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Review: Shade the Changing Girl #10

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Shade10CoverOpening with a historical prologue where Shade witnesses Robert Oppenheimer’s first atomic test, Shade the Changing Girl #10 continues this second story arc’s road trip feel as our protagonist looks for the house of Honey Rich from her favorite Cold War era Earth sitcom Life with Honey. Cecil Castellucci’s plot continues to flit from location to location while Marley Zarcone gets to apply her bendy, trippy approach to art to a Metan vs. Metan action scene with help from inker Ande Parks. Everything is topped off with a nuclear-meets-semitones color palette from Kelly Fitzpatrick.

Shade  the Changing Girl uses the vessel of an alien girl trekking across America to explore what it means to be human on both a sad and whimsical level. There’s a wonderful double page spread from Zarcone of a Life with Honey themed board game that instantly brought back memories of playing a Leave It to Beaver board game on a family vacation at a cozy cabin in the California wilderness. It’s a moment of real happiness and nostalgia divorced from real world context. Kid Logan didn’t really know about McCarthyism, the Hays Code, or Cold War, but just old black and white sitcoms shown on TV Land (Which shows Scrubs now.) and stories from my grandparents.

In the character of Shade, Castellucci successfully imitates this limited perspective on the world that we have as kids as she is utterly heartbroken when she shows up to “Honey Rich’s house” and is promptly shown the door by an angry relative. It’s like when I discovered the music of Elvis through the movie Lilo and Stitch, wanted to go to Graceland and meet him, and then was told that he’d been dead for decades. Her Shadeinteriorcoping mechanism is very adult though as she ends up at a local bar drinking with a couple sad old men that she has chirping like birds thanks to the power of the madness vest. This kind of whiplash from very childlike behavior to adult ennui kind of nails what it means to be a young person in 2017 as I go from dusting off the old Nintendo 64 to navigating the world of health insurance in the same hour.

But Shade isn’t just about Shade. There are oodles of storylines featuring her old high school friends River and Teacup, her Metan pursuers, her old boyfriend LePuck, a government agency, and even Honey Rich herself. It’s like each page is telling a different story all skillfully connected by Rac Shade’s epigrammatic poetry and Shade’s wise-beyond-her-years narration. River is a great supporting character and still cares for Shade even though she left down in a dramatic fashion and has everyone worried. His piecing together clues through news reports and using the Internet to track and follow her is an excellent real world version of Shade’s own ability to use the M-Vest to travel through space and time in the blink of an eye.

Shade the Changing Girl #10 has a four page action scene because another issue of nameless Metan pursuers fiddling around and trying to find her would be boring. However, Castellucci, Zarcone, and Fitzpatrick make the fight quite clever like a bar fight meets a ballet with bonus vaporizing guns that go pink and blue. Shade looks human, but she moves with a madness using a shot glass as a deadly weapon instead of her fists. It all climaxes in an atomic pink panel where Shade goes from girl to weapon and walks away guilty among the grey bodies. She critiqued atomic weapons and nukes in the beginning of the comic, but now has become one and even caused collateral damage. There are lines on her face, and the madness vest looks less trippy cool and more ragged like she has aged decades in a single page.

The backup story in Shade the Changing Girl #10 is a darkly hilarious story of fallout shelter and songs that mask the fear behind nuclear war courtesy of Honey Rich and her best friend Carmen. Leila Del Duca nails the fashions of the 1950s and draws faces that seem ignorant, but are actually wise perfect for the tone of this satire disguised as a period piece sitcom.

Shade the Changing Girl #10 is another beautiful installment of Cecil Castellucci, Marley Zarcone, Ande Parks, and Kelly Fitzpatrick’s comic as Shade wrestles with nostalgia, reality, and death through bar fights, sitcoms, and national parks.

Story: Cecil Castellucci Art: Marley Zarcone
Inks: Ande Parks Colors: Kelly Fitzpatrick
Backup Art: Leila Del Duca
Story: 9 Art: 8.5 Overall: 8.7 Recommendation: Buy

DC Comics/Young Animal provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review

Find Out The Secret Loves of Geeks Next Valentine’s Day

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In honor of Pride Month, Dark Horse Comics has announced the second installment of the illustrated prose and comics anthology The Secret Loves of Geek Girls with The Secret Loves of Geeks. Editor Hope Nicholson returns to assemble a dazzling mix of prose, comics, and illustrated stories from a variety of creators.

Cartoonists and professional geeks tell the most intimate, heartbreaking, and inspiring stories about love, sex, and dating; featuring creators of all genders, orientations, and cultural backgrounds. The anthology includes work by Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale), Gerard Way (Umbrella Academy), Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind), Dana Simpson (Phoebe and Her Unicorn), Gabby Rivera (America), Hope Larson (Batgirl), Cecil Castellucci (Soupy Leaves Home), Valentine de Landro (Bitch Planet), Marley Zarcone (Shade), Sfé R. Monster (Beyond: A queer comics anthology), Amy Chu (Wonder Woman), and more. Becky Cloonan (The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys) illustrates the gorgeous and “catastic” cover.

The Secret Loves of Geeks drops Valentines Day, February 14, 2018!

Preview: Shade the Changing Girl #9

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Shade the Changing Girl #9

(W) Cecil Castellucci (A) Marley Zarcone, Brittney Williams, Ande Parks (CA) Becky Cloonan
In Shops: Jun 07, 2017
SRP: $3.99

Part two of Shade’s visit to Gotham City, the first stop on her tour of America. What will happen when she uses madness to get reality to line up with her American dreams? And now that her enemies on Meta have tracked Shade and the madness coat to Earth, she no longer has to worry about how she’s going to get back to her home planet-because Shade’s home planet is coming to her! All this and a new “Life With Honey” tale illustrated by guest artist Brittney Williams (Goldie Vance).

Preview: Shade, The Changing Girl #8

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Shade, The Changing Girl #8

(W) Cecil Castellucci (A) Marley Zarcone, Audrey Mok (CA) Becky Cloonan
MATURE READERS
In Shops: May 10, 2017
SRP: $3.99

Shade hits the road! After her high school friends made it clear they didn’t want her around, Shade realized she doesn’t want to be there anyway. Map in hand, she decides to explore America. First stop: Gotham City. The city’s population may have seen its fair share of madness, but never like this. The only thing Shade didn’t factor in is that embracing her powers ends up signaling her home planet as to her whereabouts, and Meta police are going to come looking for her stolen coat.

Review: Shade the Changing Girl #8

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Thousands of comic books have taken place in Gotham City, not to mention the plethora of films, cartoons, live action TV shows, and video games set in its dark, sometimes Gothic/sometimes a stand-in for New York, Chicago, or Pittsburgh streets. So, it’s really refreshing to see the most used city in the DC Universe through the new eyes of an Avian in the body of a teenage girl in Shade: The Changing Girl #8 by writer Cecil Castellucci, artist Marley Zarcone, and colorist Kelly Fitzpatrick with some inking done by Ande Parks. Shade has left the drama of high school behind to experience the world that she has read about through the poetry of Rac Shade or the 1950s sitcom Life with Honey.

It’s invigorating to see Shade literally transform the environment with her M-vest with Fitzpatrick turning the usually drab blacks and greys of Gotham into a real kaleidoscope of a color palette. Zarcone’s pencils and inks bend and flip with each whim that Shade has going from being cramped on public transportation to seeing a couple plays and even going to a museum and “talking” with dinosaurs, who honestly she has more kinship with humans because both Avians and dinosaurs had feathers.

Castellucci doesn’t give Shade #8 a straight ahead plot, but meanders with our narrator building up a kind of tone poem about how city dwellers take the wonder of theirs for granted. I was in Chicago a couple of weeks ago and was kind of amazed by the beauty of the Roman style gardens by the Art Institute, the fact that the play Hamilton is showing there, and the overload of good pizza places, which is something that someone who works downtown sees every day. Castellucci and Zarcone (Through Shade) find the every day beauty of the city and intensify it using the M-Vest and poetic narration.

One thing I liked about Shade #8 isn’t that aside from a joking reference to Batman (It’s the Gotham equivalent of small talk about the weather or local sports team.) that Castellucci and Zarcone avoid using guest stars, which would only stifle Shade’s pure experience of a day in the life of Gotham City. Sure, there are sub plots featuring her boyfriend LePuck being forced to wear an experimental version of the M-Vest, and people from her last city looking for Megan. (The girl whose body she is in.) However, these are seeded in for long term payoff, and in the here and now, we can revel as Shade easily understands the significance of a Statue of Liberty stand-in to welcome “aliens” of all kinds to Gotham, or how humans reveal more about their emotions through art (Like a Shakespeare or Henrik Ibsen play.) than every day conversation. And next issue is teased as being a musical one (And connected to the Life with Honey backup drawn gorgeously by Josie and the Pussycats‘ Audrey Mok.), which provides even more opportunities for Castellucci, Zarcone, and Fitzpatrick to play with emotions and colors in a magical way.

One thing that I have enjoyed about the Young Animal imprint as a whole in the sheer amount of imagination it adds to the DC Universe, and Shade the Changing Girl #8 is no exception. Using poetry, snatches of conversation, a whirlwind travelogue, and bursts of pop art colors, Cecil Castellucci, Marley Zarcone, and Kelly Fitzpatrick craft a comic that will even make the most jaded Batman fan smile and maybe scratch their head a little bit. The book is a lot like those music videos that Prince, Seal, and others did for the Burton/Schumacher era Batman movies, but with like 100 times less darkness and man pain.

Story: Cecil Castellucci Art: Marley Zarcone Inks: Ande Parks Colors: Kelly Fitzpatrick
Backup Art: Audrey Mok Backup Colors:  Kelly Fitzpatrick
Story: 8 Art: 10 Overall: 9 Recommendation: Buy

DC Comics/Young Animal provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review

Preview: Shade, The Changing Girl #4

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Shade, The Changing Girl #4

(W) Cecil Castellucci (A) Marley Zarcone, Ande Parks (CA) Becky Cloonan
In Shops: Jan 04, 2017
SRP: $3.99

As Megan, the soul that Shade displaced, gets farther and farther away from Earth, Shade is starting to find things about her new planet and her new body that she really likes. For instance, there’s music. And also boys. Not to mention would-be friends and her new parents. This feeling of peace keeps the madness in check – but only temporarily. There is still the matter of that terrible night that put Megan in a coma to begin with.

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Review: Shade, the Changing Girl #3

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stcg_cv3_dsWhen asked in interviews about the body horror of her series InSEXts, Marguerite Bennett would often describe the central conceit of the series in regards to how being a woman in this society is a body horror of its own. When asked by Paste Magazine about that common thread in her works, she said, “…If you are told that by virtue of your birth, you must offer your body and heart and compliance and emotional labor in the service of others and be grateful for the chance to be subservient to someone your society actually values and reflects in stories of heroism—you are going, very much, to be consumed by the ideas of monsters with power instead of human beings without it.”

I was thinking about that quote a lot when reading over this particular issue of Shade, the Changing Girl. While Cecil Castelucci and Marley Zarcone aren’t exploring body horror with Shade, they are taking more of a route of introspection, making it very clear that beneath all the Madness, alien visitation and the horrors of high school, Shade, the Changing Girl is a series about changing yourself and coming to grips with the person you used to be and the person you’re expected to be because of it.

While the reader still doesn’t know much about Loma Shade’s past, we and Shade are learning more and more about Megan’s. In short, Megan Boyer was kind of the worst. The palimpsest of Megan’s memories is becoming clearer and Shade struggles with the balance. “It’s hard enough to sit with your own thoughts. Even stranger to creep around in someone else’s leftover memories.”

Shade has been a dense work since it began a couple of months back, but this particular issue took me a couple of reads to fully appreciate. Now that Shade’s initial enthusiasm about being on Earth has faded off, she now has to begin to face the complications of actually being a teenage girl. Let alone a teenage girl who has been called a “toxic human” and a “sociopath” by her peers and distressed her parents to the point they were willing to pull the plug on her before Shade took over. Castellucci’s balance of telling finding oneself in the madness is gorgeous and made even better by Zarcone’s art and paneling. The two-page spread of Shade crawling around in Megan’s memories shaped like the plan of a house was particularly brilliant.

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As a result of trying to figure out the balance, Shade realizes that she’s going to have to start acting like Megan in order to survive the Madness and live on Earth. Probably not a moment too soon because not only is Meta getting closer to figuring out what is going on, but River starts to suspect that maybe there is something alien about her. Just in time for her to rise from the pool to strike her teammates, give into the Madness, get detention for it and for Megan’s spirit to feel the call of the Madness, of course.

Speaking of Meta, we get to see a bit more of life on the planet in this particular issue. Mellu Loran is trying to close in on the Madness Vest while Lepuck tries to figure out how to wake Loma up from her enclosure before it’s too late. Since I’m not as familiar with the original Shade, The Changing Man series, the importance of Loran was initially lost on me, but this month’s bio material includes a biography of her and what she’s been up to since she and Rac Shade called it quits. Between this, Mad Dog showing up in Cave Carson Has A Cybernetic Eye and the brilliant and mostly silent Dial H for Hero backup in this issue from Tini Howard and Sanya Anwar, I feel like I’m learning more about obscure DC and Vertigo characters from Young Animal than I have anywhere else.

Shade, the Changing Girl #3 continues the brilliant work of the series as Shade travels deeper into Megan’s psyche and memories to try and understand both Megan and herself. It leaves a certain vulnerability that wouldn’t have been possible in any other setting besides high school and Castellucci and Zarcone tell a story that makes it worth revisiting.

Story: Cecil Castellucci Art: Marley Zarcone and Kelly Fitzpatrick
Story: 8.5 Art: 10 Overall: 9.25 Recommendation: Read

DC Comics provided Graphic Policy with FREE copy for review

Preview: Shade the Changing Girl #3

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Shade the Changing Girl #3

(W) Cecil Castellucci (A) Marley Zarcone (CA) Becky Cloonan
In Shops: Dec 07, 2016
SRP: $3.99

Trying to settle into her new life as an Earth girl, Shade finds the body she has taken over doesn’t have the same skills as it did when its previous inhabitant was in charge. It’s bad enough that her swim team hates her, but now she can’t perform in the water at all. Can Shade find anyone she can trust to give her guidance before the madness takes over and exposes her as an alien to the entire school?

This issue features a variant cover by Paul Rentler that combines with this month’s other variant covers from DC’S Young Animal to form a single image.

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Review: Shade, The Changing Girl #2

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stcg_cv2_open_order_varSchool is Hell. School is madness, even for the displaced avian Lomo currently inhabiting Earth girl Megan as she returns to Amelia Bloomer High School, much to the confusion of her fellow students. Insisting on being called shade in her new amalgamation of body and personality. Her peers are obviously wary of her, assuming her strange and oddly calm behavior is a result of her accident and resulting coma as she struggles to make sense of her place in the social strata of the school, her relationships with other students and even lunchtime.

Series writer Cecil Castellucci is crafting a strangely off-kilter look at this world through the eyes of her uniquely alien, avian creation Loma. Far more advanced and intelligent then the primitive world around her she none the less has to work to make sense of her strange new home and the people around her already questioning her act of rebellion in stealing the M-vest. Thrown into school Loma has a lot more interactions this issue as we start to learn more and more about Megan’s life. Faced with the tense and confused reactions of Megan’s former friends, unaware the majority wanted her dead. While initially indifferent to those around Loma is still left with the creeping uneasy sense that she’s logged herself firmly into a human with a very complicated and prickly past than she might have first thought. So far there is no sign of the previous occupant, Megan, beyond her memories but it’s such a tantalizing layer to add to an already out there story,  I have a hard time believing that Castellucci won’t bring some of this into the mix during her run.

Being no stranger to writing teens in her long career as a novelist or indeed the criminally overlooked Plain Janes for DC’s last teen-oriented imprint, Minx back in 2008, She has an amazing grasp on writing what feels like authentic teens dialogue and speech patterns without ever slipping into groan worthy cliche or dropping in social media mentions and in fact seems to be actively avoiding this particular pitfall with Shade. The comic slips between this tone and Loma’s more poetic inner monologue beautifully. Ultimately I was left with the feeling that even if the alien elements were stripped out, this series is strong enough already that it would still work wonderfully as a story of identity, change and dealing with the preconceptions others bring into that equation. Working as it’s own unique story even for those like myself who might be coming to the book with only general idea of Shade’s long and esoteric character history.
Matching this with some sensational art  from Marley Zarcone further sets this apart from the rest of the comics crowd, Imbuing the comic from start to finish with its own loose flow and momentum as the story drifts almost lazily and fluidly from one moment to the next. A page featuring Megan getting ready for school shows this in a single panel showing her movement from the room and time, faint versions of herself around the room almost like echoes which emphasizes the books dreamlike qualities and elements of madness. Despite the book’s solicitation saying “No one can have a little bit of madness” the visuals are toned down this issue letting the book breath a  little after the stunning visual spectacle of its debut issue. Subtle and effective when they are used, a small poster here, the madness takes over small parts of her surroundings almost seeping through into the panels.

“I have to study up. Do my homework to really live this life” Shade promises herself setting out her plan for the future as this issue itself does, expanding on the last issue this one treats us to just a little more of Megan’s life, a world that Castellucci makes you eager to explore and learn more about as Loma sets about discovering too. Gorgeous art and sharp writing sets this as a perfect allegory for being an uneasy teen and a story of identity put through a psychedelic, kaleidoscope filter.

Review: Shade, The Changing Girl #2

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422284-_sx1280_ql80_ttd_High school is pretty terrible to begin with. The angst, the pressure, the hormones… I don’t know many people who actually claim that high school was the best time of their life. Being myself in high school was hard enough. I can’t imagine being an alien in a Madness Vest possessing the body of a 15-year-old girl.

For Loma Shade though, life has gotten that complicated. After possessing the body of Megan, Shade is dealing with the fallout of her new body’s previous owner’s life. While the details are fuzzy on just what happened that caused Megan to slip into a coma in the first place, the details are even more fuzzy to Shade. Bits and pieces slip in, but not enough to form a coherent picture of anything. It’s enough to overwhelm our new traveler as she tries to deal with the Madness for the first time. Something that, if the Ministry of Ministries on Meta is to be believed, can kill her if she’s not careful.

So far in its first two issues, Shade, The Changing Girl is a dense book. It throws you right into the Madness experienced by Shade as she tries to navigate her new life. The balance between Cecil Castellucci’s writing and Marley Zarcone and Kelly Fitzpatrick’s art makes sure of that. However, in the Madness, there is still a relatable story. In the case of this particular issue, it’s isolation. If you were any sort of weird kid in school, Shade’s struggle to understand the politics of popularity as well as her own life and her boredom with the material being taught is a straight blast from the past. Granted, with the extra alien layer, but that’s what makes it so mind bending and great. Part of what makes it so easy to lose yourself in this book is the colorful and twisty art from Zarcone and Fitzpatrick.

Along with Shade’s struggle to adapt to her new life is a web of mysteries that builds on top of each other. Shade is trying to put together just what these people in her life are supposed to be to her. The swim team stays quiet, whispering to each other messages of fear. Megan’s mother Anna struggles to figure out just what her “daughter’s” deal is since waking up. The Ministry on Meta is trying to find the vest while Lepuck struggles to keep quiet about what Loma did. On top of all of this, it appears that Megan’s spirit might not be as dead as originally thought. Uh oh.

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With all of that going on, it’s easy to understand why Shade wants to cling to River, but it’s also a good way to keep the plot moving forward. Now we’re in at least three different levels of intrigue as Shade has at least two groups trying to stop her. Not to mention wondering what the newly noncorporeal Megan will do now that she’s not bound to her broken body. If she’s going to be the figure in the wallpaper, to steal an allusion from this issue. This is what really drives this issue. Wondering just what Shade is going to do as all of these known and unknown forces prepare to move in. For her though, it’s less about a potential fight and more trying to understand her new life as she drags an old TV inside after walking home from school for “homework.” Let’s hope she can understand it before the Ministry or the Madness kills her.

Story: Cecil Castellucci Art: Marley Zarcone and Kelly Fitzpatrick
Story: 8.5 Art: 9.5 Overall: 9.0 Recommendation: Buy

DC Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review

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