The Ones That Got Away: Part Three

So, here's what it comes down to:

What I'd like to see more of from Vertigo.

Take some chances.

• Don't be afraid of The DC Universe.

At the same time, everything doesn't always need to be so damned weird and edgy. If you want to do a Creeper series, you don't have to have it not feature The Creeper or set it in Paris, 1925.

Wanna do a Creeper series? Have it star The Creeper, Jack Ryder. Ask an old proven hand like Keith Giffen or someone else, if they'd like to visit the character and maybe, just maybe, not segregate it strictly to the Vertigo universe.

Let certain Vertigo/DC characters play in both universes. If there ever was a character who could get away with this, it's The Creeper. With its fractured sense of reality, is certainly one of them. They don't always have to explain their continuity. Which brings me to this...

• Don't be afraid of continuity.

Zatanna is one of those rare characters who exists within two continuities. In Vertigo, she hangs out and regrets sleeping with John Constantine. In the DC Universe, she hangs out with and regrets not sleeping with Batman.

I'm OK with that. It doesn't confuse me and probably won't confuse anyone who could reconcile the difference by looking at a blog or a website.

Would it kill anyone to have her retch at the sight of a young Constantine on the cover of a Mucous Membrane CD?
Don't be afraid to explore connections.

• What you publish doesn't have to be like that other thing.

When Y: The Last Man comes to an end you don't have to replace with something thematically (American Virgin, *cough*) similar. It doesn't shore up the line, Y is gone, deal with it. You can't replace momentum. It only makes the line look sort of "one trick" and homogeneous. There's just as much room in Vertigo for the enigmatic Jack of Fables as there is for Enigma.

• Don't be afraid of the one-shot.

Do you know what was the first Vertigo book I ever bought? It wasn't Sandman. Nope. It was Kill Your Boyfriend. I still have it and re-read it at least once a year. Why? Because, it was damned superb is "why." Personally, I would hold this thing up as important to the 90's as any Nirvana or Dr. Dre CD. As a twenty-three year old with an up and down income, at $4.95, KYB was within my means. Heck, I loved it so much I went back and bought a couple more and gave them out to friends. In today's market, Kill Your Boyfriend would probably be released as a $20-plus hardcover, one I would probably wait on in trade paperback and not be able to hand out like Halloween treats.

• When you sign talent, let them loose.

As much as I love Greg Rucka's writing, he wasn't utilized properly in The DC Universe. Rucka likes to let a story unfold at the pace in which it dictates. Yeah, Checkmate was great but that was because it didn't have a Bat-Symbol on it. His run on Wonder Woman (the best WW run in twenty years, in my opinion) came to an end because he ran out of stories to tell but by editorial edict. Too much of his other work has been hampered by multiple crossovers he had no quality control over, editors not telling him characters he was slated to write are going to be used (badly) elsewhere, effectively killing any momentum he had going into it.

Ask him to work on something at Vertigo. Let's face it, Rucka, with his deliberate pacing, is highly suited for Vertigo. Let him loose on a Phantom Stranger or a Doctor Occult, hell... why not something creator-owned? He's had some success with that, right? Let him tell the stories he wants to tell. I could think of no better place to do so than Vertigo. It doesn't have to be all DC, all the time.

If he ever comes back to the DC fold full-time, don't interfere so much that he just wants to walk away from you while.

So, there it is, what I'd like to see. From new ways to see superheroes to stories featuring Native Americans fighting corruption with wits and nunchuks, Vertigo should be experienced.

Vertigo has always been a hotbed for new fresh and exciting writers. Don't be afraid to let the writers write. Don't be afraid to let them loose across the DC/Vertigo landscape.

Until this happens, "The Ones That Got Away," will always be just that.

What do you think?

The Ones That Got Away: Part Two

In the music industry, they have what is called the A&R department. The A&R department sole responsibility is to groom and polish the artist.

Does the the artist have a really thick Boston accent and you're sending him on tour in the South? A&R'll have him sounding like Matt Damon in no time.

A&R is there to not only make the artists it works with shine but to also help the artist present the image the company wants to get across.

Vertigo Comics have been, edgy, well-written and for the most part, innovative.

Who wouldn't want a piece of that?

Seemingly, Vertigo's sister company, DC Comics.

Although, Vertigo has been one HELL of an A&R department for Marvel.

For the record, I have never even stepped foot in inside of DC or Vertigo's offices but I imagine it to be somewhat like this:

When I worked in the comics shop, random persons would come in and put things on hold. Mind you, it cost nothing to the random person to ask for something to be held for a week. Us, not so much.

Now, let's say,the thing that's being held is a "buzz book" that is sold-out at the distribution level and we're on Day 8, one day past the hold point and someone walks into the store wanting to buy the held book. Do you:

A: Tell the customer the book is being held and you're hoping the person comes in to pick it up later.

B: Tell the person, that if the person doesn't pick it up soon, they can have it.

C: Sell the damned thing to the person standing in front of you with the interest and the cash in hand.

I always went with C. I'd much rather explain to someone why I did something than why I
didn't.

With DC, they always seem to have something on hold. As long as there's been a DC/Vertigo, the only time I can point out DC/Vertigo taking someone off "hold" and using them in both DC & Vertigo was Garth Ennis.

While Ennis burned down the house with Preacher, DC hired him to write a book set within they're universe. That title was the critically acclaimed series, Hitman. Since then, it seems to me that, in the interest of DC not wanting to give the assumption that Vertigo is their farm club has taken a kind of hand-off approach in hiring Vertigo writers.


DC, Vertigo writers have not for the holding. They're usually rabid dogs that need to be unleashed and creating buzz. We need more of that in the DC Universe.

Now this has changed somewhat, not too long ago, we say Fables' Bill Willingham come to The DCU and write Robin but too much in the way of editorial mandates made his run less than memorable.

Later, he was given Shadowpact. A team comprised of DC's C to D list characters and the book, on buzz alone, managed to stick around a couple of years.

His successor on Shadowpact, Matt Sturges also writes Vertigo's Jack of Fables and House of Mystery and is due to take over writing duties on DC's Blue Beetle.

These seem to be exceptions rather than rules. While DC doles out lower tier assignments to Vertigo writers, Marvel looks at say, an Ed Brubaker and says, "Wanna follow Bendis' run on Dardevil and then take over Uncanny X-Men?"

Now, I'm all for A&R but man, looking at the cover for The Joker's Asylum:The Penguin, written by Jason Aaron of Scalped fame, just makes me want to shake my head in disbelief rather than rejoice. DC, did you really want to give a taste of what could have been? Was this really all there was to offer him?

DC, may I offer you advice:

Look at yourselves.

Where was that company that hired Geoff Johns, fresh from having written nothing, to write their big "event" book, Day of Judgment? Yeah, it bombed but didn't it lay the groundwork for returning Green Lantern to prominence? And, how did that happen? You watched him.

Did you toss the guy after his series "Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E." was canceled after only 15 issues? No, you gave him a chance and gave him JSA to write.

A few years back, when you had him do fill-in work on Superman, did you go, "Well, he's done here." No, it was laying a foundation for his return to Superman in Action Comics.

Remember when Mark Waid left The Flash and you hired Johns to fill in following his work on Day of Judgment? How'd that work out for you?

Or were you smart enough to see that once he went Marvel and started work on The Avengers that maybe, just maybe, you'd actually groomed a talent worth keeping.

Don't be afraid to groom your shared writers. Trust me, I know about inter-office chaos and the hate "stealing" people form other departments brings but dammit, Marvel's doing it to you anyway. Find a way to make it work for you amicably.

Look at what's there. I know it's been a while since you've heard it, that was "buzz."

Marvel's heard it lately.

Come back later this week for PART THREE of "The Ones That Got Away." Wherein I speak of Greg Rucka and more of what I'd like to see from Vertigo.

The Ones That Got Away: Part One

It felt familiar.

April 2008. Vertigo Version 3.0 is, in my opinion, a failure.

July 2002. I run the comic shop.

Neil Gaiman long ago ended Vertigo's Version One era (Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol & Animal Man) with the gold standard of Sandman. Six years on, Vertigo offered us Vertigo "ghosts" such as Merv Pumpkinhead, Agent of Dream.

Also, Mike Carey's acclaimed Lucifer run is nearing its end.

July 2002. The Books of Magic, Preacher and The Invisibles have come to their respective ends. Their writers, John Ney Reiber, Garth Ennis & Grant Morrison have moved on to Marvel.

July 2002, Vertigo hasn't had a true "hit" since the 1999 launch of 100 Bullets. (And
Transmetropolitan doesn't count. It was a transplant from DC's failed Helix imprint.)

July 2002. Vertigo offers me Y: The Last Man by writer Brian K. Vaughan, fresh from closing out a failed Swamp Thing re-launch.

May 2002, I look out upon the comics and see the corpses of the failed and failing.

American Century. Outlaw Nation. Codename: Knockout. Flinch. Crusades.

At this point, Fables had yet to arrive.

May 2002, I order 12 copies of Y #1.

Smartest decision I ever made comics-wise.

I'd followed Brian K. Vaughan's work. I loved his two-issue stint on Wonder Woman. I still believe, that while still a bit "green," his work on Swamp Thing was pretty good. I loved his "fill-in" work on Batman. Do you know who he was filling in for?

Ed Brubaker, writer of the soon-to-be-canceled Vertigo series, Deadenders.

I bought the first issue of Y for no other reason than the nifty JG Jones cover.

And then, I read the comic. And, then I told people about the comic. And, then I recommended the comic so then, I had to re-order the comic. Others did the same and the next thing you know, with Fables, 100 Bullets & Y: The Last Man drawing rave reviews and more than respectable trade sales, Vertigo was on the map again.

Let's look at those three series I just mentioned. Fables. 100 Bullets. Y: The Last Man.

What does one have that the others don't? No end in sight.

Fables is ongoing. 100 Bullets and Y are finite series.

After a five-year, sixty issue run, Y is finished and with 100 Bullets reaching issue 90, it is rounding the corner to its planned ending with its 100th issue.

Of the V2 group, The Losers, with its slick art and gritty dialogue, looked to be the clear choice to pick up the 100 Bullets mantle but alas, it seemed no one bothered to ask the writer whether or not it was an ongoing series. Its story came to a close long before Bullets' did.

April 2008. And much like July 2002, Vertigo is, again, left without "definitive" Vertigo.

Vertigo Version 3.0 has been less than stellar. Vertigo, knowing that their "definitives" were coming to their respective ends, let loose with a sea of new titles. Titles that, thematically, bore some striking resemblance to its some Vertigo 2.0 brethren.

American Virgin, let's face it, was Y: That Other Man.

Army @ Love is satire and is the province of the beast or MAD Magazine.

Testament, while interesting, had too much going on.

Brian Wood's DMZ & Northlanders are good but don't pack the wallop of his earlier works such as Channel Zero.

Loveless written by Bullets' Brian Azzarello looked to have the most promise but due to delays and slow pacing lost its momentum.

Deadman had two knocks against it out of the box. One: It didn't feature DC Comics' unliving trapeze artist Deadman, Boston Brand. It featured some guy who was a... dead... man.

Two: it was written by a man known for not knowing what story he wants to tell.

The clever Exterminators, Crossing Midnight and Un-Men are all soon to be canceled.

Vinyl Underground has that early old Vertigo "Brit" feel to it but, if possible, feels almost "too Vertigo."

Of the V3 lot, there is one contender for "definitive" Vertigo status and it comes in the form of the wonderfully written and well-paced series Scalped by current Wolverine writer and Marvel exclusive Jason Aaron.

Marvel. Exclusive. Jason Aaron.

huh...

Damn, DC/Vertigo, why'd you let this one get away.

I've had this feeling before. It feels like deja vu and much like in June 2002, it sees Vertigo at a crossroads and an emerging talent gone to the other side.

What DC work have we seen from this man? In July, we get a one-off Penguin story.

It resembles when Brian K. Vaughan wasn't offered Batman full-time and instead went to Marvel and created Runaways?

It feels like when Brubaker went Marvel and became a breakout star.

Vertigo develops writers and has inadvertently become a farm team for Marvel, where they go off and sell comics in the tens of thousands.

That old feeling? Oh yeah, I know what it is.

It feels like Vertigo.

Part Two of "The Ones That Got Away" and how DC Comics and Geoff Johns plays into all of this next week...