Shaft #3 Review

writer: David F. Walker / artist: Bilquis Evely / Dynamite Comics One of my earliest memories of Shaft didn’t come from Shaft at all, but an episode of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, season 5, episode 3, when Nicky asked “Who’s Shaft?” “‘Who’s Shaft?’ Oh, ho, ho. There’s so much I got to teach you,” Will replies. “See, Shaft was a complicated man…” And the credits rolled. That was in 1994, and now in 2015 we get the fun ride of discovering just how Shaft became that complicated man through David Walker’s awesome series.

Well, it’s hard to say when exactly he became complicated – he’d been a booster, a war veteran, and tangled up with gangsters, after all – but where it really went south was meeting Arletha Havens, and boy did we see that coming. Shaft met Arletha in issue #2 during his new job as private security for National Investigation & Security Services. She was perfect. So perfect, actually, that you knew she was going to be trouble or in trouble, but either way our boy Shaft was smitten. Turns out she was the “in trouble” variety, and Arletha Havens was found murdered. Things are gonna get ugly? You damn right.

Released from police custody, Shaft is free to track down whoever’s responsible for Arletha’s death, so what does he do? Get the Man on Fire track ready, things are about to get real vengeful up in here. He goes to the murder scene and starts piecing together clues. He buys the apartment where Arletha was killed. He allows himself to get captured by some gangst…