Review by Frank Plowright
On Meta, Rac Shade is a poet, but he’s sent to Earth for devious reasons he soon neglects. He arrives via a dimension of madness with his protective vest able to twist reality on Earth, where he inhabits the body of Troy Grenzer, a serial killer in the process of execution. Remnants of Grenzer remain, though, and he can emerge at times. Present for the execution is Kathy George, still traumatised by Grenzer’s murder of her boyfriend, yet she believes Shade’s claims not to be Grenzer, and over time Shade’s earthly presence more resembles his genuine appearance. The primary cast isn’t completed for some while, but it’s with the introduction of free spirit Lenny that the series gels. Peter Milligan twists the relationships of these outsiders every which way, constantly surprising, while adhering to an emotional logic as they’re involved in ever-shifting versions of insanity. This first takes the form of a spirit perverting American icons and obsessions.
Milligan and Chris Bachalo’s Shade the Changing Man is a series that never received its due. While the world latched on to what Grant Morrison was doing (with artists not nearly as talented), Milligan’s similarly intelligent and conceptually dense explorations of modern horror remain just a cult favourite. Less than a third of the series was collected in paperback, and this Omnibus over doubles the amount of issues now available in book form, yet they only serve as the warm-up, not the peak, which arrives in Volume 2.
The troubles initiated by the American Scream occupy the material reprinted as The American Scream, Edge of Vision and Scream Time, all long out print. See the individual reviews for greater detail on what’s an extended delve into the American national psyche in the late 1980s as perceived by a British writer. Then newcomer Bachalo’s talent is evident from the beginning, and he rapidly sheds initial limitations to become an incredible conceptual artist, able to deliver the strip’s insanity with style and imagination while still providing the emotional turmoil of the major characters. Daniel Vozzo’s colouring is at first primitive when seen from the digital era, but he gradually ups his game, a turning point being establishing Shade’s constantly changing coat of many coloured patterns.
A brilliantly downbeat desperation is rarely relieved, Shade barely holding himself together. Continuing from the material previously published are six chapters of ‘The Road’ in which the main cast are pushed together and pulled apart while Shade attempts to pull a secret from his subconscious. It’s followed by a brilliant insight into Lenny before ‘Shade the Changing Woman’ an idea that’s sadly not as interesting as it sounds for having an earnestness absent from most of what Milligan writes. Colleen Doran, though is the best of the guest artists, also drawing a pastiche of literary greats Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce and Gertrude Stein over two parts. It seals Shade’s reputation as a series heading where others never would, and if you choose that interpretation it could be that the entire series is a shared dream of Hemingway and Joyce.
Shade’s recurring deaths and revivals are bleak comedy (or oblique comedy) and this Omnibus ends by establishing the direction much of the series will take heading forward.
The Changing element of the title is consistently exploited by Milligan, whose imaginative scenarios remain creatively strange and consistently fascinating with a rapidity of ideas and observations to put most other writers to shame. And what a great artist Bachalo becomes.
