Numbers: A Tale of Shades and Angels

Eddie Foote knows numbers, the odds for everything worth betting on. After appointing himself head of Numbers in Freedom City, Eddie’s sure he’s got it made. But, there’s always something waiting to spoil the fun.

A bone-snapping psychopath calling himself the FEARSOME SHADE has invented a wager that’s got the crowd scrambling to figure the odds.

He bets you die.

So far, there hasn'’t been much of a spread. Everybody died.

So far.

Now it’s Eddie'’s turn; but Eddie always has an idea, and a line on an angel who might just save his life.

The Fearsome Shade is loose in Freedom City, Texas. He kills mostly criminals, forecasting his shady victims by means of a lottery in which felons are assigned numbers. When a derelict places a below-the-limit five-buck bet, the number he chooses designates the next victim. Meanwhile, Eddie Foote has offed his "father," head of numbers. He phones his boss to tell him he, Eddie, is now head of numbers. But head of numbers isn't supposed to know his boss well enough to call him. Now Eddie must die. Eddie figures he can, however, sic the Shade on the boss by talking the Shade's crony, Night Angel, into coercing the Shade to do his bidding. The Angel is as dangerous to crooks as the Shade, though. Things go better for Eddie than he has any right to expect in this dazzling costumed crime-fighter yarn that stretches the limitations of black-and-white rendering with virtuoso lighting effects, and the conventions of comics continuity with overlapping dialogue, bouncily mobile point-of-view, and insertions of dream (?) imagery. Ray Olson
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