The other day we saw a Superman/Batman comic, where Batman goes on and on about not believing in magic, despite having seen it personally about 900 times, and saying that to none other than Zatanna. The whole thing felt like Bats running a smear campaign on himself, to keep himself outta Zatanna's fishnets...seriously, the Spectre, Deadman, Dr. friggin' Fate; Batman's just being a stubborn jerk. Unless he trained under this guy, I suppose. From 1998, Vertigo Visions: Dr. Thirteen, "Do AI's Dream of Electric Sheep?" Written and inked by Matt Howarth, pencils by Michael Avon Oeming; cover by Cliff Nielsen. And, it is some nerve that the cover is "Doctor 13" while the indica is "Dr. Thirteen." Let's not optimize our search in any way, shape, or form...

We saw the good Doctor earlier this year in a Batman appearance, but this was one of a fistful of Vertigo one-shots with pretty decent creative teams trying to put that Vertigo spin on...charitably, also-rans and nobodys. Well, to 'actually' that, I suppose Tomahawk had been a big seller, maybe twenty or thirty years prior. The Phantom Stranger was probably the best known of the lot, and I'm not sure they drove as hard into the paint with him as they could; or as had been done with Swamp Thing or the Doom Patrol. Or, maybe you can't go nuts with the Phantom Stranger, because the mainstream DCU still used him here and there; but Dr. Terrence Thirteen you could probably break and throw away, who would say anything? Also, the Doctor is so unlikable; there would probably be a market for that. This issue opens with him and his long-suffering wife Marie on their way to counseling, because his unwavering commitment to "skeptical rationalism" made him a smug, condescending bastard 24 hours a day. His declaration "I am the sanest man alive!" would be tough to live with, you have to admit.

Meanwhile, a terminally ill, magic-obsessed programmer had created an A.I. version of himself; which was running faster than the real world and getting anxious to acquire more knowledge. The A.I, Desi, makes duplicates of itself to try and get past the local firewalls, but one is corrupted into "Izzy" and plots to conquer the outside world; while the programmer appears to have a conversation with a banshee he booked out as Elvis's ghost. (?) And after making a scene at a "haunted" art gallery that Marie had invested in, the next day Terrence tries to withdraw some cash, and finds Marie had closed him out, and she tells him she was leaving him. Predictably, Terrence is more upset that this would interfere with his quest for truth, but that attracts the attention of Desi, who wants him to stop Izzy. (Terrence also caught a bit of a beating, from mouthing off to some leather-types at the gallery.)

Since he had no interest in money, Terrence finds himself living in a terrible apartment; then sees an old colleague, Dr. Rintelb, pitching a book on skeptical rationalism on an infomercial--only $47 even, with a free brain-shaped ashtray! He storms the TV station the next day, and Rintelb is disturbed to see "a brilliant investigator" now an unshaven wreck, but brings him in on the current phenomenon: recently, numerous old TV shows were transferred from tape to digital. Except, there were strange crossovers, like Lucy and Ethel in "I Dream of Jeannie" or Mr. Ed on Baywatch. Furious, Terrence assumes it was a hoax, a plot against him and the truth, and storms out...as the building seems to distort around him. He ends up in Izzy's office: the rogue AI had taken over the network, and tomorrow the world, and it won't let Dr. Thirteen stop him! Particularly since Dr. Thirteen has no idea what he's on about, and couldn't care less. Still, Izzy had a series of "virtual reality hells" ready for him, which Terrence has trouble with, even though he was told it was VR right up front! Head in the game, man.

Desi tries to help Terrence, who is stuck in his earlier drive with Marie; and the A.I. starts to think he picked the wrong horse. An unlikable horse at that. Desi has to go back to the programmer for help, and he traps Izzy and frees Terrence. Terrence accepts the explanation of virtual realities and AI's as rational, but then lashes out at the programmer for his main job, at the Promethean Agency, which rented out ghosts and supernatural events, presumably created by technology, but exploiting people's belief in lies. And that's when the camera pulls back, showing Terrence in an asylum, delusional and violent; although Marie still loved him there, which might not have even been the case in his own mind. The Desi AI continues the programmer's work, trying to bring magic to the masses and replace technology, and now had Izzy's TV network to work through, after Izzy's download disk is placed on a space probe. Between the VR trips and Thirteen's delusions, I'm not sure how much of the comic was 'real,' although there did appear to still be a Desi, so...

Terrence Thirteen had appeared sporadically in the current DC continuity; but largely now because his daughter Traci was more of a hit. Also, and you see this a lot in old TV shows and such, but why is the default high moral ground "I wouldn't touch your filthy money" and not "you can't be trusted with cash, yoink!" Read more!

This book is full of swears, this post was almost full of them too.

So the other day (about 30 seconds ago, as I type this) I mentioned I'm still goddamned pissed at Warren Ellis. I don't know if there's anything he could possibly do to make amends to the people he hurt, but I also know he's halfassed even trying. He's gotten work again in recent years--I have some copies of the Batman's Grave that I've fished from quarter bins but haven't been able to bring myself to read yet. I also still hate that he wrecked Transmetropolitan for me; since I think "I Hate It Here" every day. ("Journalism is just a gun," but most outlets nowadays seem to be putting it in their own mouths.) But, I pulled this one out of a dollar bin the other day: from 2010, Vertigo Resurrected #1, featuring "Shoot" Written by Warren Ellis, pencils by Phil Jimenez, inks by Andy Lanning.

This was the infamous school-shooting issue of Hellblazer, that was pulled in 1999 after the Columbine shootings: it would have been Hellblazer #141. Ellis would leave the title early, at #143; but I'm pretty sure he took his unused plots and folded them into Strange Kisses at Avatar, where he would do a couple limited series and an ongoing featuring "combat magician" William Gravel; who, to be blunt, is a less conflicted, less pretty, Constantine with guns. (I don't fault Ellis for this, honestly: there's some book on the shelves right now that I swear is G.I. Robot with the serial numbers filed off...)

Son of a...just opening to the second page, and it refers to a school shooting in Spokane, where I currently live! Obviously I haven't read this recently. A parent drops their son off at school, taping it for their birthday, thus catching another student shooting him without warning, then killing himself. Psychiatrist Penny Carnes is investigating school shootings for the government; between that and listening to tapes from Jonestown I'm worried for her two pages in. She notices something on the tape, though; a face that appears at several other shootings: John Constantine. She tries to get a file on him, and while she gets the name, the file is restricted. But, when she returns to her office for her tape recorder (1999!) John's there, for a meeting. He'd started investigating the shootings himself, at a friend's request, after his son had been killed. John asks Penny if she's getting anywhere, and he knows damn well she isn't. He knows everyone's looking for a reason, something to blame, like video games or violent movies or rap music or food coloring, something; but John thinks those kids are already so broken by the world all they can do is sit there and wait for the bullet. He replays a tape with a kid with a gun in his face and tells Penny to look closely: she sees the kid mouth "shoot." 

Since I try not to swear on the blog, I had to edit my original response; but that was nihilistic, try-hard edgy crap. Few people think clearly with a gun in their face, but even in America today I think most kids want to live. I don't remember thinking real deeply about this one before, but I don't think I hated it the way I do now. Getting old. And while I knew this wasn't going to have a fix, Constantine wasn't going to find that the shootings were caused by Neron or some nonsense, it's crap that he gets a tirade about the futility of looking for something to blame, before giving another something to blame.  

Also this issue: a ton of shorts from Vertigo limited series like Strange Adventures, Heartthrobs, Weird War Tales, and Flinch. (OK, Flinch wasn't a limited, but even so.) The selections bring a laundry list of big names for the cover, but in keeping with the theme most of them aren't the cheeriest stories. (Scan from "The Kapas" by Brian Bolland.)

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There were some Vertigo anthology mini-series that I was completely in the tank for, and then others that I seemingly only see randomly years later. This is one of the latter, although it was from a good decade or so later than I thought it would've been. From 2015, Strange Sports Stories #1, cover by Paul Pope.

Feels like a dog's age since I've read any of these 8-page Vertigo numbers, and this one kicks off with a Gilbert Hernandez oddball, "Martian Trade" After a bully steals a dodge ball from three boys, a Martian ball appears! But are they still sore about gettting poisoned by earth germs? Can they save their friend from years of Martian slavery? And after the bully gets through with them, will they want to?

"Dodgeball Kill" features a reporter visiting a space prison, that has made a deadly version of dodgeball for the new meat vs. the lifers. But there are some fun twists. Similarly, "Chum" features ultra-violent hockey (more ultra-violent hockey) with prisoners ritually sacrificed to the frozen Cthulhu-esque monstrosity...Timmy Tentacles. A little girl at her first game is just getting into the spirit of things, when Timmy wakes up...("Dodgeball Kill" Written by Amy Chu, art by Tana Ford; "Chum" Written by Lauren Beukes and Dale Halvorsen, art by Christopher Mitten.

Lastly, another particularly downbeat story, "Refugees" Written by Ivan Brandon, art by Amei Zhao. A couple is mid-breakup, when the world ends, keeping them together a little longer. They manage to get to Cuba, where the world is still apparently ending, but there's time for a baseball game before then. The narrator maybe doesn't enjoy it as much as they could with somebody else, though. Read more!

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. Read more!

We shouldn't let a month of horror comics go by without a Vertigo book, should we? And yet it's another limited series I have three of the four issues of, except that sting is lessened for an anthology title. From 2000, Strange Adventures #3, cover by Edvin Biukovic.

Joe R. Lansdale and Richard Corben open with "The Split," in which a clock-loving worksman in the bell tower is nearly struck by lightning, which splits off his shadow, which aims to fulfill a repressed desire. Doselle Young writes and Pat McEown draws "Driving Miss 134," a torrid confessional break-up postcard from a guy stricken by a new girl, in multiple senses of the word. But the best of this issue is "Metal Fatigue," written by Mark Schultz, art by John Totleben. An obsessed geologist leads an expedition of three robots to previously unknown depths of the earth. Treasures and danger await the geologist...but what do the robots want, if you asked them?

We saw the first issue of this series years back, but I've still never seen the fourth. Something to keep an eye out for.
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80-Page Thursdays: Vertigo Quarterly CMYK #2!

The last of the Vertigo Quarterlies that I have so far--and the last 80-pager I have for the time being--from 2014, Vertigo Quarterly CMYK #2, or "Magenta," with stories and art by Rachel Deering, Matteo Scalera, Carla Berrocal, Jody Houser, Rufus Dayglo, and more.

Full disclosure time: this was a $7.99 comic, and there's no way I would've paid that much for it. The only creators I recognized this issue were Peter Milligan and Tommy Lee Edwards: Milligan's "The Shoe in the Attic" was great, while I didn't think Edward's art on "Gloves" was too bad, the story didn't do it for me.

"Bone White, Blood Red" is a pleasant little horror short, and "Adrift" features a young woman dealing with grief with a Barbie-type doll, and is both charming and devastating. Rian Hughes writes and draws "Magenta is not a Color" which is a denser read in eight pages than nine out of ten entire comics that you see any given Wednesday. So, four good ones out of nine, and even the other five weren't awful; and getting the book for under two bucks? Have to say, that might push it up a letter grade!
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80-Page Thursdays: Vertigo Quarterly CMYK #3!

Quick one today: from 2014, Vertigo Quarterly CMYK #3, featuring stories and art from João M. P. Lemos, Toril Orlesky, Fabio Moon, and more. This is the third of Vertigo's four CMYK issues, and this issue is yellow. It's also a bit more impressionistic than the Cyan issue we saw last week, which isn't necessarily my tastes, but some of the art is striking.

The highlights, for me anyway, were Gerald Way and Phillip Bond's "Untitled," Marguerite Bennett and Bill Sienkiewicz's "Playthings," and Benjamin Read and Christian Wildgoose's "The Cataphract of the Yellow Lotus." Three pretty good ones out of ten, but again we're on the sliding scale of cheapness, since I got this for under two bucks.

Hmm. I didn't think I had CMYK #2, but I do! Maybe next time.
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80-Page Thursdays: Vertigo Quarterly CMYK #1!

Give thanks, it's a new 80-Page Thursday entry! From 2014, Vertigo Quarterly CMYK #1 ("Cyan") with stories by Shaun Simon, Amy Chu, Fabio Moon, Robert Rodi, and more; and art by Jock, Ana Koehler, Martin Morazzo, Alitha Martinez, and more.

While Vertigo had in recent years had other 80-page specials named for classic DC series like The Unexpected and Strange Adventures, Cyan was the first of four anthologies featuring stories tied together by a color. In this case, blue. Some of the stories are more tied to, or the art more defined by, blue than others; but that does open up the book to murder mysteries, steampunk activists, and sci-fi drug addicts.

None of the stories rocked my world or anything, but nothing was absolutely terrible either. The lead story, "Serial Artist" was a fun murder story, followed by "918," in which a drug addict doesn't find the destination he intended. "Blue Sundae" has a pair of ice-cream men versus "some sort of demon dog," which is just odd. In "So Blue" an aging pop-star plots against her up-and-coming rival, and in "Much Ado About Nothing" an anti-terrorism codebreaker is present for the accidental unlocking of the universe's numbers.

"Rebolt" is a steampunk anti-coal, anti-corporate story; and "Madame Bluebeard" tells the story of a beard for closeted actors in the fifties who lives up to her nickname. "Once Upon the End of Time..." was a post-apocalyptic love story; and "Breaking News of the Wonders the Future Holds" a short about two artists wondering about vases after their art gallery is closed. That last one is stronger than I make it sound; but the latter half of this book mostly wouldn't be out of place in a classic DC anthology. (Well, the subtext of "Madame Bluebeard" might've been a tough sell, but still.) "Cyan" is a little pretentious of a title, for a batch of shorts, but not unreadable.

I picked up this one, two other new 80-pagers (no points for guessing!) and seven other books; during a "Deal of the Day" sale from Hastings: ninety-nine cents an issue! More like two bucks with shipping, but still. $70-some worth of books for $23 shipped!
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Y'know, that first panel would look great as a Lichtenstein.

If Lichtenstein wasn't a thieving bastard, of course. But it would look nice on the wall: from 1999, Strange Adventures #1, with "The Kapas" by Brian Bolland, "Immune" by Robert Rodi and Frank Quitely, and the above from "Riddle of the Random Realities!" by Dave Gibbons.

This is another of those posts that serve as a reminder: I still need issues #3-4 of this one. #2 was pretty good as well, though. Still, I tend to doubt Vertigo is ever going to get a good anthology book going again like this or Weird Western Tales or Gangland. Crap, now I'm wondering if I had all of those, either.


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80-Page Thursdays: Strange Adventures #1! (2011)

By this point, I feel like I should have some kind of formula or equation for how much I like these 80-pagers. What characters are involved, what creators, how many stories are in the issue, how old the issue is, how much I paid for it...The reason I'm wondering about that, is that today's issue doesn't push my buttons as much as I would've expected. From 2011, Strange Adventures #1, featuring stories by Peter Milligan, Paul Cornell, Brian Azzarello, and more; and art by Eduardo Risso, Goran Sudzuka, Denys Cowan, Juan Bobillo, and more. Jeff Lemire, Ross Campbell, and Kevin Colden all write and draw their stories, to boot.

This issue features nine short stories, including two that serve as previews for Saucer Country and Spaceman. DC seems to alternate the Strange Adventures title from DCU science-space heroics, and oddball Vertigo shorts, and this issue is squarely in the Vertigo camp. It does seem a little more mean-spirited and grim than usual, though. (I need to get the last two issues of the 1999 limited, the first two were pretty good.) And Jeff Lemire puts a Vertigo spin on the old DC space character, Ultra the Multi-Alien. In the best Vertigo tradition, it is now a complete downer.

I got this issue for a buck, but it still feels hollow. Not bad, I suppose, but perhaps not to my taste. Peter Milligan's "Partners" is probably my favorite of the lot, but it's not my favorite of his, either.

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Milligan and Fegredo may not have had Morricone in mind here...

...ah, maybe they did. From Weird Western Tales #4, "What a Man's Gotta Do" Written by Peter Milligan, illustrated by Duncan Fegredo. While watching old westerns, a put-upon, hen-pecked realtor gets the idea that he needs to get in touch with his inner cowboy. With mixed results...

Damn, I have the rest of this series somewhere. This issue also features a brutal revenge story from Bruce Jones and Cully Hamner, "Savaged," and "Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie" from Jen Van Meter and Dave Taylor: on a cattle drive, three cowpokes try to press on after a fourth dies of natural causes, and they try to get his body to the nearest town for a decent burial. Slapstick ensues, but with a tragic ending.

Anthologies are often hit-and-miss; but I thought Vertigo did all right on this one. And after the break: some Ennio Morricone, which I probably should've had at the start of the post, but I couldn't embed "The Ecstacy of Gold," so this'll do.




Huh, Morricone composed the score for John Carpenter's the Thing, another movie that like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, I'll always stop and watch.
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This would be House's best cold-open EVER.

From Face #1, written by Peter Milligan, art by Duncan Fegredo. As the GCD points out:

Synopsis:From the "On The Ledge" column: "The first of the Vertigo Voices one-shots explores the horrific consequences when the world's most famous artist hires the world's most brilliant plastic surgeon for his own warped agenda."

It's pretty good, but hard to beat that first page there. If you're not one for blood, this one won't be for you; but it's one to check out if you've got the stomach. I do believe DC's reprinting the Eaters, another Vertigo Voices from Milligan (with Dean Ormston on art) but I did prefer Face, and wish Vertigo was a little more free with the one-shots these days.

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This would explain a lot, wouldn't it?

Sometimes, a story may have a perfectly good hook, but not be sure enough of it, and decide to throw something else in there as well. Like today's book: the Unseen Hand, written by Terry Laban, pencils by Ilya, inks by Ande Parks.

Young college student Mike Webb is doing pretty well for himself: 3.9 GPA, speaks five languages, and he plans to become an entrepreneur in the newly freed markets of the Soviet Union. (The story, like the series, is from 1996.) He has a meeting with his econ professor, Geldt (a signifying name...) who suggests perhaps everything Mike knows and everything Geldt teaches about economics may be a lie; that in fact there are no free markets. While Mike's father is "an old time liberal" who believes in market controls, Mike understands all sorts of things interfere with the free market--wars, government regulations, etc.

Geldt says, what if the free market itself is a lie? A ruse, perpetrated by a cabal controlling the world's monetary system. Mike scoffs at the idea that any group could respond to market forces efficiently enough, and Geldt asks if there was such a group, would he join it? Mike defers, saying any cabal that would include him couldn't be smart enough to run the world.

At a frat party that night, Mike is interrupted by news of his father, hit by a car. In the hospital, though, his father admits that he isn't, and that Mike was adopted. His real father was Conrad Dank, CEO of Global Oil, killed in an "accidental" plane crash twenty years ago. Moreover, the Dank family has been part of a multi-generational conspiracy, spanning five centuries, to control the world's resources. The "absurd notion that unregulated markets will be managed automatically by an 'unseen hand,'" was propaganda from their agent Adam Smith, a perfect cover, and became the group's name.

Conrad, after a case of heat stroke that may have been a religious experience, had intended to publish a book exposing the Unseen Hand. Although the book would've been easily discredited, the Hand felt Conrad was a traitor and arranged his death. Then an infant, Mike survived; along with his sister, Miranda. Mike didn't even know he had a sister; but now he has a mission: to find her, and to expose the Unseen Hand.

Solid hook, huh? Unfortunately, I think the book bogs down a bit after Mike gets to the former Soviet Union; where most of the citizenry are cartoonishly struggling to get rich or die trying. Then there's Rasputin the III, a conjoined-twin seer and head of a plot to turn the clock back two hundred years (figuratively) and install a Czar on the throne; amongst other weirdness.

Still, an interesting read; although I'm not sure The Unseen Hand was ever collected. Give it a read if you see it, though.
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If Girl Comics had featured this Girl...ah, if only.

It's funny: I didn't think I was a huge fan of writer Peter Milligan--we've only seen a few issues from him here, like his Scarecrow one-shot or the Minx. But, I liked the Minx up until it's premature end, I liked Milligan's Batman work (especially his more oddball Detective stories) and a lot of his Vertigo work, like Face, Human Target, Egypt, the Eaters...and then his X-Force/X-Statix run. Huh, yeah, that's a pretty good batch of Milligan.

Then there was Girl, a surprisingly amusing three issue limited, under the Vertigo Verite label, and following the misadventures of young, charming, and imaginative Simone Cundy. Trapped (not unlike every teenager) in the terrible urban blight of Bollockstown, she struggles to deal with her identity, with her frankly horrible family, and with her grip on reality. It's hilarious, even when a murder mystery shows up later...


Milligan usually does pretty well with artistic collaborators, and this time is no exception: Duncan Fegredo is one of those artists, who, if there's any justice, should be getting paid to draw whatever the hell he feels like right now. (Actually, that may not be far off, since Fegredo is currently Mike Mignola's replacement on Hellboy.) Great facial expressions, a ton of detail, and a lot of fun.

And, as I have a lot lately, it seems I've picked another series that hasn't been collected to date. (In fact, Fegredo is the subject of a recent interview at Newsarama and Girl comes up.) I don't think Milligan's later Vertigo Pop! limited London has been collected either, but we might have to scan a few Philip Bond panels from that one sometime.

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One of the few safe-for-work scans from Cruel and Unusual:

Written by Jamie Delano and Tom Peyer, pencils by John McCrea, inks by Andrew Chiu; Cruel and Unusual isn't just another one of Vertigo's best limited series; it's one I read every year or so and am vaguely worried every time that a lot of it is going to come true. Of course, I probably worry about that when I read the Filth, 2020 Visions, the unfun parts of Transmetropolitan...

Set in a not-too-distant future, each issue is introduced by Marion Meach, a conniving, glad-handling hustler so sleazy Larry Flint would be ashamed for him. Marion should be on top of the world: his cable network the Salvation Channel is raking it in with trashy bible movies like "Jesus in America" above: "The Greatest Story ever Retold for our times." By throwing money at the Florida gubernatorial election, he got Benny Guevara elected and should have him in his pocket. And Marion just got a sweetheart deal to run a private jail for the state. And there his troubles begin.

Salvation Channel producer Bobbie Flint is on the outs with the network she helped blow up: forced to apologize and resign after an abortion, Bobbie is forced to take a new position, not quite the one the leering Meach wants her in, but close: new warden of the Paradiso Bay State Penitentiary. As Bobbie is hazed by the automated intake system, it quickly becomes obvious that the prison's a brutal, overcrowded, and corrupt nightmare; staffed by a skeleton crew of drug addicts and sadists. She wants the prison shut down, while Marion wants it to turn a profit again.

Bobbie gets the idea to do both:

Setting up pay-per-view events, phone sex banks of female inmates, and the over-the-top ringleader persona of Warden Whiplash, Bobbie's plan to expose the mistreatment of the inmates and the prison's corruption backfires: the expected outrage is virtually nonexistent, while the profits start rolling in for Marion. Even a live execution of an obviously insane woman only makes America roar for more. Meanwhile, Bobbie's estranged and troubled daughter gets herself in trouble following her mom's example...

Somehow, I don't think Cruel and Unusual has ever been collected in trade. Even in Texas. (A brief bit in the fourth issue features a knockoff Texas show that promises to "show 'em how it's done!") It's vulgar, violent, ethically questionable across the board, and still far funnier than it should be. While some may think it goes to far; I'm just glad prison hasn't gone that far yet. 'Yet' being the key modifier there...really, Arizona?

Really should do an all-Vertigo week one of these days...
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Vertigo Comics has had its hits over the years, like Sandman, Preacher, or Transmetropolitan; and also some successes imported from the DC Universe proper, like Swamp Thing, Animal Man, or the Doom Patrol. But for every import that thrives, or even does respectably (like, say, Unknown Soldier or the Losers) Vertigo's had a ton of DC transplants that are forgettable at best. Tomahawk, Prez, Black Orchid, Congo Bill, Deadman...a lot of characters and titles that didn't break it any bigger in Vertigo than in DC.

Which brings us to another revival: Angel and the Ape. Written by the American Century team of Howard Chaykin and David Tischman...look, I don't care if Chaykin's done a ton of other books, I liked that one...and art by Philip Bond of the perennial classic Kill Your Boyfriend; this revival had a strong pedigree. Actually, it was Angel and the Ape's second revival, Phil Foglio had previously done a 1991 miniseries. The thing is, I didn't read that one...or the original series. And I've read a lot of comics, but apparently they're hard to come by, and I can only recall one comic with the duo.

I can see why it would be tempting to try and bring it back, though, since it seems to have that high concept hook: she's a hot young blond! He's a gorilla that wants to draw comics! Together, they fight crime! In some versions, Angel's a ditz--at best--and Sam Simeon, the titular Ape, can talk; in the Vertigo series, Angel's a party girl, no rocket scientist, but not dumb; Sam can't talk but no one seems to have a problem with him being a gorilla.

This was a four-issue limited, which probably would've led to more if it had taken off; which I guess it did not. Maybe it's just I've liked other Chaykin books better (I liked the all-but-forgotten Power and Glory, for pete's sake...) but it seems like they were trying to walk a fine line between smutty and funny and didn't quite nail either, but both have their moments. Bond's art is great though, so good I'm not quite sure how it didn't carry the whole project through. Maybe it wasn't promoted enough, maybe it was promoted as a nostalgia book when it totally wasn't, and don't you have to remember something to be nostalgic for it? And the four issues were one mystery; second-guessing, maybe two shorter stories or single-issues might've been the way to go. Yeah, like I know.

Currently, Vertigo's got new versions of the Haunted Tank and another shot at Unknown Soldier (Garth Ennis did a limited with him, that I really need to finish a writeup for here...) so they haven't run out of DC characters looking for a new limelight. Probably won't for a while, either. It might not be tops of anyone else's list, but I'd love to see a revival/relaunch of The Barren Earth myself.

Cheer up: if they ever do a Vertigo Sugar and Spike, maybe then you'll get that Showcase collection. Some readers might remember a few years back Kevin Smith took an almost Vertigo-style look at Stanley and His Monster in Green Arrow, of all places...I think I'd prefer Sam's version. Or Philip Bond's. Read more!

From today's quarter boxes, details from the first page and the last page, of two different comics set in 2020.



The weird thing is, Joe Linser's Killraven came up in conversation earlier today: a friend mentioned he bought Dark Ivory yesterday, (to paraphrase, he liked the art, but was waiting for the plot to start) and I said I hadn't read a lot of Linser but knew about this one. The art is nice: he can do some great facial expressions when he wants to, but everyone's hair looks way too nice. And the story's interesting, even though the new character is stupid on so many levels, and Killraven enables her stupidity. Stupid.

The other page is from Jamie Delano's Vertigo limited 2020 Visions, which I've had and lost at least twice. I just read the nine issues of it that I had last week, but I've been missing the Frank Quitely issues forever. Sadly, only the first one was in the bins today: I also bought issues #2 and #3 of the old Chaykin written Fury limited, after foraging around for the rest. The quarter boxes can be cruel. There were a couple of limited series in there that I'm surprised I didn't pounce on, since I'm usually a sucker for a complete run of anything, but I already have Vertigo Pop: London (it's great), don't really need Spider-Girl Presents: the Buzz (haven't read any of those Defalco-verse future ones), and like but know other people who like Tank Girl more...shoot, might kick myself on that one later.

Out for a couple days, but we should be back Saturday, I think...

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