Shade The Changing Man!

It is not difficult to argue that Shade the Changing Man was Steve Ditko's last significant creation for mainstream comics. It's a been decades since I read these stories and frankly reading them all together and not once a month has altered my opinion. For one thing the stories are incredibly dense, both in plot and numbers of characters. The fact that unusual names are common only makes keeping the rosters of good and bad guys distinct and further hurting that effort is the fact that at least half the cast is keeping a criminal secret and the rest are duplicitous about something at the very least. These are agents of a bizarre other-dimensional government which seems to lots of laws but seems to have difficulty dispensing justice. No doubt that was intentional. 

In Shade the Changing Man I see one of the most complex universes Dikto ever took time to concoct. Usually his heroes operate in a version of the very real world in  cookie cutter cities called Hub, River, or some such name meant to evoke a film noir setting. But here we have the Earth as just one setting with Shade's home being the Meta-Zone and between the two a weird wild dangerous territory called the Zero-Zone. There are characters brimming in all of these locations, so many at first that I frequently got lost in the crowd of offbeat names.  

I was reminded of nothing so much as the lush beautiful "Fourth World" fashioned by Jack Kirby for his New Gods adventures. In those tales Earth is just one battleground among several, though a critical one. Here it seems to be much the same. 

Also Ditko creates some of his most visually arresting villains. As wacky as Shade is himself with his visually interesting but sometimes difficult to fathom powers we get the likes of an angry warrior "Zokag" who reminded me of Kalibak with his ferocious ways, their weird color-shifting "Form" who seemed to scare everybody, and the stark white "Cloak" who reminded me a lot of the Ghost from those Charlton Captain Atom comics. 

There's a family drama imbedded in the saga too with Shade's love interest imagining he's hurt her family and betrayed the Meta-Zone.The villain "Sude" who looks like a version of Pac-Man at times makes the most of these misunderstandings. Shade is in fact thought a villain through almost all of the run we have in hand. 

I got the sense that after his battle with the ultra villain "Khaos" that his standing might well be improving and it did in some quarters. Still and all he was pursued by the authorities as a traitor with a death sentence on his head. 

The action moves beyond our hero Rac Shade when he slips into a "color coma" which is just what you'd expect. He periodically changes color as he lies unconscious following his defeat of Khaos. 

The transition is being made in the book and you get the feeling that Shade's days as a marked man are going to end as he undertakes a mission back to the Earth-Zone for elements of the Meta-Zone leadership. He's not been publicly exonerated but his girl friend knows he's an innocent man and so do many others who now stand beside and support him. This shift happens just as the title abruptly ends. 

One final issue of Shade the Changing Man was produced by Ditko and in this one he is waylaid on his way to the Earth-Zone and battles a deadly villain in the Zero-Zone. All the way through in these Zero-Zone skirmishes I got the feeling of deja vu as the fights reminded me of Doctor Strange's forays into the Dark Dimension to take on Dormmamu in the pages of Strange Tales. Of course this is a science fiction seeting but the visuals are much in the same vein. 

Some call Shade the Changing Man Ditko's last great mainstream comic work and I'd tend to agree with them. I was much impressed on this reading at the potential for the characters and the new setting. I know much work was done with Shade and his Meta-Verse when it was inducted into the arcane Vertigo universe. I haven't read any of those stories and cannot comment, but for sure they got their inspiration from the deft artwork and mind of Steve Ditko. 

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