The Vertigo Thread

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