Again
I've had another go at reading Peter Milligan's comic Shade the Changing Man, a surreal horror title from the nineties. This time everything clicked.
Something about this comic really resonates with me. It's rare that I read a comic and think, "Yes. I get this. My mind works just like this"; I'm tempted to say I haven't really felt like that since I read Gaiman's Sandman comics a decade ago (there's a bunch of similarities between those two, actually). Like Sandman was perfect for the headspace I was in ten-something years ago, Shade the Changing Man really suits me now (and in an amazing bit of coincidence, Shade the character is exactly my age!).
It's a very surreal comic (which usually isn't my thing at all), as Shade has come to Earth to battle an epidemic of madness, which he continually gets pulled into. There's a lot of meta text and archtypes and complexity. At the same time I find Shade more relatable than for instance John Constantine; Shade is a shy and sensitive young man who's trapped on a strange planet; He falls in love and worries about his masculinity and sexual adequacy (and at one point, transgenderism).
I've only read the first twenty-something issues so far (DC has failed to rerelease the entire run in trades), but I'm enjoying the hell out of this ride. Here's a cool little presentation from Cartoon Network:
Something about this comic really resonates with me. It's rare that I read a comic and think, "Yes. I get this. My mind works just like this"; I'm tempted to say I haven't really felt like that since I read Gaiman's Sandman comics a decade ago (there's a bunch of similarities between those two, actually). Like Sandman was perfect for the headspace I was in ten-something years ago, Shade the Changing Man really suits me now (and in an amazing bit of coincidence, Shade the character is exactly my age!).
It's a very surreal comic (which usually isn't my thing at all), as Shade has come to Earth to battle an epidemic of madness, which he continually gets pulled into. There's a lot of meta text and archtypes and complexity. At the same time I find Shade more relatable than for instance John Constantine; Shade is a shy and sensitive young man who's trapped on a strange planet; He falls in love and worries about his masculinity and sexual adequacy (and at one point, transgenderism).
I've only read the first twenty-something issues so far (DC has failed to rerelease the entire run in trades), but I'm enjoying the hell out of this ride. Here's a cool little presentation from Cartoon Network:
Click to view