The Vertigo Thread

Other current Vertigo I love:

Y, of course, Fables, of course, Lucifer (which I at first dismissed as cashing on the Gaiman cow, then tried to get into, failed, and then really got into ten issues later...I've been onboard for a good six issues or so now), and probably some things I'm forgetting. Is Human Target on Vertigo? They really seem pretty solid these days, despite the token goth-kid comics like that new witch series.

I really want to like Hellblazer, since I like John Constantine and I like Mike Carey on Lucifer, but it's one of the very few comics that the art just turned me the hell off of (in the last arc). The writing didn't help. Maybe the other stuff is better.

NB I'm drunk.

Y has overplayed the limited hand it had, I think, and is starting to recycle plots - or maybe it just seems that way. Also, the last Fables arc has done nothing for me.

The two best ongoing Vertigo titles at the moment though are certainly Human Target and The Losers.

What's Constantine been up to for the last 150 issues? Still narrowly avoiding meaningful relationships and eternal damnation? Did that Vampire King from #50 ever turn up again? Is his niece all grown up now, what was her name, Gemma?

Lucifer and Fables are certainly tops for me -- sometimes in that order, sometimes the other way around. I haven't been all that tempted to pick up Hellblazer again, though, despite Carey ... I haven't read the title since Ennis was writing it, except for an issue here and there, and I don't know if I've lost my interest in Constantine per se (I always thought he was a better supporting character) or just my investment in the title.

I'm loving Fables, and I think I may actually go buy individual issues this weekend, which I never do.

Y is certainly taking its sweet time, but I keep thinking that something big has got to actually happen soon (or later). It's still pleasant enough when nothing is happening, and I love the art. It reminds me of Steve Dillon on Preacher, very clean, lots of space.

I have a crush on Bigby Wolf.

Vermont Girl, please tell me I'm not alone.

I just get a little frustrated when they introduce this wicked idea and put things in motion that will supposedly lead to some sort of explanation or revelation, but then they sort of go, "okay, now that we have you hooked on the BIG MYSTERY, we're gonna take a bunch of sideroads."
I mean, I guess they can't just reveal everything or that would be the end, or the beginning of Vertigo-Kamandi or something.

Okay, I don't get THAT emotional about it, but it irks me.

Wouldn't it be much, much more artificial if you had a guy named Yorick running around and no one ever commented on it?

Vertigo can do no wrong in my eyes because it birthed the Sandman. Do you think it would be fair to say that Vertigo is the house that Sandman built?

I get lots of Vertigo titles: Y, Fables, The Witching (and I'm trying to ignore the "They really seem pretty solid these days, despite the token goth-kid comics like that new witch series." comment that Jordan made...), We3, the new Books of Magick and...

I think that's it.

What does "SEEKERS: INTO THE MYSTERY" refer to? I don't get it... What was it about?

It was about hippie bullshit.

Several more blasts from the past.

Keep in mind it's not like I've actually read it or anything. :>

Vermont Girl OTM about Sandman's place. It's been directly responsible for a boggling number of titles as well: Lucifer, The Dreaming, two Thessaliad series, the Mervin one-shot, the Corinthian miniseries, The Witching, the Prez one-shot and two (three?) gallerys. Add in two series of The Books of Magic, The Trenchcoat Brigade and Black Orchid to assess the lengths Karen Berger will go to in order to keep making money out of suckers the breadth and depth of his contribution to adult edgy comics.

Yes, okay, The Craft is one of those movies I can watch over and over again, but there are some pretty cool parts in the most recent Witching (#3?). The story still feels a little unfocused but once the three get together, I think some cool shit might go down.

I don't know, the three and the maiden, mother and crone thing will never go out of style for me. I loved it in Sandman and, [I'm revealing an embarrassing secret here, which leaves me open to ridicule and therefore vulnerable, so don't be too mean] a total cheese romance trilogy. Agghh! I'm so embarrassed!

[And thanks for the fake-out Jocelyn. I read your first comment and literally went, "Whew! Tee hee. I guess I'm not the only-" and then your next comment, "- WHAT?! Arrrggggh..." It's all good, though. It's all good... I mean, hah, I was just kidding about all witch stuff, hah ha... ha.]

Moving it over from the "what are you reading" thread:

I really liked Kiernan's Dreaming for the most part (I don't think she did much else for Vertigo outside of the rare Sandman-related miniseries). I mean, she's pretty goth-y, but you have to have a tolerance for that sort of thing if you're delving very deeply into that era of Vertigo.

I'm generally fond of the Vertigo/pre-Vertigo titles that got all of the accolades (Sandman, Swamp Thing, Morrison's Animal Man and Doom Patrol, etc.), but I have a special place in my heart for a lot of stuff that went under the radar.

I've said as much on the board at least a half dozen times by now, but the simultaneous runs of Veitch's Swamp Thing and Delano's Hellblazer comprise some of my favorite comics of all time. Mine is not the most widely-held opinion, I know, but I think that's the apex of those characters and their respective titles.

Rachel Pollack's Doom Patrol is a hot, hot mess, but it is decidedly its own thing. Weird and inscrutable in a different way than Morrison's run. I don't think it's very popular, but I dug it.

Mark Millar's Swamp Thing run (which is rumored to have been ghost co-written by Grant Morrison for more than just the initial four issues for which he was credited) is quite good. It feels icky like a horror book should (Phil Hester's art helps greatly). Some clever conceits and episodic world building that make it feel a bit like modern day genre television. Avoid the pre-Millar Nancy Collins run like the plague (probably the worst thing to come out of Vertigo, which is saying something).

I'll have to have a think about this.

{This thread, for the sake of future reference.)

I never read much of these but the last Vertigo thing I read was Cuba:My Revolution, a welcome slap against all those "Che Guevara was great" comics by Spain Rodriguez and too many others. It's kind of an autobio by Lockpez, as someone who really wanted to believe in the revolution but kept seeing the horrible reality. I don't think Haspiel's art did anything special but works well enough to get the account across.

I read most of Hard Time by Gerber but it really didn't do anything that wasn't done better by the OZ tv prison drama. Hard Time had a supernatural element but I never read the last few issues to get the relevance of it.

I read 7 or 8 issues of Codename: Knockout but the covers by Chiodo were the only thing that made an impression. It was a sexy crime comic.

hard time was gonna be part of this whole line of 'semi-realistic' people-with-powers titles that wasn't even part of vertigo. the rest of the line got killed in the crib (yes i had a pitch that was green-then-red-lit) and hard time was the only one to see the light.

that willow wilson book looked cool did any of you guys read that?

Cairo or Air?

Cairo

Agree that Veitch’s Swamp Thing is great, and feels more coherent than Moore’s, too. Largely because of the more consistent art, and the way that fill-in artists were usually fit to specific stories (Gaiman may have drawn from this on Sandman), under Veitch’s planning, not just parachuted onto an issue in panic by the editor, which seemed to generally be the case in Moore’s run (Pog one obvious exception). Also notable that Veitch ghosted much of the Bissette/Totleben material in Moore’s first year. Not sure this particular strand ought to have been migrated here though because

Moore's Swamp Thing is the only Vertigo run I ever read the whole of

Moore’s Swamp Thing ended six years before Vertigo started.

I just wish the whole British invasion could have just stayed in Britain with creator owned books that Americans could read

Stayed in Britain with what industry?

Mark Millar's Swamp Thing run (which is rumored to have been ghost co-written by Grant Morrison for more than just the initial four issues for which he was credited) is quite good.

Morrison & Millar kibbitzed a lot on plots but Morrison didn’t do any actual writing past those first four, I believe.

Yeah, first Vertigo Swamp Thing is during the Nancy Collins era. First Hellblazer is during Garth Ennis' run. Doom Patrol starts with Rachel Pollack's first issue. The first Vertigo Sandman is Brief Lives pt7. The final launch title is Shade #33, the first one with him back in the present day as an empty shell.

It's weird to think how late it actually started, compared to the public perception.

Fables is the only one I'm still reading, and it's racing towards conclusion in the next 9 months.

I've read both Cairo and Air... I think Wilson has a lot of cool ideas, and she has a unique take on magical realism, but her writing is also kinda uneven and sometimes feel oddly deflated, considering the type of stories she tells. Air is definitely better than Cairo (which feels like a practice piece), though it suffers from the story ending a bit prematurely due to its cancellation (at least there is a proper ending, though). M. K. Perker's art is pretty inconsistent too, he's great at composition and wide-scale images, but his humans often look oddly disfigured, and he has problems keeping the character models consistent, so people's faces may look wildly different from panel to panel.

But I'd still recommend checking Air out, as far as urban fantasy/magical realism goes it's quite unlike anything else Vertigo has published.

Any of you been following The Unwritten? IMO it's been consistently good, and Carey's take on storytelling, myths and fantasy is certainly more original than what Fables & co are doing. That said, I'm glad it's soon coming to an end too, since it feels Carey has said pretty much everything he can within this framework.

I liked Fables too for the first 50 issues or so, despite Willingham's conservative politics occasionally shining through too obviously, but feels like it's been going on way too long due to its success. (Fables must be the second most popular Vertigo book after Sandman, right?) The story should've ended with the defeat of the Adversary, the Mr. Dark business and everything after that has been more or less anti-climactic. (Though I gotta still love him for making the second Big Bad an evil version of Gaiman's Sandman.) It's pretty obvious Willingham had no long-term plans for the plot once the war arc was finished.

I know it only officially started later on but don't all those collected editions have the Vertigo label on them? Treated as Vertigo comics in retrospect.

Obviously my speculations about what the British comics scene could have been is more made of wishful thinking than business knowledge.
But in the 80s and early 90s there were quite a few more British comics (including Marvel UK titles that weren't just reprints). I don't know what kind of money they were making or if they needed other jobs to support their comics work. But imagining they all stayed, surely there would have been a bigger comics scene in britain?

It's not that I'm particularly pro-British, it doesn't bother me at all when brits get published by American companies, more that I could see them having more control over their creations and probably less pressure to fit in to the sort of titles DC was willing to produce.

What made me think of all this was Quentin Tarantino complaining about brits relying more on America than keeping their own film industry growing.
I'm not really sure what to make of that because it's difficult to imagine Jason Statham ever having the sort of career he wanted in Britain but Tarantino was in favour of the sort of unique things that can grow in different countries.

I'm not putting this very well but I'd like to see you guys thoughts on this.

British comics in complete decline by then, sales had dropped to the point where Battle merged with Eagle in 1988 (and it had already absorbed Action in 1977). Tiger was kind of the daddy of them all, taking in lots of titles (such as my well-loved Speed) before it finally folded in the early 80s(?) and was kind of taken over by the Roy Race comic which ran until the early 90s. Scream only ran for about 3 months before it became part of Eagle. Starlord and Tornado were both fairly short-lived before 2000AD co-opted them, Vulcan had about 2 years before merging with Valiant which then merged with Eagle a couple of years later.

Most of the people you associate with, say, 2000AD and the remainder of the IPC line were also doing the girls' comics such as Jinty and Misty (both of which I really like).

The biggest success story in terms of publication was, and still is, Commando by DC Thomson which has an awful lot of art that's recognizable by e.g. John Ridgway and famously (according to him) refused to let Garth Ennis write for them, which was why he did War Stories.

Weren't Crisis, Revolver, Deadline, Toxic and 2000AD doing quite well? There was another title that was a lot like Heavy Metal but I don't think it was successful (explains why I can't remember but I think I have an issue somewhere).
I have no idea what kind of sales Marvel UK titles like Motormouth and Death's Head did.

Crisis only ran for three years, was mainly reprints for the last half of that and was a monthly for the final year. Revolver was only 7 issues. Toxic ran for 6 months. Deadline had a good run at it, but was as much a music magazine as comics and arguably was more interested in that side of things until Tank Girl blew up. After the failure of the TG movie it mainly reprinted US stuff like L&R, Flaming Carrot and Milk & Cheese.

Also honorable mentions to The Man At The Crossroads and his attempts through psst! and Escape to promote bande dessinee in Britain, to complete market disinterest.

> Deadline had a good run at it, but was as much a music magazine as comics

only in the last year or so. and by that time it was mostly reprints (albeit reprints of good american things that i hadn't read before).

i think they were victims of their own success really - the hewletts and bonds and dylans going on to bigger and better things.

Not at all, Blur as an example were in it all the time around the time of Leisure (91), Curve were on the front iirc before they were signed (1990), Ride were old hat by the time of Going Blank Again (early 92), Carter had a big feature when Sherriff Fatman came out (89?)...

but there'd be one or two pages of cud interview and 20 of comics.

My memory is definitely that it was about half and half. The real reason for the success imo is that it was bought by a lot of people who didn't buy comics, and they didn't start doing that because of the comics.

i have a complete set sat by the bed at the moment, having dug them out to scan all the wired world strips*, so i'll have a look tonight. it changed a lot over the years, was quite sad to see.

(*
http://www.flickr.com/photos/31962137@N00/sets/72157626379868868/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/31962137@N00/sets/72157626254976253/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/31962137@N00/sets/72157626379764964/
etc
)

http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Glyn-Swerve-cover.jpg

Take this cover for example - the strip on the cover gets top billing then four bands are billed above Hugo Tate.

Even issue one only has Tank Girl listed as content (although Bolland interview tenuously).

http://www.tankgirl.info/tankgirl/images/strips/covers/deadline/dead1.jpg

Actually, that Tank Girl site has all the TG covers - which for the first couple of years is basically everything - and there's next to no comics content on the covers other than the strip which is on the front. It takes 6 months for them to have the name of 2 on the front, and by #14 there are none for months.

skottie young sketches spider

http://images.cdn.bigcartel.com/bigcartel/product_images/141011302/max_h-1000+max_w-1000/Transmet.jpg

So rather than attempt to alter modern day Vertigo to make it resemble the old school version we all love, DC is starting a whole new sub-imprint called Young Animal, featuring a Doom Patrol reboot and Shade the Changing Girl, among others. The creative teams are basically unknown to me, but it seems to be going for the spirit of '90s Vertigo (another new title: Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye). My interest is piqued, if hesitantly so. Because, y'know, DC.

Gerard Way's been doing comics regularly for many years now. Cecil Castellucci and Becky Cloonan have both been around for more than a decade, Oeming and Edwards since the '90s. No idea about any of the guys co-writing with Way.

Amazing that moving the entire company across a continent hasn't prompted any examination of Didio/Lee's "reboot a bunch of shit at once with no planning and see if it sticks" policy, over and over again.

Is Gerard Way the guy who wrote Umbrella Academy? Because that was some teen-angsty Goth bullshit. He'd be better fit for writing Harley Quinn or something than Doom Patrol.

gerard way's a big morrison disciple so i guess he makes some sense as a doom patrol writer

i just hope they honour the spirit of 90s vertigo with shitty, muddy colouring in every book

A Morrison disciple? I didn't get that vibe from Umbrella Academy, except maybe for the bit about the Eiffel Tower. Has he written any other major comics?

i've never read any of his stuff - i just know they're buddies and i've read some interviews where way expresses his admiration for morrison's writing

apropos of nothing other than they've both worked for vertigo: i met both grant morrison and frank quitely a few weeks ago in glasgow and they were fucking awesome

I can see him being influenced by Morrison in a superficial way, like having one of the main characters in Umbrella Academy be a dude with gorilla hands and other such surreal details, but the vibe of UA is all gloomy and doomy in way that's almost antithetical to Morrison's optimism. It's more like Chris Claremont style superhero soap opera combined with goth angst.

(xpost)

There's more than no connection:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egG7fiE89IU

Oh yeah, I forgot Way was also the dude who was in a big(?) band. I keep confusing him with the guy who wrote some Green Lantern comics in the 90s, but I guess that was some other Gerard...

You're thinking of Gerard Jones.

I should've specified that I'm not familiar with the writers inasmuch as I haven't read their stuff. I am familiar with the existence of Gerard Way and Umbrella Academy. I guess I should check it out to see how I feel about him taking over these characters.

Just re-reading DeMatteis's Doctor Fate run, which is very Vertigo-y: muddy colours, vampires, claptrappy captions, Shawn McManus art. It's very good tho'

Just read a fun Vertigo miniseries that rarely gets mentioned, Steve Gerber's Nevada. Completely bonkers and a lot of fun with it. Great character, too. My only problem was that it seemed to have been set up for a sequel, or further stories which never materialised.

There were short Nevada stories in two of the Vertigo Winter's Edge specials. But yeah, that was pretty much it.

I'll have to track those down!

I had a similar problem with the ending of his (otherwise excellent) Foolkiller mini, but that story took place within the Marvel universe, so other writers could potentially use him. It was still one of the best takes on the "what if a vigilante superhero were REAL?" idea I've ever read.

So it's well-established at this point that I'm a total sucker wrt comics (at the very least), but oh my am I ever salivating over what appears to be the re-partitioning of the old school Vertigo universe (or the Sandman Universe, as it's now being called), despite Si Spurrier being the only writer on the line whose work I'm familiar with.

Look, I know it probably won't be good, but I have a deep attachment to that shared universe prior to its being ported over to the DCU proper. If nothing else, this'll prompt me to reread all of the classic stuff.

that shared universe prior to its being ported over to the DCU proper

???

I'm talking about the New 52 nonsense of putting Tim Hunter on a Justice League team and having John Constantine battle Dark Orko.

this'll prompt me to reread all of the classic stuff.

i dunno if i could stomach that much muddy, indistinct colour work these days tbh

Swamp Thing was fighting (with? against?) Batman in the 70s...

(first ST i bought was #46, the crisis crossover issue)

Yes, the DC-owned properties that eventually became part of the Vertigo imprint did in fact originate in and among the DC Universe proper. And then Vertigo happened and those characters were more or less sealed off in their own little corner of the world for a couple of decades. I promise I'm not making this up. You can check the history books and everything.

bg, the material largely and surprisingly holds up (I reread everything from Moore's ST through Lucifer about ten years back) even if some of it has the color range of a rusted rain barrel full of mud.

As big a Marvel Zombie as I am, I might be an even bigger zombie for the best of this stuff. If such a thing is even possible. The parallel runs of Rick Veitch on ST and Jamie Delano on Hellblazer remain some of my favorite comics of all time.

bg, the material largely and surprisingly holds up (I reread everything from Moore's ST through Lucifer about ten years back) even if some of it has the color range of a rusted rain barrel full of mud

oh yeah, i have a lot of fondness for a lot of vertigo stuff (and precursors like morrison's animal man, which is still maybe my favourite-ever run out of everything he's ever done) but damn i also have a lot of teenage memories of squinting at brown-and-purple-smeared pages trying to work out wtf is going on

The recolourings are worse though, esp Sandman

90s computerised mud >> 00s computerised recolouring

has anything from Vertigo ever been recoloured? even Sandman wasn't afaik

(went to Vertigo circa #37 iirc)

checked: #47.

I know at the very least that Flex Mentallo was controversially and fairly radically recolored for the collected edition.

oh ya

not muddy brown-&-purple to begin with though

Sandman was recolored for the massive omnibus versions.

I've been tempted to re-read Shade the Changing Man but idk

I really soured on Sandman on my last re-reading (some thoughts here: Neil Gaiman - S/D)

Swamp Thing is still all-time great of course. That Bissette/Totleben artwork is some of the greatest comics art ever imo, I never get tired of looking at it.

I don't know that Shade held up as well on a reread but there are bits that are still fantastic. It was probably my favorite of the bunch by the time Vertigo proper was underway.

Books of Magic is a sleeper. I love the majority of that first series. The initial Gaiman miniseries is also good.

yeah the initial Books of Magic miniseries is p good

Sandman was recolored for the massive omnibus versions.

the question was about Vertigo comics

Gaiman's Sandman wasn't Vertigo?

sic, you're slipping, man.

this is a v upsetting development

sic are u okay

Gaiman's Sandman wasn't Vertigo?

bg, the material largely and surprisingly holds up (I reread everything from Moore's ST through Lucifer about ten years back) even if some of it has the color range of a rusted rain barrel full of mud.

― I really like the acting, dialogue and especially the scenes (Old Lunch), Friday, May 25, 2018 10:15 PM (yesterday)

oh yeah, i have a lot of fondness for a lot of vertigo stuff (and precursors like morrison's animal man, which is still maybe my favourite-ever run out of everything he's ever done) but damn i also have a lot of teenage memories of squinting at brown-and-purple-smeared pages trying to work out wtf is going on

― i am fast and full of teeth. i willl die in a barn fire (bizarro gazzara), Friday, May 25, 2018 10:26 PM (yesterday)

The recolourings are worse though, esp Sandman

90s computerised mud >> 00s computerised recolouring

― Chuck_Tatum, Saturday, May 26, 2018 2:43 AM (three hours ago)

has anything from Vertigo ever been recoloured? even Sandman wasn't afaik

...

(went to Vertigo circa #37 iirc)

...

checked: #47.

― we used to get our kicks reading surfing MAGAzines (sic), Saturday, May 26, 2018 3:31 AM (two hours ago)

I know at the very least that Flex Mentallo was controversially and fairly radically recolored for the collected edition.

― I really like the acting, dialogue and especially the scenes (Old Lunch), Saturday, May 26, 2018 3:32 AM (two hours ago)

oh ya

not muddy brown-&-purple to begin with though

― we used to get our kicks reading surfing MAGAzines (sic), Saturday, May 26, 2018 4:05 AM (two hours ago)

It was the Sandman Absoloute Editions that were recolored.

please to tell me which issues of Sandman #1 through #18 were published by Vertigo in the 1990s with a muddy brown-and-purple colour palette, and were also somehow numbered somewhere between #47 and #75

Dunno about any of that I'm just saying which Sandman books were recolored.

I'll give you eighteen guesses at which issues of Sandman were recoloured for the "absolute" editions

Whew, okay, didn't realize you were just kicking it up into uber-pedant mode, don't scare us like that bruh.

Mods, plz change thread title to 'The Vertigo (and properties which one might consider grandfathered into the Vertigo imprint, were one a dullard) Thread'

The colour pallette under discussion is specifically a Vertigo thing - though derived from pre-Vertigo Hellblazer, neither Sandman nor Doom Patrol nor Swamp Thing nor Shade The Changing Man nor Animal Man (under Morrison or Milligan or Truog) nor Black Orchid nor Watchmen nor Prez The Teenage President used it.

Plenty of '90s Vertigo that did use it could toootally benefit from a recolouring though, which is why I was asking!

or 12-issue collections of Sandman Mystery Theatre printed in b&w, with light half-toning if needed for clarity

Would buy except that I wouldn't allow myself to get burned by a third SMT reprint project that distractedly wanders off before it's finished what it set out to do (the most recent having ended with a paltry two volumes).

I had also totally forgotten that Sandman wasn't always a Vertigo comic, so good to be reminded/corrected.

My fave Vertigo comics remain two mini-series written by Pete Milligan at the top of his game - The Extremist, with Ted McKeever, and Enigma, with Duncan Fegredo.

Enigma was one of the best things to come out of Vertigo.

(In before the boffins: Enigma was actually intended to be part of Disney's Touchmark mature readers imprint along with several other titles that ultimately formed the foundation of Vertigo proper after Disney got cold feet.)

I always liked Sebastian O, from Grant Morrison’s “cheeky young man” phase, although it might have benefited from being half or twice the length.

I’ve started Enigma multiple times in my life and never finished it. Will try again this weekend.

Has the gap between Seaguy 1&2 been longer than the gap between 2 & now? Not that I need to see them - the sequel was only ok.

Vertigo was practically the Sandman imprint rather than vice versa and I’m not gonna budge on it

There’s definitely an argument that one of the reasons the imprint existed was because of the widespread recognition and respect that the Sandman was receiving - but even so that’s some impressively crazy talk there.

What it definitely was, was the Karen Berger imprint - I was wondering if the thread revive was related to her new imprint, which I haven’t read anything in yet.

Extremist and Sebastian O were also both Touchmark books iirc

Also Tattered Banners, Mercy. Maybe also Tell Me, Dark?

I think the Shadow's Fall miniseries by John Nay Rieber was Touchmark as well.

Tell Me Dark was published by DC pre-Vertigo, Shadows Fall was Touchmark, as was Mercy. Tattered Banners seems unlikely as it was so much later, not even faintly gothy, and neither Giffen nor McMahon were in Touchmark's promo, but iirc it did lay fallow for years before being finished without Giffen.

Still, if there's one thing we can say, it's that what Vertigo definitely was, was the Art Young imprint.

Five years between Seaguy 1 and Seaguy 2, nine years and counting since Seaguy 2.

Never mind though: yeah, Seaguy 2 was weak, Seaguy 1 was the worst of that cluster of Morrison minis, and Morrison is sadly bad not good now.

Here's a good rundown on the Touchmark backstory, with scans of promo material: https://www.cbr.com/comic-book-legends-revealed-321/

I think I mistakenly included Tattered Banners because it was announced very early, alongside many of the initial Vertigo titles, but as you mention wasn't released until many years later.

Tell Me Dark was published by DC pre-Vertigo

also not Vertigo:

https://static.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_small/14/148518/2883281-better_mr_e_1_cover.jpg

K.w. jeter?!

Speaking of proto-Vertigo mature readers titles, I just remembered that a collection of Del Close and John Ostrander's Wasteland was hinted at a while back but has apparently disappeared into the ether. That's a bummer.

would for sure be a lesser reading experience in collection

A few of these are now being published by Dover, of all people, who have also rescued some other lovely, earlier comics works from neglect: http://store.doverpublications.com/by-subject-graphic-novels-and-comics-graphic-novels.html

Oh sweet, thanks for the tip.

I have that Puma Blues collection. Or a Puma Blues collection. If it's Dover, I never noticed.

If it's the 2015 one with the new ending, that's the Dover one.

There's only one Vertigo book in that lineup, really - Mercy was a Touchmark refugee, but probably came along with the Seekers rights when they were dealing with deMatteis.

Yeah, that's the Puma Blues edition I have. It's a nice big hardcover, which is not what I generally associate with Dover.

Delano's World Without End was a proto-Vertigo DC mature readers title.

The Charyn/Boucq graphic novels are all essential, esp The Magician's Wife - just a shame the page size is smaller than on the original Catalan translations.

It ain't been what it once was for many a moon, but still...RIP(?) Vertigo.

Fucken DC, man...

If true, it feels inevitable, but still sad.

And that 25th Anniversary celebration book didn't even materialise!

My first reaction was, BUT... SEAGUY 3!!

I'm sure Morrison will be given carte blanche to do whatever he wants to do under the regular DC banner, but I'm not sure he'd want to given the changes they made to creator contracts a while back.

I mean, there's not much material change, as whatever little wisp of Vertigo currently remaining doesn't in any way resemble what it was back in the day, and since (as far as I can tell) the Vertigo-esque/Vertigo-lite stuff they've been publishing lately (eg Gerard Way's Young Animal stuff, the Sandman-verse titles) are unaffected. Even though the line has been a bloated drunken shut-in for most of its existence, I still mourn for the impact it had in its sleek and jaunty youth.

I think the last Vertigo comic I bought before Seaguy was the third issue of The Invisibles. Inbetween was my “comics, they ARE just for kids” snooty teenage phase.

TBH, as a kid, Vertigo’s biggest draw was the extra boobs in SHADE.

Been reading <i>The Unwritten</i>, got to Volume 3 and gotdamn this series has gotten good. Issue #17, "The Many Lives of Lizzie Hexam - A Pick-a-Story Book!" is a marvel.

Vertigo was finally euthanised last week btw

I know. I just wanted to enthuse to somebody about this series.
Also, I figure sooner or later DC will have another brainfart and dig the name back up, probably within five years.

just noting for thraed posterity!

The Unwritten was great for a while, but IMO it went on a bit too long and got a bit too meta (even for a series whose whole premise is about metafiction), Carey should've wrapped it up a bit earlier. Still, it's definitely the best post-90s Vertigo title that I've read.

Oh hey look, a new sub-imprint imaginatively titled DC Horror, which is kicking off with...Conjuring tie-in comics. Cool stuff, proud legacies.

https://bleedingcool.com/comics/dc-launches-new-horror-imprint-called-dc-horror-for-the-conjuring/

yeesh, enough with the imprints already

Question for the more experienced heads: are horror comics going through a resurgence/bubble these days? Or is it just something that I'm noticing more in the past couple years as I've started to get into them? Yes, I'm aware of some of the history of horror comics throughout the decades, but it feels like I'm seeing them more and more at the store especially in the past year. Or maybe my store is just promoting them more on social media or something. Any thoughts?

they are definitely in the midst of a resurgence. Aftershock and Boom have more than 60% of their roster as horror comics and Image and Dark Horse are likely around 40%. Chalk it up to The Walking Dead's long impact maybe?

Interesting, thanks!

They're still mostly written by Cullen Bunn, right?

lol, a lot of them are.
https://www.horrordna.com/features/7-most-promising-horror-comics-of-2021

I guess he's supposed to be good at it but, on the basis of his Marvel work, I can't say I'm champing at the bit to find out.

i don't care for bunn or kindt, which rules out like 1 of 5 comics these days

Right now it seems like there are a lot of guys -- Kindt, Bunn, Remender, Charles Soule, Tom Taylor, Dennis Hopeless, James Tynion, Donny Cates, I'm sure there are more -- who came up in the 00s and 10s, get big assignments for Marvel and DC, and clearly write better than a certain level of 90s hack (Scott Lodbell or Chuck Dixon, say) but are just... deeply, deeply ordinary.

I'm missing that layer of mid-tier writers who weren't exactly always *good* but were at least consistently weirdly interesting (e.g. Mike Baron, Messener-Loebs, John Ostrander, Ann Nocenti, etc.).

No one who's writing dozens of books a year can be consistently weird and interesting, tbf. And I don't blame these guys for taking the paychecks when they can get them

Agree, it's more like the ratio of hackwork to "weird and interesting" has gotten worse, from like 4:1 to 4:0.

last three posts otm