Vertipoll

I imagine this will be a three-way fight between Invisibles, Fables and Y, with Transmet as a possible dark horse.

I'm not sure how to deal with someone who, out of the list of titles above, would pick the safe, bland, "do you see what we're doing here?" Fables, but DEAL WITH THEM WE MUST!

I had completely forgotten American Century - in retrospect it seems quite a good balance of weird and plot-driven.

A lot of these books are good, some of them are great, but only one of them changed my life, so Invisibles it has to be.

This is TS: Invisibles vs. SMT for me.

I'm not sure how to deal with someone who, out of the list of titles above, would pick the safe, bland, "do you see what we're doing here?" Fables, but DEAL WITH THEM WE MUST!

Actually, of the three I mentioned Fables is by far my least favourite, but lots of folk seem to like it a great deal.

So for me it's between the masterfully sustained narrative of Y, and one of the most exhilarating month-by-month comic reading experiences I've ever had (vol 1 of The Invisibles - I'm one of those people who thinks it lost it a bit somewhere around the midpoint of vol 2).

I voted for Y. Still haven't read the Invisibles all the way through yet. Preacher and Transmet are good, SMT is good, American Virgin was okay, haven't read the others, but I really liked Y a lot.

Anyone read much 100 Bullets? I followed the first arc, and it was a bit so-so as I recall.

I like the writing pretty well, but I love the art!

I was going to say where's Animal Man?, but of course, that wasn't actually Vertigo. Derr.

Only got round to reading The Invisibles last year, but boy is it good. I thought it actually got better and better as it went along.

I think Animal Man became Vertigo after Morrison's run. Certainly around the time they blew up San Francisco, I don't think it'd have been a regular DC Universe book.

I guess Invisibles might the best of these, but since I already voted for it in the Morrison poll, I'm gonna go for Books of Magic, even though I never finished it. For a few years it was a very strong comic, like a better version of Sandman, too bad it got kinda incoherent later on.

I also have a soft spot for Fables, despite his sometimes dodgy politics and lapses into military fetishism, Willingham is a very good storyteller on a basic, no-gimmicks level. Few ongoing comics have kept me so interested for so long.

I'm about a year behind on 100 Bullets, but I've liked what I've read a fair bit. It took at least three or four arcs before I really got into it, though.

I voted for Invisibles, for exactly the same reasons I have in every other poll it's been presented in (i.e., it's a distillation of essentially everything I read and thought from ages 14-30). Y is good, but I'm not sure I really buy that it's a perfectly sustained narrative. I'm pretty sure you could drop two or three of the story arcs in the middle and not notice the difference. Preacher, similarly, could have lost at least two iterations of "Jesse leaves Tulip behind to protect her and she gets mad" and not suffer at all.

My second choice would probably be Human Target, actually. The Pulido issues have some of my favorite art in a recent comic, and I thought it was some of the best storytelling Milligan's done in a while.

Was Shade a Vertigo book from the beginning?

I guess I should read Invisibles, huh

All the COOL KIDS like it!

Was Shade a Vertigo book from the beginning?

Nah, only from issue 30something.

I guess I'll vote for Y since I'm still directly feeling the glow, though I'm still quite fond of Preacher and Transmet and it's pretty close.

I excluded THE INVISIBLES, as really, that's not all that far from including DOOM PATROL or THE SANDMAN, in my book.

Voted for HUMAN TARGET, though SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATRE sorely tempted me.

Went for 'Y', as I really enjoyed that, and hung out for it between most issues.
I suspect I'd have voted for '100 Bullets' if I'd ready any of it, rather than stacking up the issues for one big read once it finishes.
'Invisibles' would have won, I think, if it had been given the time/space it was originally meant to have (3 x 24/25-issue volumes), rather than being rushed through to finish by the yr 2000 for whatever odd Morrisonian mystical reasons after being delayed by his exploding appendix (I forget the actual health problem).

This is going to be a massacre. I really loved volume three of the Invisibles, after thinking about half of Vol 2 was kinda skippable (action=snooze, timetravel etc=awesome). Actually maybe I mean more like a quarter, cos usually the action bits tied into something AWES, but y'know.

I've only included titles that had their first issues published under the imprint

I voted for Transmet, which I've read is 'pornography for journalists.' But Fables, Preacher, Lucifer and Invisibles are all worthy votes. Probably if not for Transmet, I would've voted Lucifer.

Transmet's whole first year was on Helix, IIRC.

Wagner/Seagal/Davis

I've voted for Y. I reckon it is probably the most consistently satisfying comics of the last number of years, and never managed to disappear up its arse.

100 Bullets - I read it in issues and like it a lot. The art carries it some of the time (and did, basically, for the first arc), but the writing got better and better as it went on. Bizarrely, once they threw away the 100 bullets premise, or once you realised that was just a front for something else, it became a lot more fun. They have lately been killing off all my favourite characters, though, and I assume it will end shortly with #100.

I'm surprised by how few of these I've read... I get the impression that I am missing out with stuff like Lucifer and maybe Scalped, but not so sure with Fables.

I went with Scalped. I just recently got turned onto it and am gobsmacked. Great noir reservation storytelling. It benefits by not being finished - both Y and Preacher lost me before they wrapped up. Fables first 40-odd issues were outstanding, but again, the series lost me.

Preacher got a little meandering but rallied for the home stretch IMO. Y held my attention throughout, but I read it in trades which makes a big difference. I'll have to check out Scalped, I'd never heard of it till I wikipediaed Vertigo for this poll. Is there a horror/fantasy element, or is it just a crime type thing?

I had a really hard time getting into the first Invisibles trade (maybe it read better as floppy?) (maybe I was SOOOOO looking to be AMAZED that I couldn't concentrate on it-qua-it) (maybe it was too Britso for me?) and voted Fables, which I've read most of. But then I saw that only suckers like Fables, so I changed my vote to the Books of Magic because it paved the way for Kingdom Come. YES IT DID. (Actually voted Human Target cuz it was gnarly)

I was not blown away by the Human Target mini series.

it amazes me that American Century made 20 issues. I read it for a bit, but gave up when I registered how little enjoyment I got from reading it.

Dr Supes, Invisibles gets a lot better/more linear (sort of)/less wanky (definitely) around Volume 3, and there's still tons to go after that -- it's definitely worth the effort.

Yeah, the first two books of THE INVISIBLES can be rough going. Then there's that last half of the last book...

Dr Supes, Invisibles gets a lot better/more linear (sort of)/less wanky (definitely) around Volume 3, and there's still tons to go after that -- it's definitely worth the effort.

You really think so? Because I thought Volume 3 was much less linear and more wanky than the first two, with less action and fun and more new age Zen Buddhist Morrison mumbo jumbo.

For me at least the last third of Vol. 1 and the first two thirds of Vol. 2. were when The Invisibles was at its best, with a good balance between the thrills and action and the philosophical ponderings.

Ah, by volume, I mean the trades not the "volumes" -- which funnily enough means I totally agree with you (about the last third of Vol. 1 and the first two thirds of Vol. 2 being the best parts). I did like the conclusion of Vol 3 a lot, though. It's so WTF, it sort of begs you to go back and read the whole lot all over again.

I'm with Tuomas on the Invisibles. The first and second book are my favourite, while all that eclipse coronation shite at the end was a bit tiresome.

I think there's a lot of people who really thought that Grant thought that getting the book done for the Millennium would usher in a new age of glory and peace. I don't really see how those people could be reading the same book I was.

Volume I is great though, particularly for the second story being "boom - off to revolutionary France!". It lost a lot of what the Vicar would term trend people, but still kept enough - and the end of the volume was a great mix of really dense and really tense.

Volume II I have in my head as not being all that great, but I think some of that might be an allergic reaction to Phil Jiminez and Brian Bolland covers.

Now that I think of it, I'm not sure which vols are which... by vol 1, do you mean the first trade, or everything before it restarted and they moved to the USA?

Vol 1 (issues 1-25) is a breathtaking piece of storytelling that barely puts a foot wrong. Vol 2 starts brilliantly but gets repetitive and self-indulgent halfway through. Vol 3 is a huge disappointment; confusing and a little tiresome.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Ha ha, Preacher now in dustbin of comics history.

I think you've misspelled Lucifer there...

I'm not surprised that Preacher is two people's favourite Vertigo comic - I'd expect it to be higher in a non-self-selecting poll actually, I always got the impression that (like Promethea) a considerable part of its audience just bought it and it alone.

There was a period in the late 90s when Preacher and Invisibles were the only monthlies I bought (as opposed to, er, none now).

lol go go pity vote

Preacher on the whole is a solid enough book to be remembered, I think, but not as the big deal it seemed at the time.

I'm not sure I'd describe it as solid as such, the much-yawned trip to Salvation does stand out like a speed bump in the general run of the series. But then, so is almost everything in the Proud Americans volume - possibly the best of the collections, but in retrospect the best bits are just a bunch of stories that didn't really need any of the main cast in them, that Garth Ennis could just have waited and stuck in another book.

Also: Bill Hicks issue.

i was one of the two who voted for preacher, which i found to be a much more ENTERTAINING comic bk than the INSANELY overrated (by ILC)invisibles (funnily enuff both steve dillon and steve yeowell strike me as talented but fundamentally v. lazy artists who take all sorts of shortcuts and skimp on lots of detail/variety.) i don't think invisibles is 'too Britso' tho, wtf

prob my absolute fave vertigo titles were two pete milligan mini-series, enigma, and the extremist (superbly drawn by duncan fegrado and ted mceveer respectively) - witty, erotic, twisty, clever, funny comic bks

I liked The Extremist a lot. I'm still looking for a copy of #4 so I can find out how it ended. Or maybe I am looking for a copy of #1 so I can find out how it started.

ftr I voted 100 Bullets because I thought Dizzy was super awesome and I knew the book would otherwise get 0 votes

I really enjoyed Preacher along the way, but found the end very disappointing and haven't gone back to re-read it. I might now, just to see what I think.

I seem to be the only person on the internet who thinks the end of Preacher is fine.

I love the end of Preacher. I also read the series in trade paperback, so I didn't mind the off-path outings it took in the later books - I can imagine that being annoying issue-to-issue if you were waiting for the end of that series to finally come.

I also really like the ending, while recognising it as a massive cop-out.

It's a cop out that makes narrative sense though.