The Vertigo Thread

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