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Underground > Comic Books >

Shade the Changing Man Trade!!!

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03:43 / 06.12.02

It's in the newest previews, so I'll finaly get to read something that should have been put in trade 8 yrs ago. I only have to wait three months.

15:17 / 06.12.02

Hu-fucking-Rrah! and stuff.

Matthew Fluxington

15:27 / 06.12.02

Would any of you mind giving more details (as in, which issues will be collected, the pricetag, whether or not more Shade tpbs are on the way)?

Also, please, write a title abstract.

15:35 / 06.12.02

The shade trades will run from issue 1 onwards - so the first trade will cover at least part of the first shade story, American scream. Not sure how long it will be though.

I have it on good authority though that if the first trade does not sell well there will be no others so if you are in anway interested in shade being fully collected, buy the first trade!

Murray Hamhandler

15:37 / 06.12.02

Take a look here for answers to all of your questions and concerns.

My main concern is that this collection is but a portion of a much longer story. I hope that DC's intention is to at least collect the whole American Scream story (although I'd like to see them collect the whole series).

17:05 / 06.12.02

I'm interested to see how this is going to do, and how people who haven't read it before are going to react to it. It's very much of its time, and touches on a lot of late 1980's-early 1990's
obsessions (serial killers, who shot JFK?, Hollywood, 1960's hippie culture) that may not carry the same sort of punch it had back then. But then it's also about madness, and we're living in mad times.

And Milligan is a good writer, and the Chris Bachalo art looks very nice, and the Brendan McCarthy covers are fantastic. And they'll most likely print this on decent paper. I'm hoping it does well.

Matthew Fluxington

17:12 / 06.12.02

They should do the same trick Marvel did with it's old paperbacks, and print about 40 issues or so in one volume on cheap black and white paper. I'd rather have a larger chunk of story than colors and nice paper, me.

17:19 / 06.12.02

Not me. I don't like what Marvel's done w/ those b/w reprints at all. It's like the life has been sucked right off the page.

And I don't have a problem w/ b/w comics, either. But that old Lee/Kirby stuff is so colorful, and taking that away really detracts from what's left.

19:12 / 06.12.02

So buy a box of crayons.

19:29 / 06.12.02

I fear the run won't make it. The series lost focus too often; although persistance had its rewards with Shade, I think the investment will be too much for many people.

Murray Hamhandler

21:20 / 06.12.02

DC was talking, a few years ago, about collecting all of Grant's Animal Man in one of those cheap, newsprint trades. If I remember correctly, there was a big negative uproar about it and the idea was dropped. I also personally favor this approach, but I know that there are a lot of people out there who don't agree w/it. Maybe releasing the huge newsprint trades in conjunction w/the smaller (and more expensive) Archives editions is the trick? Probably too cost prohibitive, that...

19:18 / 08.12.02

Its hard enough to get buyers for one collection/format of a series, let alone multiplying the cost (two different format trade of the same strip are more costly than one) while dividing the readership (who just want to buy one, not both) between the two books - Its just not financially feasible.

20:24 / 08.12.02

I say scan all the old issues and send 'em on CD on demand. Pretty cheap and simple, and it gets the stories out there.

Matthew Fluxington

21:35 / 08.12.02

I wish fans would get over themselves - why gamble never having a full collected volume of a story just because you can't get over something rather shallow, like paper quality? Isn't having a complete story a lot more important than having glossy paperstock?

Murray Hamhandler

21:44 / 08.12.02

Well, there is something to be said for the preservation of the artwork. Marvel's bulky newsprint trades have done a pretty good job of it, from what I've seen, although I can see the side of those who'd like to see the artwork, complete w/color (the original Kirby New Gods issues that I've seen, for example, lose a lot of vibrancy in their translation to black and white).

I've long lamented the view of comics as disposable, especially as it related to their being preserved for posterity, but the truth of the matter is that there is so much material out there that it honestly would be cost-prohibitive at this point to get it all back in print in a high-quality format. Me, I'm not picky. Keep it up w/the phonebooks and I'm happy. Two fat newsprint trades and the whole of Shade would be available.

22:17 / 08.12.02

In most cases, colour is part of the "complete story". Quibbling over paper stock and fighting over colour are very two different things. Me, I can't stand those b & w reprint books. One of my best friends loves them, especially the Fantastic Four. That's fair. but I think most comics that were originally in colour were created to be in colour. I couldn't care less about paper quality, but a large part of Shade was it's use of colour. It's like buying a copy of Wizard of Oz in black and white or a reissue of a rare album without the bassline.

With the exception of Jimmy Olsen, Kirby's Fourth World work is in trade. I won't purchase them. I don't hate their existence, or even blame DC, but I see no reason to buy an inferior product. That's my choice as a consumer. I take my money elsewhere. Right now there are more quality comics in print then ever before. It's wonderful to be a comic reader. 20 years ago, a Shade collection (or Invisibles, or just about anything) would have been almost unthinkable. In fact, I'm surprised it's happening at all, especially considering I can go into any major city in North America and get an almost complete run for less than $100, or less than what it will cost in trades.

02:40 / 09.12.02

It really is a shame about the Fourth World books. The collections that DC put out aren't even in black and white- they're grey. They look like fucking photocopies. But, hey, you can get a hardcover copy of All Star Comics for $50.

I'm serious about the black and white Marvel collections though. Where else can you get a coloring book that size for that cheap? Little kids love em.

14:54 / 11.12.02

Personally, I would be encouraged to see a color touch-up applied to Shade. A lot of the older DC books had terrible coloring. The b & w reprints of Swamp Thing were so so so much nicer than any of the color ones ever, because they let the beauty of the underlying art show through. I loved those books. Too bad that, like, one other person was buying them....

I have a few of the Marvel fatties and all of the 4th World books. I'm sure they're not what they were, but I still find them plenty readable. To be honest, my main drawback is with the change in expectations from the writing.

OT: is 'The Doom Patrol' ever scheduled to trickle into more trades than 'Crawling From The Wreckage'?

15:18 / 11.12.02

This week's Lying in the gutters column hints that there *might* be some doom patrol trades - but i'd say it still seems unlikely given the legal complications around the flex mentallo character - something that DC still points as a major reason behind the lack of trades.

16:46 / 11.12.02

But Flex first appears when #34, #35?

And they've only done trades up to #25.

17:32 / 11.12.02

Well i don't make DC policy but i'd say it makes little economic sense to put out a further trade of a long series if there is little to no chance of reprinting the rest due to legal disputes- especialy when there are many other comics that could be collected with less difficulty.

17:39 / 11.12.02

Many, more worthy, much more anticipated works, some of which are titles that are still being published and could do with that kind of cross-promotion (and before anyone says anything, word on the street is that the recent Doom Patrol comic isn't long for the world. Too little, too late, i guess).

18:33 / 11.12.02

I can't speak for comic consumers as a whole, but I'd be on a new DP trade like, um...

Someone who wanted it badly. I think there are a few thousand like me - how much does a trade normally sell? I think the New X-Men ones have sold about 7,000 or so.

What trades should DC do, moriarty?

Other than Shade of course, which I'm quite excited about, and I did tell you all in the 'Milligan crap' thread, you know...

20:55 / 11.12.02

This isn't a put-down of Morrsion's Doom Patrol. It's a great comic, and I would love to see it in trade. That goes triple for Flex Mentallo.

My post was poorly worded. There are many great works that have been reprinted, but only in Archives or in those cheap Essentials-style books, of which I can rarely afford one and have no interest in the other. And there are many comics I would like to see reprinted that would generate less excitement than Morrison's Doom Patrol, it's true. Both lists, those that I would like to see reprinted in a colour trade format and those that have never been reprinted but only a small group would pay for, are really long lists. Huge.

The only thing I can really think of that would fit into the category I posted previously would be an Alex Toth collection put out by DC, but that's pretty unlikely to happen.

21:25 / 11.12.02

Maybe this all stems from my not understanding why a trade is necessary when with enough perserverance I have, and could again, put together complete runs of Morrison's Doom Patrol, Milligan's Shade, etc for less than half the cost of any trades.

From a business perspective, the back issues you buy don't put money in DC's coffers or result in royalties to the artists who created the work.

From a customer perspective, many bookstores are beginning to carry decent collections of trade paperbacks. These are selling to people who would probably otherwise never have been exposed to the series. We can already see this to an extent - think of how many printings of the Sandman books have been through. Surely by now they're selling to casual readers who probably have no idea they are reading "collections" in the first place.

21:28 / 11.12.02

I was kind of hoping that the mods would beat another poster to the punch and delete that last paragraph for me. Darn. It was a pretty pointless statement, and not only do you raise some good points against it, LLBG, I can think of many more. So, yeah. I don't know what I was thinking.

12:38 / 13.12.02

I think fraelyboy rools! when saying the shade trades won't stick. i bought the first twenty shades or so and they felt dated - this was about three years ago now. the fireworks don't kick off until the poetry mod boho art shit gets flying around issue mid thirties or so.

i like and hate the black and white marvel tpbs. without the poor art repro, i never would have noticed the emotional intensity of the dialogue of the early ff issues, but the dr strange one was bad because the art had all its fluid trippiness removed and all that was left was the dreadfully overwritten stories. but for dc to keep the best depths of its back catalogue between expensive hardcover bookends feels like a kick in the balls with cherry bovver boots. i want to read the drake/premiani issues of doom patrol and though i know on colour they'd be better i'm not that bothered if it makes the price right only for the fat middle aged credit card guys in the shop on thursdays who gets everything dc and marvel put out each week. [i hope they don't read all of it, for the sake of their minds.}

15:54 / 13.12.02

Hmm... I think I'm in the camp that doesn't know how well the first twenty or so issues of Shade will go down with 'the kids', as it were.

There are some really, really good bits in there, but on the whole it all feels like a bit of generic Vertigo book- kinda like the half-brother of Delano’s Hellblazer run, methinks. And much as I like the Delano’s (admittedly quite wonky sometimes) run on said title, there’s only been, what, one trade of it collected. I have a suspicion that Shade could suffer a similar fate, especially since at this rate it’ll take a good four or five trades before we get to the really great stuff that came later on.

I hope I’m wrong, and given how nice Bachalo’s art looks, and how cool McCarthy’s covers are, it's not improbable that I will be.

Hell, with any luck, the X-Force/X-Statix readership will eat this stuff up so we can get to the middle bit.

Man do I love the middle of this series… there’s so much good stuff going on between issue 30 and issue 50. Some of my all time fave comics, actually.

16:07 / 13.12.02

Yeah. That Vertigo relaunch has some good stories in it. All that stuff about what smug and obtuse bastards the Angels are ('The Area of Madness is only a part of the Area' or something like that), the 'Season in Hell' story, the Milligan stand-in Miles Laimling, Shade worrying about his hair. And so forth.

17:34 / 13.12.02

heh- I just noticed an amusing typo in my last post: "the Delano's"

Does this conjure up images of a more miserable british version of The Sopranos (set in the miserable Thatcherite 80's of course) to anyone else?

03:16 / 24.03.03

This is out. Has anyone else gotten it?

Well, this is my first read and I have to say it does have a very early 90s feel to it, which made it all kinda boring. All of the conspiracy stuff outvix mentioned is, by now, so played out that I found it hard to care. I loved the character and the premise (him being trapped in a serial killers body), but the stories were, blah. Maybe it'll all be readable again in another decade when the 90's will be cool again. Also, I kept thinking "Damn, these old comics are freakishly verbose! If I turn the page and find ten large caption boxes again, I'm putting this book down." But then I guess I'm used to the Authority-minimalist-manga-inspired writing. It's not like I couldn't work passed it... it was just a bit jarring.

17:56 / 17.07.07

Not entirely sure where to post this, but this ancient thread seems like the best place to find a taker.

Does anyone want a set of six promotional '90s Shade The Changing Man [Milligan, Bachalo, Pennington] postcards for free? The card stock's relatively flimsy and they're not in mint condition, but neither are they dog-eared. Postage paid to any Earth address. First person to reply gets them and we can PM to sort out the details.

I'm having a clear out.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

18:27 / 17.07.07

OOOOH! Me! Shade!

06:50 / 18.07.07

They're yours!

Twig the Wonder Kid

09:52 / 18.07.07

So I take it the Shade trade didn't sell well enough to do a second one.

They should have started mid series - jumped straight into the Hotel Shade stuff.

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