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Shade the maturing man

Mr Wolfe

16:12 / 03.11.01

Is it just me or does Peter Milligan’s Shade get immediately better when it switches to Vertigo (late-30s)? I bought most of 1-41 + wasn’t too turned on by anything beyond the JFK arc- but then Milligan gets more light-hearted + whimsical, + I love Glyn Dillon + Phillip Bond. makes me think I should find the last 30 issues too. Recommendations?

uncle retrospective

16:27 / 03.11.01

Shade 1-32 has some damn good stuff in it but dragged the american scream thing out far to long.

Shade 33-50 is by far the best stuff. It just goes nuts in a very good way.

51-70 are good but not up to the madness of 33-50. It borders on "whacky" in one or 2 places.

But dear god man, if you can get them, buy them. You won't regret it.
Love that book.

[ 03-11-2001: Message edited by: uncle retrospective ]

Jack The Bodiless

17:42 / 03.11.01

Absolutely - go with the above. Incidentally, Haus, m'boy - can you email me your snail mail? Got a little present for you.

Hush

22:24 / 03.11.01

When comics like 'Major Bummer' or 'Swamp Thing 3' die at less than twenty issues I thin how lucky we are to have Shade at all. It was very poor for nearly two years, lit up only by some extraordinary inventive but unstructured wierdness.

Then it got really good; and it never stopped being good. I'm sorry it finished, It should have faded away into an annual.

Get it, read it, love it.

06:28 / 04.11.01

I just picked up acopy of Shade #10 (The Invasion of the Normality Snatchers, or something) the other day, and I loved it. I actually laughed out loud a couple of times.

What's Peter Milligan's other stuff like? I've not read much at all.

Mystery Gypt

07:20 / 04.11.01

quote:Originally posted by Count Adam- Ne'er-do-well at Large:
What's Peter Milligan's other stuff like? I've not read much at all.

Rojan Gosh is fantastic -- an insane homage to hindu myth comics with multiple psychedelic cosmoweirdness and KILLER art by brenden mcarthy

[ 04-11-2001: Message edited by: Mystery Gypt ]

sleazenation

08:40 / 04.11.01

Milligan did a lot of stuff for 200 AD and various other doomed uk comics of the early 80's - he also has a parallel career as a hollywood scriptwriter IIRC

other highlight include Hewligan's harcut (with jaimie hewlet of gorillas and tank girl fame) and the highly contraversial SKIN (with brendan mccarthy) a story about a thalidomide victim skin head. orginally comissioned for crisis (doomed overtly political comic anthology of the early 90s UK- a large number of whose strips were subsequently reprinted in the US) Skin faced many problems getting printed and distributed but eventually found a home at tundra-- Apparently milligan and mccarthy donated the script and art to the tate (british art museum)

ONLY NICE THINGS

11:37 / 04.11.01

Is the reaction of the curator recorded for posterity?

"Um...thanks. No, really. Thanks. That's...great."

Captain Zoom

14:20 / 04.11.01

Apart from X-Force, I'd avoid any of Milligan's Marvel stuff. I've not liked any that I've read. His follow-up to Grant's Animal Man was quite good and strange.

Zoom.

CameronStewart

14:29 / 04.11.01

Yeah, X-Force excepted, Milligan and Marvel don't get on well at all. I read some of that Elektra series and the Archangel one-shot and they were positively amateurish.

If you're talking Milligan, though, you can't miss out ENIGMA. Brilliant stuff.

Ronald Thomas Clontle

16:33 / 04.11.01

I'm quite fond of Milligan's one shots Face and The Eaters (about a family of cannibals), personally...

My favorite issues of Shade are the ones towards the end, the ones drawn by Mark Buckingham and Richard Case...I have a great sentimental attachment to them, they bring back a lot of my happier high school memories, they have a lot of good connotations for me...

I never started reading the comic til after it was a Vertigo title...

I really wish DC would capitalize on the current popularity of Milligan (X-Force), Chris Bachalo (Steampunk) and Mark Buckingham (Spider-Man) and put out some trades....

Cat Chant

06:33 / 05.11.01

Fuller response when I have time.

Shade 1-50 are a very tightly-arced meditation on death, thru Shade's death around 25 to Kathy's in 50.

Post-50, Shade being unable to die, death stops being a major theme (since it is no longer final or a rite of passage) and we move on to the intractability of history, from the "string" imagery in the late 40s where Shade tries to run out on Kathy and is stopped by the cartoon in the bar, which modulates into the "Devil's [umbilical] cord". 51-70 are by miles the best issues; I insist the comic should have run for 100 issues in order to balance 50:50, but the cancellation actually makes the last storyline one of the best things ever done in comics ever ever.

Why has it never been collected? I want t-shirts and tarot packs and "The Quotable Shade" ornamental books and... No, I don't, I want to keep some self-respect.

Chuckling Duck

15:21 / 05.11.01

For me, Milligan’s best work was “The Enigma”. It combined his usual themes of postmodern strangeness and existential angst with a uniquely touching love story. And I really felt for that lizard, man.

mondo a-go-go

13:18 / 06.11.01

i'm the only one who thinks that the enigma was annoying, then? (on the other hand, i have a fab page of dean ormston's art from the eaters. there's a hook outside our kitchen waiting for it: all i need's a frame.)

but shade.... oh yeeeeeaaaaah. fabulous stuff. i need to pick up some more issues, but i can never remember which ones i need, because i've read them all...

for some reason, the one that always stands out in my head is the issue where he's a ballroom floor. which is odd, coz i didn't think it was one of the better stories...

Ronald Thomas Clontle

13:35 / 06.11.01

quote:Originally posted by Kooky is a bad scamp:
i have a fab page of dean ormston's art from the eaters. there's a hook outside our kitchen waiting for it: all i need's a frame.)

outside of yr kitchen, eh? ha! which page, I'm wondering? any of the kitchen/dinner scenes?

moriarty

14:54 / 06.11.01

quote:Originally posted by Deva:
Why has it never been collected? I want t-shirts and tarot packs and "The Quotable Shade" ornamental books and... No, I don't, I want to keep some self-respect.

There was a t-shirt. And a Shade card in the Vertigo tarot. I'm working on the Quotable Shade for you even as we speak. Maybe then the armageddon can begin.

mondo a-go-go

10:24 / 07.11.01

quote:Originally posted by Flux = Rad:
outside of yr kitchen, eh? ha! which page, I'm wondering? any of the kitchen/dinner scenes?

i can't remember which page #, but it's the one where the girl is telling her mom she'll have to gain an eater or lose a daughter. i like it because it works really well on its own, out of context of the whole story it still makes perfect sense (sign of good writing, that. and you'd be surprised how rare it is).

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