CANCELLED COMIC CAVALCADE #2: SHADE THE CHANGING MAN #9

Cancelled Comic Cavalcade

Continuing on through the second of the two hand-copied volumes of written-off material put together by DC in the wake of the DC Implosion that saw their line cut down by 40%, today we’re looking at another book that was intended to be completed but which wouldn’t see the light of day for decades yet.

SHADE THE CHANGING MAN was the brainchild of Steve Ditko, who had started doing work for DC again after a number of years away. Ditko was a creator who was simultaneously hailed as a genius for his triumphant ideas and series (notably Doctor Strange and of course Spider-Man) but whose work began to shift further and further away from the mainstream as time went on. Like his fellow Marvel founder Jack Kirby, Ditko found himself often on the outside of an industry that he’d helped to build.

SHADE THE CHANGING MAN wasn’t a super hero strip so much as it was a science fantasy adventure, one involving other dimensions. This allowed for Ditko to go all-out on the sorts of trippy, hallucinogenic visuals that he’d become known for. The lead character, Rac Shade, possesses an M-Vest which allows him to traverse the dimensions from his home dimension of Meta to the “Earth Zone” by passing through the Zero Zone. it also makes him appear monstrous and distorted to his foes.

SHADE THE CHANGING MAN was being both plotted and illustrated by Ditko, but editor Jack C. Harris had brought in writer Michael Fleisher to provide the dialogue for the strip, feeling perhaps that Ditko’s own command of language was a bit on the stiff and utilitarian side.

This story was eventually reprinted as part of the DC STEVE DITKO OMNIBUS in 2011.

Published

16 thoughts on “CANCELLED COMIC CAVALCADE #2: SHADE THE CHANGING MAN #9”

  1. Crisis on Infinite Earths was probably the first time I saw Shade the Changing Man and not Who’s Who in the DC Universe. I like his look and concept ( Wondering if that is the right word I’m looking for ).

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  3. I’ve never been a Ditko fan, either his art or his apparent worldview, but I did like Shade as a series for some reason. I liked what Vertigo did with the character more but then I liked its creative team much more as well so that makes sense.

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  4. To each his/her own, but within the last few years I tried to read the first four-five Milligan SHADES and thought they were terrible. I will say that despite Ditko’s SHADE containing some of his last high-quality art, the story was out of steps with what most fans wanted from comics so it probably never had a chance as an ongoing regular series. Maybe Ditko’s SHADE should have been launched as a mini-series to test the waters, so that if it flopped, at least the story would have been complete even with dangling plot-threads. The downside of that would be that Ditko might not have produced some of the bizarre villains I liked– Khaos, The Cloak, etc.

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  5. Ditko came up with something interesting here. I’m not sure where he was going, but he created an interesting world.

    I’m not an Objectivist but Rand kind of gave him a spin most people in comics don’t have.

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  6. There’s a thesis waiting to be written regarding the contrast between Ditko’s own straight-laced, buttoned-down life and his unashamedly outrageous / grotesque characters Creeper (who anticipates Tim Curry’s ‘Rocky Horror’ look by several years), Shade and Odd Man.

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    1. . . . or even the slightly down-market (and bohemian) doings of Dr. Strange.

      Ditko, no less than Ayn Rand, was an artist and might have had a tolerance for chaos than his “his own straight-laced, buttoned down life” might imply;

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  7. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this, so it’s very exciting. I was 14 years old when the Implosion happened, and two of my favorite books were Kamandi and Shade. I remember really enjoying the plot-line Ditko was writing, and then POOF…Screw you, fan boy…

    Another dangling plot left by the Implosion and one that will never be resolved, unfortunately…

    Thanks for posting, Tom (and hard to believe all this was 48 years ago)!

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    1. It was (somewhat) resolved by John Ostrander in Suicide Squad # 36 in1989 . Then it shifted to Vertigo . . . .

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  8. Wow! Thanks for sharing Tom! Shade came out right around the time I was phasing out of comics/into college, but this series almost sucked me back in. Ditko was still at his prime, and it felt like some sort of amalgam of Flash Gordon and the epic “Eternity” story at the end of his Doc Strange run. 

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  9. I really would like to know what happened to the original art of the whole original Shade series: lost, stolen, destroyed or anything else ?

    Does somebody knows ?

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      1. Why would he do something like that ? Yes, I know Greg Theakston’s story, but this story has bias and I also heard a story by a credible person that saw Ditko almost weeping one day seeing an original page from ASM presented to him. BTW, original pages by Ditko done after the return of OA to the artists became a common practice (in the 80s), can be found on the market. So ?

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