Shade: The Changing Man #18

Finishing up the last of the small stack of comics that I brought with me when we moved overseas. I have a big collection of comics back home. Mostly bargain-bin fodder, but a decent sized collection. Twenty-five longboxes or thereabouts. And that's after I ditched five longboxes for pennies-on-the-dollar to clear space a year or two ago.

Of those, there are probably about three longboxes worth of unread comics, most of which I bought during buying sprees in bargain bins at stores and conventions. 

During the last days of packing for our move to the other side of the world, I figured I'd grab some unread comics, but I was pretty short on space. I had a bit of room in a carryon bag, and I knew that comics I crammed in there were in danger of getting wrecked.

So my criteria when I went into the unread comics stack was pretty simple. I grabbed books that were already bagged and boarded (most weren't) until I had all that would fit. The result was a very random mix.

I'm down to my last few. After this one, seven more to read.

Title:Shade: The Changing Man
Issue: 18
Date: December, 1991
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Peter Milligan
Penciler: Chris Bachalo
Inker: Mark Pennington
Colorist: Daniel Vozzo
Letterer: Todd Klein
Editor: Alisa Kwitney, Karen Berger
Cover: Jamie Hewlett


This is the finale to the American Scream storyline that formed the main narrative in the early issues of Vertigo's Shade: The Changing Man (technically this is pre-Vertigo, but it's the series that was brought under the Vertigo umbrella). 

Shade is being backed into a corner. His only chance to save Kathy and defeat to American Scream is to return to Meta and kill Wisor. But he doesn't know how to get there, and he isn't sure he can do the deed even if he does find a way home.

There are final confrontations all round as Shade and Agent Rohug confront Wisor, and Wisor is forced to confront his own creation, the Scream.

The opening scenes are the usual frenetic insanity that is to be expected from Shade, with appearances by Christopher Columbus and an animate version of Mount Rushmore. The climactic faceoff is good, if a bit neat in its resolution, but the real gem of the issue is the epilogue sequence, which is poignant and heartfelt, and lays the groundwork for a new direction for Shade's story.

Rating: 7.5/10