Review by Frank Plowright
Since starting Shade the Changing Man Peter Milligan has tied Shade into an idea of American themes corrupted and distorted by madness. He ends that in Scream Time, and the series will improve further, but the quality continues upward here. Slimmer ideas such as a fat Elvis Presley only gather passing attention, while the main confrontation is framed as a Western showdown and Milligan nails down what the madness vest is. All the while Chris Bachalo’s art is becoming more adventurous, to the point where his pages even look better than a fill-in by heavyweight Bryan Talbot.
An earlier visit to Shade’s Metan background was perfunctory, but the full revelation of horror, deceit and manipulation disclosed here hits the spot while also explaining the previous vague manifestations of the American Scream. ‘Meta’ wasn’t a commonly used term when Shade was originally published, but there’s great self-awareness to Milligan’s writing as he skates across dead lives casually dropping some very off-message views for the conservative times. Everything is supplied with a seductive intelligence making absolute sense in context.
The trippiest selection of events yet in a series hardly short of mind-bending experiences is presented by a now extremely confident Bachalo who delivers alien environments with a first rate imagination. He’s greatly helped by colourist Daniel Vozzo now completely attuned to what’s going on, ensuring Shade’s coat is a constantly shifting interpretation of the distinctive pattern. How far Bachalo has come is seen in the final story, in which Christmas is perverted by a lunatic. It’s overwrought and overstated kicking against the pricks, but Bachalo and Vozzo deliver brightness and clarity, with the layouts showing Bachalo entering his prime.
After what she suffered in Edge of Vision poor Kathy George awakens in a psychiatric institution and her life deteriorates further from there. Milligan supplies what seems a definitive ending to her relationship with Shade, but that’s just a ploy. As with the ending to the other main plot, it’s thoughtful, surprising and apt.
Frustratingly, Scream Time is the final collection, three paperbacks covering just eighteen months of a series that ran over five years, and which become far better. In 2025 the first volume of Shade the Changing Man Omnibus combined the three early paperbacks and extended the run to cover half the series.
