One of the things I think I miss most about Vertigo is the little anthology miniseries they put out here and there: later in the run they went more with 80-page specials like
Unexpected,
Strange Adventures, or
Time Warp; but I preferred the miniseries. Although, doing the math: for this series, there was a title page and an amusing creator profile page each issue, then 22 pages of story: minus the title and profile pages, the whole thing was maybe one story away from fitting into an 80-pager. From 1999,
Heartthrobs #1, featuring "The Princess and the Frog" Story and art by Brian Bolland; "Genes and a T-Shirt" Written by Robert Rodi, art by Phil Jimenez; and "Diagnosis" Written by Steven T. Seagle, art by Tim Sale. Cover by Bruce Timm!
Brian Bolland opens with a princess determined to find her frog prince, and it is
funny. Bolland's art is just pristine as always, and the tale is narrated in a cheerfully meandering manner. There's actually a second story in there as well, that might be a spoiler, so I won't say. In "Genes and a T-Shirt," after a bad breakup, a young man decides to have an operation, to cut the gay out of him: the excision of the gene that "predisposed him to homosexuality." It may not be as easy a switch as that, though; but he does have some success on the pick-up scene, with a woman who wonders if he wasn't what she was looking for all her life, "a heterosexual queen." Then the boyfriend shows back up...This a fun short that thankfully doesn't go into the usual Vertigo horror territory.
Seagle and Sale's "Diagnosis" does, though: a handsome young surgeon has married his beautiful bride, and all he can think about was cutting her open. A cancer specialist, he was preoccupied with tumors, and was convinced there was some inside her. Was there only one way to find out? The bride gifts him a gold scalpel, which also seems like an invitation...The scalpel imagery of course brings back
Face to me, but not bad. I picked this issue up recently, but I think I had the rest of the series already; but I don't recall if it was as strong on the art front.
You know, I don't think I've ever read or been interested in reading a Vertigo book. I don't know what it is but none of the subject matter or titles appealed to me. You'd think there'd be something, considering how wide of a variety there was, but no.
ReplyDeleteI'll see readcomicsonline has this one.
ReplyDeleteI myself enjoyed their anthologies, even though I'll admit to not having immersed myself in them as much as I should've. I owned the first issue of the Weird War Tales with the Jim Lee/Garth Ennis story. Solid first issue.
Read the first issue of Flinch & the one you reviewed last year or the year before. Definitely need to catch up on the others. How many of them did you manage to collect so far?
@H: Really? No title in the entirety of Vertigo's massive back catalog interests you? Wow. I know you normally had to be tried & true mainstream comics only fan to be that way. Probably not the case for you as you seem more open-minded than that. Definitely go back & see all the titles they have.
It's true, Mr. Morb- as far as I can tell, none of the titles interest me. I'll take another look but I don't know if I'll find anything. I appreciate the compliment, by the way- I'm definitely not a fan of most mainstream comics (at least past the 80's) and I like the work that some of the writers and artists have done for other publishers.
ReplyDeleteI think part of it is the Mature Readers intent behind most of the titles- seems kinda pretentious and a gatekeeping move, which goes against my core beliefs of what comics should be. There's something more tactile as well, the way that it gets printed- that sort of thing has kept me away from other imprints as well. I'll give it another try though, see if I can find something that looks interesting.
I...can get where you'd get that & maybe for some writers or creative teams that was the case, but from what I remember, the purpose of slapping a mature readers label on it wasn't to gatekeep, but to let potential readers know heavy & mature topics that aren't covered/discussed in mainstream comics get addressed with these kinds of comics. That was a call coming down from DC itself, namely then DC head Jennete Khan. So it's not like Vertigo Editor Karen Berger asked for it, she had no choice in the matter.
ReplyDeleteI know sales-wise I don't think the label helped boost sales like the parental stickers for music albums did for them.
I didn't mean gatekeeping like trying to keep it out of the hands of minors (I'd forgotten that the Mature Readers label was there after the first few years, at the point that mainstream comics caught up and went beyond the topics in most Vertigo titles). I'm more talking about writing for a very specific audience instead of writing something most people can enjoy. That sort of thing seems to be saying that comics aren't for everybody, they're just for a certain group that 'gets' those sort of stories.
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