20 cool psychedelic comics to read after seeing Thor: Ragnarok

Shade, The Changing Man (Cover image via Vertigo/DC Comics)

14. Shade, the Changing Man

Like quite a few comics characters, Shade, the Changing Man has many different iterations. He first shows up in June 1977, in Shade the Changing Man #1. While creator Steve Ditko did create an originally weird concept, the really trippy parts didn’t come in until the 1990s. That’s when Shade was adapted by Peter Milligan and Chris Bachalo for DC’s more graphic, adult-oriented imprint, Vertigo.

This new Shade was part of the so-called “British invasion” of comics in the 1990s. That’s when British writers like Neil Gaiman (of the famous Sandman series) and Grant Morrison really started to make their mark in the comics world.

Though Shade appeared in the DC world, he soon broke away from his 1970s origins. Shade becomes a lovelorn poet who is also working to keep his planet away from a tide of insanity, the “American Scream”.

Shade also wears a “Madness-Vest” that can warp reality. He forms an alter ego, Hades, that isn’t evil so much as a manifestation of Shade’s desire-driven id.

Of course, like many trippy and psychedelic comics, reality and identity are only paper-thin concepts. Thus, Shade is killed many times over. Each time, he (or she) returns in a different form. Sometimes, Shade is a dark-haired madman. Other times, a red-haired hipster, or a woman sharing a body with its previous, murdered owner. That mod hipster personality, by the way, once removed his heart and locked it in a metal box to alleviate his own suffering. Like you do.