The Vertigo Thread

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.

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