Some thoughts about Shade: The Changing Girl #1

A new life is born.

A mysterious alien has found itself in the body of a comatose girl who might be able to get her own identity a new meaning.

DC Young Animal imprint continues and this time in a classic Vertigo franchise. For people who don't know, this particular version of Shade was made famous by Peter Milligan during the 90's by exploring the different concepts related to change which makes it pretty fiting that this Shade returns as a girl. How does it fare?

Well, it does follow the kind of Vertigo tone that you would expect from this line.

Cecil Catellucci opens the story by immediately exploring the whole nature of Loma as an alien who invades the body of a young girl called Megan who had no hope of ever awakening. This in and on itself is a pretty interesting premise which allows to create some interesting moments of characterization and the dilemma of using another identity to infiltrate on Earth and connect with the girl's loved ones.

The writer certainly contrasts the two identities by showing how bizarre Loma's life was and the storytelling in these segments are appropriate for it while the ones focusing on Megan's past show that she was a pretty shallow and unlikable girl, which is not quite different from how Loma was, and this allows for some compelling parallels.

Marley Zarcone handles the artwork and it certainly has a pretty adequate style for the story due that is able to create quite creative layouts that exploit the supernatural direction perfectly and is really vibrant at it.

There's a second segment written and drawn by Natalia and Gilbert Fernandez based on a little tale about another alien form that it focuses more on being cute with an artstyle that complements it.

Overall, is yet another book very influenced by Vertigo, at times it feels like is way too much influenced by it to the point that it almost becomes a parody due to how overly-weird is but I guess people interested in this kind of tone might enjoy it.