CANCELLED COMIC CAVALCADE #2: SHADE THE CHANGING MAN #9: The Odd Man

Continuing our dig through the second issue of CANCELLED COMIC CAVALCADE, the hand-printed collection of material whose mainstream publication had been squashed by the DC Implosion that saw the company’s line slashed by 40%. This time out, we’re dealing with what would have been the back-up series in creator Steve Ditko’s SHADE THE CHANGING MAN series.

The Odd Man was a quintessential Steve Ditko character, a non-powered moral crusader who for some reason dressed up in clown attire to wage war on criminals and the underworld and who pretends to be something otherworldly. According to editor Jack C. Harris in recent years, while Ditko created this series and plotted and drew this story, it was he who wrote (or rewrote) all of the final dialogue, Stan Lee-style.

This was the only Odd Man story that was ever produced, though the character would have been featured as a regular back-up had SHADE THE CHANGING MAN not been axed by the DC Implosion.

This story was one of the few in CANCELLED COMIC CAVALCADE to see print relatively quickly. It was repurposed for DETECTIVE COMICS #487 only a couple of months later. It was also later collected in the first STEVE DITKO DC OMNIBUS years later.