WIBR: Shade: The Changing Man vol. 3 — Scream Time

It’s easy to see how this series broke new ground at the time in mainstream comics.  The overall “madness” of the premise gives us lots of interesting stories as Shade wanders around Santa Fe trying not to feel guilty while insect legs grow out of his head, and his showdown with the American Scream in a megamart-styled Wild West.  Still, time marches on and a lot of the boundary-pushing that was cool then comes off as rather quaint now.  What makes this volume readable is how writer Peter Milligan keeps to a logical progression of events in this stories, so that even if they are awash in weirdness the plot remains understandable and fairly easy to follow.  The most surprising thing here is looking at artist Chris Bachalo’s style then and marveling at how it has changed over the years.  There are kernels of what would become his contemporary style here, but his older style still works pretty well in terms of bringing the surreal to life on the page.