Random Comic Notes

I came across something when I was looking at something else with Cass, and that led to this and then that, and at some point I was putting in a tiny bid on Ebay for the first 8 issues of a comic from 1990, DC's Shade, the Changing Man.

I'd heard about this comic over the years, and the time came for me to make a purchase.

The comics are, to say the least...strange. There was a comic that came out recently that made me think the same kind of thing: 'Well, this is weird.'

Look at these covers, about 35 years apart:

That Shade cover, from 1990, is one of the classic mainstream-WTF covers from any era:

I only bring it up now, and am comparing these two, completely unconnected comic storylines, because they shared a spot in my head. I tried explaining Shade to Cass, to Corrie, to my dad and brother...and I struggled.

If, in 1990, you picked up a Superman comic, or a Batman comic, or the X-Men or Spiderman...if you picked up a comic from one of those main companies, you'd have a pretty good idea of what to expect, and even what you're looking at.

My mother would occasionally buy me little lots of comics from Ebay or Amazon once she found out that I was giving my old, 90s-era comics out as prizes. These were full of era-specific dreck, surely, but the idea remained true: you could tell pretty much what was happening or what was going to happen.

And that's where this Shade title comes along and messes all that up. Just look at this collage of the first 8 issues. Does this look like anything from 1990, besides the digital backgrounds of television commercials?

It's not like you can randomly pick up issue 4 and have any idea what happened before and what will be happening later...or even just WTF you're looking at right then.

Even the description defies sanity: Rac Shade is from another planet, and has been sent to Earth, but needs his madness vest to help him cross the Madness Zone, and while his body seems to be stuck in the Madness Zone, he has been implanted into the body of someone about to die, but not just anyone: he's been put into the body of newly executed serial killer and needs the daughter of the killer's most recent victims to believe him and help him regain his memory and powers.

Anyway...JFK's assassination plays a prominent role in the first story arc...so, there's that...

Now, Bleeding Hearts exists not because of comics like Shade, but rather they are created in a world where comics like Shade effected the readers-who-become-creators...well, maybe those things are the same.

This comic shows the kinds of stories that comics can do. Action movies can do some of these same things, surely, and novels too, I guess but...sequential art is like the sandbox for these whacky stories.

The main character, Poke, seen there on the cover, is a zombie in a horde that has a name that I can't recall at the moment. 'Poke' is short for something like 'mouse-pokes-hole-in-head' and his buddy Mush is a zombie with mushrooms growing all over his neck and shoulder. The central conflict, as their portion of the horde corners a group of survivors and, er, makes a meal out of them, is that poke's heart has started beating again. And he's not sure what to do, besides certainly not telling his buddies.

That kind of story isn't about using madness as the magic with which to exact or extract results---like Rac Shade's adventures. But in what world could it exist? One that had madness used as a plot point?