Shade, the Changing Man #1

History

Editor Karen Berger, who had been actively recruiting British writers — among them Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison — approached Milligan after he completed his DC debut miniseries Skreemer and asked him to develop a new ongoing series. Milligan, who had been traveling across the United States and absorbing American culture firsthand, chose to resurrect Shade, a character Steve Ditko had created in 1977 whose original eight-issue run was killed by the DC Implosion of 1978. Milligan deliberately retained only the elements of Ditko's concept he found useful — the alien Rac Shade, the planet Meta, the powerful vest — and rebuilt everything else, transforming the M-Vest into a Madness-Vest capable of warping reality; artist Chris Bachalo then developed the visual language of the new Shade from character designs supplied by Brendan McCarthy, who also painted several early covers.

Trivia · 7 facts

• First appearance of Peter Milligan's reinvented Rac Shade: an alien who arrives on Earth trapped in the body of Troy Grenzer, a convicted serial killer scheduled for execution on that very day.
• First appearance of Kathy George, the central human character whose parents were murdered by Grenzer and who becomes Shade's primary companion throughout the series.
• Written by Peter Milligan with interior art by Chris Bachalo (pencils) and Mark Pennington (inks); the cover was painted by Brendan McCarthy, who also supplied the foundational character designs for the new Shade.
• Launched the 18-issue opening arc titled 'The American Scream,' in which Shade and Kathy journey across the continental United States battling a metaphysical entity representing the rot at the heart of American culture.
• The series ran 70 issues (1990–1996), with Bachalo illustrating 38 of the first 50 issues; at issue #33 (March 1993) the title formally migrated to DC's new Vertigo imprint for mature readers.
• The first six issues were collected in trade paperback as Shade, the Changing Man Vol. 1: The American Scream (first published 2003); the complete Milligan–Bachalo run was later collected in a hardcover Omnibus Vol. 1 (2025, collecting #1–37).
• The series inspired a spiritual successor, Shade, the Changing Girl (DC's Young Animal imprint, 2016), written by Cecil Castellucci with art by Marley Zarcone, and a two-minute DC Nation Shorts animated adaptation that aired on Cartoon Network on August 20, 2013.

Full credits

Key issues in Shade, the Changing Man

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#27 1st appearance — Naomi

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#41 1st appearance — Pandora