Shade the Changing Man: Difference between revisions

The series has a cult following, but can be difficult to find, although the first 19 issues have been republished in TPBs. In 2003, original author Peter Milligan teamed with Madman artist Mike Allred to write a one-off Shade story for Vertigo's tenth anniversary special.

 

 

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* [[Beat Still My Heart]]: Shade's heart is stolen by a squatter in his home after a battle. He embarks on [[Incredibly Lame Pun|a half-hearted rescue of it and when he finally catches up to it, has a heart-to-heart talk with it]]. {{spoiler|And then steps on it when he decides he's better off heartless.}} It appears from time to time, still beating, moving under its own power, and even has internal monologues.

* [[Bitter Wedding Speech]]: Subverted. Lenny is invited to her uncle's wedding, years after he babysat her as a child, and masturbated while watching her sleep. She has everyone's attention when she gets onto the table in front of the married couple, expecting a speech. She simply unfastens her dress and lets it fall off her with a smirk on her face. The reception ended in family violence.

* [[Changed My Jumper]]: On the rare examples of time-travel, it was easily [[Handwaved]] by Shade only appearing to personalities known to stay under the influence of substances, sometimes including hallucinogens. In one unique aversion, all of Hotel Shade and everything inside reverted gradually to earlier analogues and fashions, until they finally arrived in colonial Salem. Constantine mused on the fit of various underwear through history.

* [[Continuity Nod]] - Meta's Ditkosian mythology referred to [[Steve Ditko|Steve Ditko's]] work on the title, largely thrown out of canon during Peter Milligan's run.

** And then there's Shade himself, who gets a new haircut every time he {{spoiler|dies}}.

** According to Milligan, hair is a major theme of the series.

* [[Mad Artist]]

* [[Medium Awareness]]: A movie camera infected by the American Scream shows awareness of both film and comic conventions. And the narration during 'The Great American Story' calls much attention to panel framing and transition, then at the end the writer character reveals his name to be an anagram of Peter Milligan (and is suddenly rendered much slimmer and younger), implying that he ''was'' the narrator.

* [[Power Born of Madness]]: prime example of the [[Reality Warper]] ("forge what you need on the smithy of your soul".) Shade began merely poetic, and therefore only insane to his native culture, so he was able to survive being flung through the Area of Madness relatively sane. With time on Earth, [[It Got Worse|he got much madder]].

* [[Reality Warper]]: Shade

* [[Rewriting Reality]]: One arc features an inversion: anything that frustrated writer Miles Laimling wrote would be fictional, even if it were true before. Miles drew inspiration from personalities around him, and as their traits became more lifelike in his fiction, those traits would fade from the individuals they were inspired from.

* [[Sarcasm Failure]]: Lenny is always good for a snark, no matter how dire the situation. Her [[Sarcasm Failure]] was a result of an author, an unwitting personality plunderer, who had written her into his book, and shocked her enough to drive her to a suicide attempt.

* [[Too Kinky to Torture]]: Version 3 of Milligan's Shade expresses enthusiasm for the idea of being tortured, as long as it's being done by an expert.

* [[Weirdness Magnet]]: Shade and his crew end up living in 'Hotel Shade', which the Angels told him would "draw madness to it like a magnet." Even John Constantine paid a visit.

* [[Who Dunnit to Me?]]: Story Arc 'The Road'.

* [[Who Shot JFK?]]: The second and third issue give us a Sphinx with JFK's head that asks people this question and eats them when they're unable to answer. The JFK-Sphinx's madness is fueled by a Kennedy admirer-turned conspiracy theorist. In the end, he's forced to ask the question, {{spoiler|and says we're all responsible, for letting the President's death overshadow his life}}, but the real truth is {{spoiler|confronting the manifestation of his obsession allows him to come to terms with the death of his young daughter, which he can only blame on life's unfairness}}.