American Gods: Shadows #2 is the latest issue of Dark Horse’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s novel, American Gods. It, essentially, adapts the entire second chapter of the original novel pretty faithfully. In this issue, Shadow and Wednesday continue their conversation at Jack’s Crocodile Bar, Shadow meets the leprechaun Mad Sweeney and has an altercation with him, and Shadow attends his wife’s funeral.

I’ve got sort of mixed feelings about this issue. It’s good, don’t get me wrong, but it’s starting to feel like there’s no much actual adaptation going on. It’s pretty much a copy-paste of the original novel with some really beautiful illustrations added in. And that’s not a bad thing, per say. But it doesn’t really feel like we’re getting anything new here.

It’s still nice to see what Gaiman described in his novel fully realized in a visual format, but that’s sort of all we’re being given. The pacing is exactly the same as it is in the novel, and for a novel, it works well. But for a comic book, it’s dreadfully slow. I mean, I summarized the entirety of what happened in this issue in a sentence. That’s really all that happened this issue. Now we wait another 5 weeks for the next one.

There were some good character moments, as there are in the book, and the artwork is still amazing, but I’m just not sure if the way the comic is going right now is really sustainable for the number of issues they want to put out. I like it, but something feels kind of off.

(3.5 out of 5 wands)

The next issue of American Gods: Shadows comes out either May 17 or May 24. (The end of the issue says one thing, its listing on Comixology says another.