his people and using it to claim ownership over them. That becomes especially cruel with Leo. The shaman claims everyone he kills, and Colby ultimately kills her wounded boyfriend herself to keep his soul from the fate the shaman threatens. She loses him anyway. The story follows it with his soul rising and the spirits beginning to respond to her. She acknowledges the chief's mistakes and tells the spirits they don't belong to the shaman, or to anyone else. The White Deer accept her offer first. Others follow. The shaman's strength depends on spirits whose loyalty he can lose. Colby finally embraces him as lightning strikes, their bodies fall, and the spirits emerge. She reminds him that serving their people has to continue in death. I like that his defeat addresses what went wrong with him. He's been holding on to the dead so tightly that he's making more of them. Getting him to release that hold costs Colby everything. His suffering explains the monster, but it doesn't give him the right to keep everybody else suffering with him.