Shade, The Changing Girl: Earth Girl Made Easy

Shade, the Changing Girl, Volume 1: Earth Girl Made Easy by Cecil Castellucci
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Loma, an alien from Meta, tries on Rac Shade's legendary madness coat and finds herself on earth, in the body of a brain-dead girl, Megan, who was not very nice before her accident. Will she adjust to Megan's life with Metan authorities on her trail?

As someone who has most of the Steve Ditko Shade run from the 1970s AND most of the 1990s Vertigo run, I approached Shade The Changing Girl with cautious optimism. Since the Young Animal imprint seems to be the second coming of Vertigo, I figured I'd give it a shot.

I wound up digging it. Shade, The Changing Girl, takes elements from both the Ditko run and the Peter Milligan-penned Vertigo adventures. Honestly, it's more coherent that both were a lot of the time.

Shade, The Changing Girl, is a fish (or bird) out of water story as Loma steps into Megan Boyer's life and tries to experience earth life. Too bad Megan was a tremendous bitch. As Loma pieces together what happened on the night Megan drowned, she makes friends and encounters a lot of people Megan did wrong. A LOT of people. Even her parents hate her.

Without spoiling things too much, Earth Girl Made Easy laid a lot of groundwork and set the stage for future adventures. It was really cool that Mellu is on the trail of the stolen M-Vest. I have a feeling Shade and River will be visiting Meta and the Area of Madness in the future. It kind of feels like Doctor Who in a way.

Earth Girl Made Easy feels like it could easily fit into the Vertigo Shade series. As a long time Shade fan, I'm pretty excited about what's to come. Four out of five stars.

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