I'm just coming to the last few pages (I hope) of a major digital comic project (currently at about 330 pages, with an average of 4-9 pictures per page. Since it's taken about 2 years to do, I started with P4 propack, only used P5 for a very short time (because I hated it and it took them so long to create a version that actually worked), and then moved on to the wonderful, wonderful P6. Like aeilkema, I've used various other bits of software for other projects, but the comic has been created entirely with Poser and Paint Shop Pro. I don't think you need Shade. Basically you can do everything you need with just Poser and a half-decent 2D program.