Introducing: Shade The Changing Man

You think you’re emo, kid? You ain’t seen emo until you’ve picked up an issue of Shade The Changing Man. I first discovered Shade the same way I discovered a lot of my comic books. By going to 7/11 stores and buying chips and Slurpees. Hey, I was a little fat ass with extra cash because I ironed my brothers clothes for money. They sold these packs of four comics for $2.99. The downside was that you didn’t know what comics were in the center. I got at least twenty issues of Shade this way. This turned out to be one of the weirdest and awesome comic books I’ve ever read till this day. Not to mention the cool stories by Peter Mulligan and great art by Chris Bachalo who went on to draw Neil Gaimen’s Death, Generation X, Ultimate X Men, and Steampunk.

Shade was first drawn by Steve Ditko who is known for his distinctive style and for drawing ROM Spaceknight, The Incredible Hulk, Fantastic Four, and Dr. Strange to mention a few. In it his full name was Rac Shade and he was a fugitive from a planet called Meta. He had the ability to use his M-Vest to create a monster looking version of himself. Shade is an agent that is framed for murder and he ends up living in a place called the Area Of Madness. That sounds awesome. This version of Shade is far different from what he would eventually become which if you know your comic books is not as strange as it seems.

Later after joining the Suicide Squad the character was redone for DC’s Vertigo line which included titles such as The Sandman, 100 Bullets, Hellblazer, A History Of Violence, and V For Vendetta. Those last three have become films. In the first story arc he falls in love with Kathy while trying to defeat The American Scream. While he is dating her is goes into super-emo mode and ends up making another version of himself named Hades that handles emotion better than he does. Meaning he doesn’t whine like a little bitch as much.

When Shade dies or leaves a body (which is how he survives) he ends up in the body of a recently murdered chick. Normally when he takes a body over he can morph it to look like himself but since the spirit cant rest he stays in woman form. He even has sex as a woman. Told you this was a weird ass comic. Eventually Shade figured out who killed her and then he is able to transform into himself. While all this is happening there is all kinds of drama with Kathy and her friend Lenny.

Later on after being killed angels make Shade come back. He ends up in the body of a guy in an asylum with spiky black hair who is batshit insane. Apparently there are people born empty just for things like this. Shade and Hades are mixed perfectly together which is bad for everyone since Shade no longer can control himself. At one point the rushes outside and has sex with the ground which causes a bunch of tiny versions of himself to spring up. After this awesome storyline and version of Shade Chris Bachalo left and it all went to shit. I stopped caring about the character until he resurfaced in DC’s 52 in Justice League Dark. Go back and see if you can find old issues of Shade. They are really fun and different. Plus each cover was a work of art.