Joe Keatinge and Leila del Duca have been dealing in imagination, adventure, and most potently, nostalgia with their creator-owned series “Shutter.” It’s easy to get caught up in nostalgic notions and not see the forest for the trees. For all of its warmth and heart, does “Shutter” #4 have a compelling story at its center? Read our spoiler-free review to find out.
Written by Joe Keatinge
Illustrated by Leila Del DucaKate Kristopher has left the life she built to confront the life she left behind—and here there be monsters.
The cover of “Shutter” #4 depicts one of the nostalgic “totems” that I alluded to in the cold opening to this review. Did your parents, or someone you knew, have that Kit-Cat Clock in their home? If you’ve ever seen it somewhere before, you will surely recognize it upon reading “Shutter” and it just might take you back to a place in time. So will crocodiles wearing bellhop outfits (seen in “Shutter” #1), mice in medieval robes, or very overt references to Richard Scarry stories (“Shutter” #3 featured a bugnuts characterization of Lowly the Worm from Busytown). All of these things are either references to, or close enough approximations of, stories you may have read in your younger years. “Shutter” #4, and every issue before it, brings these “totems” to life in some very subversive and literal ways.
The inclusion of storybook nostalgia in “Shutter” has been downplayed to this point, and so too is it downplayed in the story itself. In fact, issue #4 is perhaps the surest proof yet that Keatinge and del Duca plan to use these elements as integral cogs in a story, rather than one-off gimmicks, jokes, or references. (Okay – maybe the Richard Scarry thing was a one-off joke, but it was a great one.) “Shutter” #4 even begins with a few pages of backstory for a new recurring character fashioned in the style of a turn-of-the-century illustrated storybook, its story typed out in little captions below each panel. There’s no doubt that “Shutter” is insanely charming, at minimum, but the story also strikes a specific and memorable chord – one that will definitely paint the way that you look at the kindly skeletal butler that welcomes Kate back home.
Once that segment ends, we join up with Kate – literally coming face-to-face with all of the aforementioned kitschy “demons” in the home of her departed father. We’ve been treated to flashbacks of her unique relationship with her swashbuckling explorer father (think Tintin or Corto Maltese, one of Keatinge’s favorite comic works and certainly an influence on some level) along the way. But where Kate has ended up is a lot different from where it looks like her life’s trajectory was going, based on her family legacy. She’s lived a life writing about adventures, but finds herself back in her childhood home facing the ghosts of her past. Each issue we learn more about Kate, whether it’s tidbits from her troubled past that she’d kept hidden from us as readers, or things that even she herself was not aware of; “Shutter” is the rare kind of story that continues to stack more and more complexity on its central character the further we follow her.
While Kate’s backstory can be illuminating, heart-warming, or heart-wrenching – depending on the era of her life it’s focused on – it remains unclear, 4 issues in, what reality its fantastical fiction is tethered to. If it’s not tethered at all, that’s valid too, but its world seems decidedly realistic at times. If Kate takes these encounters as they are, with a relative matter-of-factness, would the rest of the world? What is the established “normal” in “Shutter”? I don’t think we quite know that yet. So while I think the sense of nostalgia, whimsy, and heart behind “Shutter” is captivating, and the story itself is soundly propelled by a wonderful sense of inertia, we honestly can’t be sure where the ground floor is – if there is one. Are these images all flooding back from Kate’s past as a troubled child? Or are they meant to be taken entirely literally. “Shutter” is leaning heavily toward fantasy chaos in its opening issues, but the ride is totally gripping and those questions are worth waiting to discover the answers to.
Continued belowAnd oh my, the work that Leila del Duca is doing right now. I had a “Wind in the Willows” storybook when I was a little rascal that contained interstitial full-page drawings with little captions at the bottom, repeating a line from the pages that came before it. There were a handful of these per chapter. There’s probably a different, more accurate reference for the type of visual storytelling that Keatinge and del Duca are going for here, but that was the point of reference for me as a reader. del Duca’s style remains consistent in this segment, but Owen Gieni’s color palette is entirely sepia-toned, recalling a weathered old storybook like the one from my childhood. The browning, weathered color scheme demonstrates how versatile del Duca’s art is, but also how perfectly suited it is to telling stories from days gone by. While “Shutter” has been a gorgeous book in a modern setting, it only takes a color change to turn it into a dust bowl tragedy, if only for just a few pages.
That’s also an endorsement for the idea that the colorist on a comic is far more important than they usually get credit for. Gieni’s colors change everything about the mood and feel of the piece. “Shutter” is pretty earthy-looking to begin with. A muted color palette makes it feel nostalgic and homey the whole way through, which is interesting when contrasted with the idea that what we consider anthropomorphic fiction is treated as reality.
del Duca uses loose linework and stunning design to craft this fiction in ways that calls upon all manner of fairy tales and fables without directly copying any of them or making the reference too overt. Late in the issue, when a side story takes a particularly dark turn, it’s not only unsettling but the anthropomorphic character designs are unlike anything we’ve seen before. The deeper “Shutter” goes, the more varied and non-specific these references become. By the end of issue #4, it is quite clear that del Duca has not built the world on bits and pieces of existing fiction, but springboards off of historical fables and creates an entire parallel modern world that shares that spirit, but not its design.
Mostly, there’s an emotional core to Keatinge’s story that del Duca is just expert at drawing out. The ghosts of Kate’s past are made evocative through the art, and the heartbreaking expressions on her characters’ faces. Not only is there a whole fantastical fictional world slowly being uncovered, but an emotional one too. It’s unfolding slowly, hiding how deep it goes, but it’s doing so in a gorgeous fashion.
“Shutter” #4 continues Keatinge and del Duca’s visually moving look at nostalgia and a loss of innocence. It’s a decidedly grown-up look at the difference between childhood as you experienced it then, and how you remember it now. Those elements are packaged and delivered in the spirit of something resembling an antique anthropomorphic curiosity shop. “Shutter” errs on the side of non-specificity, but with enough heart and storytelling prowess you don’t need to know all the rules – now or ever, really.
Final Verdict: 8.2 – “Shutter” is a deep, slowly-unfolding story for anyone who loves twisting, turning fables
