In every Vertigo comic ever

Inspired by re-reading Shade the Changing Man. Some good stuff, but wow it's of its era.

1. Captions narrating a serial killer's thoughts (present tense, first person)

2. Lesbians

3. Random switches between three or four different pencillers, sometimes in a single issue.

4. Gradual, tentative phasing in of the word 'fuck' c. 1996.

5. Leather jackets.

6. Morpheus/Robert Smith hair.

8. Multimedia cover.

9. Angels of ambiguous morality.

10. An epigram every four or five issues of a given series.

You guys are killing me!

11. Rarely does anyone have a real job.

I know work has rarely gotten any play in genre comics, but it always seemed especially noticeable in Vertigo.

but it always seemed especially noticeable in Vertigo.

It's absence, just to be clear. How could they afford all that hair product?

12. Chain-smoking.

13. Heavy shadows where genitals should be.

14. Everybody's long and thin and pale, or else obscenely fat

15. Lettering: Todd Klein

16. Fetishization of London/New Orleans.

17. Vague human concept as force of nature, overseen by anthropomorphic sentinels.

18. Trenchcoats.

2. Lesbians

Upon reflection, this might honestly be the most ubiquitous.

Did Hellblazer of the golden-oldie Vertigo era which I presume were all referring to on this thread ('93 to oh, '98 or so) feature alt-sexuality, lesbian-chic or otherwise?

I'm curious - I've never read Hellblazer.

Prolly not while Ennis was writing. Later days, though, Constantine's bisexuality was brought to the fore.

Oh, golden-oldie Vertigo era. Shit is practically inextricable from same-era 120 Minutes in my mind, for whatever reason.

Some clerk wouldn't let me buy the ENIGMA trade - didn't want my 15 year-old self exposed to existential superhero man-on-man action, presumably.

Thankfully, another clerk let me have that epiphany a week later.

19. Coloured with a full spectrum of brown, olive, grey and brown.

God turns out to be a wanker.

Don't think Constantine was ever meant to be srsly bisexual. For other alt-sexuality, IIRC Azzarello had him get noshed off by a dog in some unwillingly-filmed bestiality pr0n post-golden-oldie-era, and the Gaiman/McKean pre-Vertigo issue had half a lesbian couple try to seduce him for his sperms.

Prolly not while Ennis was writing.

A later Ennis arc definitely had lesbians, I distinctly remember JC seducing and shagging one.

21. Incessant fourth wall breaking.

22. Dead literary figures appearing as characters.

23. Extremely awkward attempts to tie narrative in with mainstream DC continuity.

(To be fair that one doesn't apply to Shade)

Vertigo seemed intent, for quite a while, on deliviing pixie sticks for Anglophilic American teenagers (like myself) - KILL YOUR BOYFRIEND, GIRL, various et ceteras.

(Not a surprise, given that a good chunk of their writing stable was British.)

22. Dead literary figures appearing as characters.

perhaps the most OTM so far.

23. Extremely awkward attempts to tie narrative in with mainstream DC continuity.

(To be fair that one doesn't apply to Shade)

don't worry, they're making up for it RIGHT NOW!

Kind of the most boneheaded DC move ever, imo

If they're going to kind of drop into DC continuity, then let them do so. Pretending you have to make some grand gesture and explain it's the same version of the character that's in the Vertigo line is ridiculous.

24. Biblical characters show up in person or in a different guise and explain how things didn't necessarily play out as history has stated it

If they're going to kind of drop into DC continuity, then let them do so. Pretending you have to make some grand gesture and explain it's the same version of the character that's in the Vertigo line is ridiculous.

ya rly - there were six months between his last DCU appearance and the OG Milligan reboot, which they didn't bother to explain; now there have been fifteen years between that reboot ending* and the DCU version re-appearing, and they think they need to include exposition to explain away the different versions.

sad testament to the tiny, circular, fanboy-minded creative direction of DC as an entity these days, but so is pointless folding these characters in at all.

*yeah he's appeared in Hellblazer in the last year, but they've got two continuities of Constantine running around now so

Who is this 'he' you are talking about? Shade?

yep, currently appearing in a Milligan/Perez "Flashpoint" miniseries, apparently as a prelude to leading a Milligan-written "Justice League Dark"* ongoing when everything relaunches

*this is really what it's called

I really wish that the idea of a solid, mainstream continuity shared between writers and titles would die a quick death. I understand that there could be issues with one writer immediately ignoring or contradicting the previous, but that kind of problem already happens. It'd be better if they could quietly ignore things and just write the comic as they see fit, with editorial possibly flagging any issues that'd be confusing to long-time/new readers.

Not that every writer's run of a comic should read like an Elseworlds issue, but constantly trying to reconcile messes left by the last ten writers kills things.

25. A major character with the power to magically alter reality.

26. Positive use of psychedelic drugs (real or made-up).

27. Main character narrates everything in purple prose.

28. Main character has a job and/or set of powers that makes it very difficult for him to form steady romantic relationships. Expect a lot of moping over this.

29. Positive depictions of supporting queer characters, but if the main character is male, he's always straight (or bi who mostly dates women), even in the cases where he's not a human being. Enigma is the only major exception to this I can think of.

30. Bedsheets drawn with a bizarrely excessive number of folds.

31. Ominous sinister figure standing in the shadows.

32. Goth chicks (see also: 00s cartoon shows).

33. Every kid has some kind of paranormal ability (as evidenced within the singular Vertigo crossover event, The Children's Crusade).

34. "Superheroes are for kids, lulz."*

* FLEX MENTALLO is the exception that proves the rule.

35. Every normal life is in some way touched by the paranormal.

34. "Superheroes are for kids, lulz."*

34b. If superheroes do show up, the comic focuses on how weird and/or crappy their lives are, not on any world-saving antics.

36. Shakespeare quotations dropped in for increased profundity(didn't Morrison mock this particular trope in Animal Man, or was it in something else?)

37. Raves, they're the hip new thing nowadays.

38. retreads of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing

39. Dirty, scruffy hobos possess ancient knowledge and mysterious power.

A later Ennis arc definitely had lesbians, I distinctly remember JC seducing and shagging one.

so - in Garth Ennis comics, male homosexuals either die or are subjects of ridicule, while female homosexuals are cured by the male lead?

39. A letter from Charles J. Sperling

40. Digitally-manipulated photo cover.

A later Ennis arc definitely had lesbians, I distinctly remember JC seducing and shagging one.

so - in Garth Ennis comics, male homosexuals either die or are subjects of ridicule, while female homosexuals are cured by the male lead?

That lesbian police officer in Welcome Back, Frank wasn't "cured", though admittedly her being a lesbian was mostly just a gag to emphasize how the male cop was unable to get a date. But yeah, you shouldn't really read a Garth Ennis comic book if you want positive depictions of queer characters.

*this is really what it's called

http://www.bleedingcool.com/wp-content/uploads//2011/06/Justice-League-Dark-logo.jpg

wow, is it 1993 again already?

41. A Revival of some incredibly obscure DC Universe character that no one other than the saddest of the sad gives even the remotest shit about.

Are there any Vertigo comics set in the mainstream DC Universe any more?

42. Heavy lifting by the colorist seeing as the penciller only saw fit to include a few circles and parallelograms as backgrounds.

43. Pretending it's still 1993

44. Spontaneous outbreak of weird phenomena throughout the world ("A shower of frogs falls on an Irish village...in Spain, all the clocks stop at 2:16pm....a Japanese statue suddenly comes to life...."); this happens in practically all of the early and proto-Vertigo series

45. cigarette smoking

I sincerely came here to post "smoking" when I saw this was revived.

great minds

46. Protagonist travels though mystical dreamscape/afterlife and describes all the crazy/wonderful things they see (Jamie Delano and J.M. DeMatteis did this about a million times)

Aka the shit tons of captions/very few panels issue

Which Alan Moore did quite well one time.

46. Half-successful attempts at things Alan Moore did quite well one time

Oops. Would've been 47 but I wasn't terriby serious.

48. Weird scratchy inking which is probably supposed to convey off-kilter weirdness but actually just looks deeply amateurish.

Ugh #48 painfully true

This whole thread is frighteningly dead on.

49. Body dysmorphia

picked one of the latest issues of the Titan Dr Who comic in a shop the other day, and was physically repelled back from the pages by an outbreak of "Vertigo brown" colouring

50. Sam Goody advertisement

51. A couple of characters have wobbly-edged speech balloons for some reason.