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shewhomustMany of the comics I was sorting through at the weekend were things I had removed from the shelves for the Reading Group (many others weren't, but let's not get distracted): the Readers of the Lost Art had greeted the announcement that DC were closing down their Vertigo imprint with a look back at some of the shorter series published by Vertigo. So, not another Sandman re-read (though personally I'm always up for a Sandman re-read), and not Shade or Hellblazer, and there seems to be a degree of resistance to The Invisibles too. Which still left plenty to look at (Wikipedia has a useful list) and when I came to check my shelves, I found plenty of Vertigo titles of my own to explore. I should have returned them to the shelves by now (easier said than done, but nonetheless) but they have been waiting on the brain dump which follows, which started out back in the autumn as a Post in Progress (PiP) - if not, as mentioned in the context of the queue for authentic Belgian chips, a Post in Perpetual Progress - to enable me to keep track of what I had read, and in particular what I had borrowed from fellow members. As time passed, there has been a reversal in the direction of flow, and I want now also to record my pleasure at sharing my own collection, and in particular at discovering a shared enthusiasm for what I thought were my strange minority tastes. The Reading Group long ago wrapped up this theme, circumstances have closed several tabs which were supposed to push me into completing the post, so it's time to admit that it is never going to be finished, and post it anyway.
I seem never to have posted about the group's previous topic, which was 'Animals'. I had things to say about that, but apparently I never wrote them down, and the moment has passed. But I chose my last contribution to that discussion with an eye to introducing the Vertigo theme: Nevada is an elaboration of the famous obligatory fight scene in the Deadline Doom issue of Howard the Duck in which a Las Vegas Showgirl and her Ostrich battle an Evil Standard Lamp (transformed into a Lava-lamp in Nevada). How could you not love a narrative which takes that premise and makes the characters (including Bolero the ostrich) real and believable? Somehow writer Steve Gerber and artists Phil Winslade and Steve Leialoha manage this - and then turn up the weirdness with gruesome murders, multidimensional cosmology and the heroine's subjection to training as some sort of spiritual champion. This last is something I would expect to hate, and while on this occasion I didn't, I was still hesitant about how others would read it: but Nevada was a big hit with the group, each reader's recommendation handing it on to the next, while I sat back anf glowed like a proud parent.
Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's Heartland is entirely naturalistic, even mundane: a single issue story of everyday life in Belfast, with lots of conversation (in my opinion, conversation is what Ennis does best). It isn't lacking in action: this is still Garth Ennis, after all, and he tosses in the odd kneecapping almost in parenthesis. What it has in common with Nevada (apart from being a fine representative of the Vertigo style) is that it is secretly a spin-off from another title, though you'd only know this if you knew it: it follows central character Kit home to Belfast after her breakup with John Constantine. Technically, I suppose this makes it a Hellblazer spin-off, but I'd rather think of it as a short story set in the Hellblazer universe, and an example of Vertigo's openness to oddities of form and genre.
Leafing through the short-run titles on the top shelf of the bookcase, I found two separate detective stories scripted by Ed Brubaker, which amused me: nothing but crime stories, even way back then (twenty years ago), eh, Ed? Of the two, I prefer Scene of the Crime (art initially by Michael Lark, later also by Sean Phillips): it's pure sub-Chandler, from the moment the client enters the office in search of her little sister, but evidently I'd rather read Brubaker's sub-Chandler than his sub-Gaiman. In fact, I'd forgotten that he had scripted The Sansman Presents: The Dead Boy Detectives story: what I had remembered was that I had disliked the artwork, Bryan Talbot inked by Steve Leialoha, despite liking both artists individually. Revisiting it now, I wasn't enthusiastic about the art, but couldn't see why I had reacted so very negatively - was it just the darkness of the colouring? As if to compensate, this time round I thought the script very weak: but I'm resistant to the charms of the Dead Boy Detectives, perpetually innocent and perpetually deceived. Best thing about the story, the typewriter keys logo: presumably this, like the covers, is by Dave McKean?
'The Sandman Presents' was an umbrella title sheltering a number of short spin-offs; it filled a gap left when The Dreaming, originally an anthology title of short arcs, became a continuous narrative. At 60 monthly issues, The Dreaming doesn't exactly qualify as one of Vertigo's "shorter series", but I'm fond of it, in its earlier incarnation at least, and decided I'd try to slip it into the discussion arc by arc. Besides, Dave McKean covers! G. borrowed the first batch, and reacted particularly warmly to the opening arc The Golden Gargoyle. I was unenthusiastic about Terry LaBan's story: Abel's pet gargoyle Goldie adds a whimsical seasoning to the atmosphere of the House of Secrets, but the flavouring is overpoweringly saccharine at full story length. Peter Snejbjerg's art had some pleasingly dreamlike qualities, especially in the backgrounds. But I preferred Peter Hogan's story of Mad Hettie, Joanna Constantine, magic and time paradoxes, The Lost Boy (drawn by Steve Parkhouse, with a lightness of touch which fits perfectly). Both of us were lukewarm about His Brother's Keeper, a single issue story by Alisa Kwitney and Michael Zulli, introducing Seth, the third brother of Cain and Abel. Trying a bit too hard to be meaningful, I think.
I also threw into the mix an oddity, Vertical by Steven T. Seagle and Mike Allred (mostly): set in 1965, it's a romance between a young man who obsessively jumps off buildings, and a young woman seeking fame at Andy Warhol's Factory. This is charming enough, but the real interest of the book is its format, which is half the width of a normal comics page, and folded at the top, so that it opens to double the normal height. That's right, it's vertical. This suits a story about New York, and tall buildings, and it does interesting things to the way the reader sees the page: usually with comics you have some sense of the spread as a whole, but the extreme length here prevents that. It's a novelty, and this one story is enough, but well done to Vertigo for taking this play on their name and making it happen. In the reading group, people were curious and amused and a bit dismissive, but those who borrowed it do seem to have enjoyed it.
I came away from that session with two volumes on loan from fellow members. Northlanders: Thor's Daughter was contributed by the most art-oriented member of the group, with the remark that Vertigo was primarily a writer's imprint, but he'd selected something that he found particularly easy on the eye. I don't dispute that judgement, but we're still talking a volume of a series in which writer Brian Wood is joined by a succession of different artists to illuminate the breadth of the term 'Viking'. I agreed with S. that the outstanding story of the three in this volume was not the title story but The Seige of Paris, though he was referring to Simon Gane's artwork, and I was just taken aback at an event I knew nothing about. I would have welcomed come historical footnotes here, if only for the architectural details (in 885? Really? Pretty, though...) L. contributed J. M. deMatteis and Paul Johnson's Mercy, which I really did not like. Why do I not mind (much) when Steve Gerber does weird spiritual stuff, but find it indigestible when Marc deMatteis does? Don't feel obliged to answer this question, but I note also that Nevada has other things going on, both events and characters, while Mercy's protagonist is bedbound, comatose and full of self-pity. The point of the story, I suppose, is how he emerges from this, but I didn't enjoy keeping him company while he did it. Pretty, swirly art.
A. brought Human Target to the meeting, and encouraged by this, I began to promote Peter Milligan. I think of The Extremist (with Ted McKeever) and Enigma (with Duncan Fegredo) as a diptych, both published in 1993. The eponymous Extremist - it is, effectively, a job title - is the enforcer of a group of hedonists: I think of them as Sadean, and self-consciously perverse, but I have no evidence for this. Perhaps it is just Ted McKeever's dark and scratchy artwork (which, unexpectedly, I like a lot) or perhaps it is the presence among them of the leather clad Extremist. Somewhere along the way I have begun to associate the Extremist with Thurber's Todal "an agent of the devil, sent is punish evil-doers for having done less evil that they should" which suggests that for all its sinister eroticism, I am not taking this book entirely seriously. Whereas Enigma (the eponymous Enigma appears to be a character from a comic come to life - a particularly drug-addled underground comic which only ever ran to three issues, at that. The heart of the narrative is a love story (which, if I can say this without it constituting a spoiler, shows its age by treating as a deep dark secret something that the 21st century reader risks finding blindingly obvious), told with such emotional warmth that I was quite surprised to realise that it has a higher body count than The Extremist by an order of magnitude. Both books are recommended, but it's Enigma that I love.
I also set circulating around the reading group Peter Milligan and Brett Parson:' The New Romancer, which I haven't read since it came out, but remembered as lots of fun. That seems to be the verdict of the group, too, as each person who borrows it gives it a ewview which sees it embraced by another reader.
My notes run out at the point where I followedsamarcand's suggestion of looking at Rachel Pollack's Doom Patrol, and I rapisly ran out of steam too: the relentless preoccupation with sex was exhausting. I carried on reading The Dreaming: Weird Romance has a Bryan Talbot script, which makes good use of dream logic (art by Dave Taylor and Tayyar Ozkan); I liked Terry LaBan and Jill Thompson's Coyote's Kiss; I continue to regret the switch to a single author, and don't enjoy Caitlin Kiernan's work. Question: why did I buy The Dreaming month in, month out, when it offered a series of self-contained stories, but buy The Sandman Presents only when a story or creator particularly appealed to me when it took over that format? Answer: I don't know, these are the mysteries of marketing.
Finally, I read Purple Orchid, both the original Gaiman and McKean mini-series - I had forgotten the extent to which it offers a tour of DC's plant-based characters - and the continuation by Dick Foreman, Jill Thompson and Stan Woch, which - well, it isn't as terrible as everyone kept telling me, but it isn't that great, either. The best thing about it is the Dave McKean covers.
tl;dr version, Vertigo was fun while it lasted, with a remarkably high success rate. Why am I not tempted by Karen Berger's omprint at Dark Horse? Other publishers have followed where Vertigo led, I guess. Anf now all I have to do is squeeze these comics back onto the shelves ...
I seem never to have posted about the group's previous topic, which was 'Animals'. I had things to say about that, but apparently I never wrote them down, and the moment has passed. But I chose my last contribution to that discussion with an eye to introducing the Vertigo theme: Nevada is an elaboration of the famous obligatory fight scene in the Deadline Doom issue of Howard the Duck in which a Las Vegas Showgirl and her Ostrich battle an Evil Standard Lamp (transformed into a Lava-lamp in Nevada). How could you not love a narrative which takes that premise and makes the characters (including Bolero the ostrich) real and believable? Somehow writer Steve Gerber and artists Phil Winslade and Steve Leialoha manage this - and then turn up the weirdness with gruesome murders, multidimensional cosmology and the heroine's subjection to training as some sort of spiritual champion. This last is something I would expect to hate, and while on this occasion I didn't, I was still hesitant about how others would read it: but Nevada was a big hit with the group, each reader's recommendation handing it on to the next, while I sat back anf glowed like a proud parent.
Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's Heartland is entirely naturalistic, even mundane: a single issue story of everyday life in Belfast, with lots of conversation (in my opinion, conversation is what Ennis does best). It isn't lacking in action: this is still Garth Ennis, after all, and he tosses in the odd kneecapping almost in parenthesis. What it has in common with Nevada (apart from being a fine representative of the Vertigo style) is that it is secretly a spin-off from another title, though you'd only know this if you knew it: it follows central character Kit home to Belfast after her breakup with John Constantine. Technically, I suppose this makes it a Hellblazer spin-off, but I'd rather think of it as a short story set in the Hellblazer universe, and an example of Vertigo's openness to oddities of form and genre.
Leafing through the short-run titles on the top shelf of the bookcase, I found two separate detective stories scripted by Ed Brubaker, which amused me: nothing but crime stories, even way back then (twenty years ago), eh, Ed? Of the two, I prefer Scene of the Crime (art initially by Michael Lark, later also by Sean Phillips): it's pure sub-Chandler, from the moment the client enters the office in search of her little sister, but evidently I'd rather read Brubaker's sub-Chandler than his sub-Gaiman. In fact, I'd forgotten that he had scripted The Sansman Presents: The Dead Boy Detectives story: what I had remembered was that I had disliked the artwork, Bryan Talbot inked by Steve Leialoha, despite liking both artists individually. Revisiting it now, I wasn't enthusiastic about the art, but couldn't see why I had reacted so very negatively - was it just the darkness of the colouring? As if to compensate, this time round I thought the script very weak: but I'm resistant to the charms of the Dead Boy Detectives, perpetually innocent and perpetually deceived. Best thing about the story, the typewriter keys logo: presumably this, like the covers, is by Dave McKean?
'The Sandman Presents' was an umbrella title sheltering a number of short spin-offs; it filled a gap left when The Dreaming, originally an anthology title of short arcs, became a continuous narrative. At 60 monthly issues, The Dreaming doesn't exactly qualify as one of Vertigo's "shorter series", but I'm fond of it, in its earlier incarnation at least, and decided I'd try to slip it into the discussion arc by arc. Besides, Dave McKean covers! G. borrowed the first batch, and reacted particularly warmly to the opening arc The Golden Gargoyle. I was unenthusiastic about Terry LaBan's story: Abel's pet gargoyle Goldie adds a whimsical seasoning to the atmosphere of the House of Secrets, but the flavouring is overpoweringly saccharine at full story length. Peter Snejbjerg's art had some pleasingly dreamlike qualities, especially in the backgrounds. But I preferred Peter Hogan's story of Mad Hettie, Joanna Constantine, magic and time paradoxes, The Lost Boy (drawn by Steve Parkhouse, with a lightness of touch which fits perfectly). Both of us were lukewarm about His Brother's Keeper, a single issue story by Alisa Kwitney and Michael Zulli, introducing Seth, the third brother of Cain and Abel. Trying a bit too hard to be meaningful, I think.
I also threw into the mix an oddity, Vertical by Steven T. Seagle and Mike Allred (mostly): set in 1965, it's a romance between a young man who obsessively jumps off buildings, and a young woman seeking fame at Andy Warhol's Factory. This is charming enough, but the real interest of the book is its format, which is half the width of a normal comics page, and folded at the top, so that it opens to double the normal height. That's right, it's vertical. This suits a story about New York, and tall buildings, and it does interesting things to the way the reader sees the page: usually with comics you have some sense of the spread as a whole, but the extreme length here prevents that. It's a novelty, and this one story is enough, but well done to Vertigo for taking this play on their name and making it happen. In the reading group, people were curious and amused and a bit dismissive, but those who borrowed it do seem to have enjoyed it.
I came away from that session with two volumes on loan from fellow members. Northlanders: Thor's Daughter was contributed by the most art-oriented member of the group, with the remark that Vertigo was primarily a writer's imprint, but he'd selected something that he found particularly easy on the eye. I don't dispute that judgement, but we're still talking a volume of a series in which writer Brian Wood is joined by a succession of different artists to illuminate the breadth of the term 'Viking'. I agreed with S. that the outstanding story of the three in this volume was not the title story but The Seige of Paris, though he was referring to Simon Gane's artwork, and I was just taken aback at an event I knew nothing about. I would have welcomed come historical footnotes here, if only for the architectural details (in 885? Really? Pretty, though...) L. contributed J. M. deMatteis and Paul Johnson's Mercy, which I really did not like. Why do I not mind (much) when Steve Gerber does weird spiritual stuff, but find it indigestible when Marc deMatteis does? Don't feel obliged to answer this question, but I note also that Nevada has other things going on, both events and characters, while Mercy's protagonist is bedbound, comatose and full of self-pity. The point of the story, I suppose, is how he emerges from this, but I didn't enjoy keeping him company while he did it. Pretty, swirly art.
A. brought Human Target to the meeting, and encouraged by this, I began to promote Peter Milligan. I think of The Extremist (with Ted McKeever) and Enigma (with Duncan Fegredo) as a diptych, both published in 1993. The eponymous Extremist - it is, effectively, a job title - is the enforcer of a group of hedonists: I think of them as Sadean, and self-consciously perverse, but I have no evidence for this. Perhaps it is just Ted McKeever's dark and scratchy artwork (which, unexpectedly, I like a lot) or perhaps it is the presence among them of the leather clad Extremist. Somewhere along the way I have begun to associate the Extremist with Thurber's Todal "an agent of the devil, sent is punish evil-doers for having done less evil that they should" which suggests that for all its sinister eroticism, I am not taking this book entirely seriously. Whereas Enigma (the eponymous Enigma appears to be a character from a comic come to life - a particularly drug-addled underground comic which only ever ran to three issues, at that. The heart of the narrative is a love story (which, if I can say this without it constituting a spoiler, shows its age by treating as a deep dark secret something that the 21st century reader risks finding blindingly obvious), told with such emotional warmth that I was quite surprised to realise that it has a higher body count than The Extremist by an order of magnitude. Both books are recommended, but it's Enigma that I love.
I also set circulating around the reading group Peter Milligan and Brett Parson:' The New Romancer, which I haven't read since it came out, but remembered as lots of fun. That seems to be the verdict of the group, too, as each person who borrows it gives it a ewview which sees it embraced by another reader.
* * *
My notes run out at the point where I followed
samarcand's suggestion of looking at Rachel Pollack's Doom Patrol, and I rapisly ran out of steam too: the relentless preoccupation with sex was exhausting. I carried on reading The Dreaming: Weird Romance has a Bryan Talbot script, which makes good use of dream logic (art by Dave Taylor and Tayyar Ozkan); I liked Terry LaBan and Jill Thompson's Coyote's Kiss; I continue to regret the switch to a single author, and don't enjoy Caitlin Kiernan's work. Question: why did I buy The Dreaming month in, month out, when it offered a series of self-contained stories, but buy The Sandman Presents only when a story or creator particularly appealed to me when it took over that format? Answer: I don't know, these are the mysteries of marketing.Finally, I read Purple Orchid, both the original Gaiman and McKean mini-series - I had forgotten the extent to which it offers a tour of DC's plant-based characters - and the continuation by Dick Foreman, Jill Thompson and Stan Woch, which - well, it isn't as terrible as everyone kept telling me, but it isn't that great, either. The best thing about it is the Dave McKean covers.
tl;dr version, Vertigo was fun while it lasted, with a remarkably high success rate. Why am I not tempted by Karen Berger's omprint at Dark Horse? Other publishers have followed where Vertigo led, I guess. Anf now all I have to do is squeeze these comics back onto the shelves ...
