Neil Gaiman often tells a story familiar to many of us who grew up reading comics. As the story goes, young Neil Gaiman, in his school’s guidance counselor’s office in Great Britain, is asked the question we all remember getting asked: “What do you want to do when you grow up?” L’il Neil’s response? “I […]
Tag Archives | Vertigo
Time of the Preacher
To lay my bias on the table right off the bat, I believe Preacher is the best series Vertigo has published. Some might argue for Neil Gaiman’s Sandman or Warren Ellis’ Transmetropolitan, IGN puts it at #3 on their list of the best Vertigo titles (behind the Sandman and Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, which was […]
Anatomy of a First Issue: Sandman #1
Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, which ran from 1988 – 1996, totaling at 75 regular issues, is arguably the definitive title that put Vertigo on the map. Originally published as a DC title, much like Alan Moore’s The Saga of the Swamp Thing, The Sandman moved to Vertigo with its forty-seventh issue. As I dialed back […]
Vertigo
Let’s start by looking at Vertigo as a typical DC business model. DC is the place of multiple, similar Earths. It is the place of Vertigo and Tangent comics. And at the very beginning, when comics were unformed and no one was certain how to tell their stories, there were three companies. National Allied Periodicals, […]
Looking Back on Alan Moore
Whenever folks new to comics ask for graphic novels to pick up, we tend to recommend the same ones: WATCHMEN. V FOR VENDETTA. SWAMP THING (All of which were re-branded after the fact as “Vertigo” books once the new DC imprint had been established.). It’s no coincidence that these and so many more sprang from […]
One Last Drink
The things we love the most don’t always love us back. John Constantine, blue collar magician and eternally a grumpy old man, has an addiction to cigarettes. He fights the occult, the extremely powerful, and has more screwball experiences in one day than most people experience in a lifetime. None of that does him in […]
Spotlight on: Daytripper
Daytripper hit the comics industry like a punch to the gut in 2010. Garnering critical acclaim from reviewers and their peers, creators Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba teamed up with Vertigo for this ten-issue series about the life and many deaths of an introspective obit writer who aspires to be an author. Like many of […]
UNDERRATED @ VERTIGO: The Exterminators
Vertigo is responsible for some of the best comics in the history of the medium. The early nineties saw the publication of series such as Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, Grant Morrison’s Animal Man, Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s Preacher, and graphic novel reprints of Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s V for Vendetta, encompassing a sort […]
The Fantasy of Realism
DC Comics has had a surprising tendency over the course of its existence: if a rival publisher goes out of business, often they’ll swoop in and buy up the rights to the character. It happened first in the 1960s with Quality Comics, which added 1940s stars like BLACKHAWK and PLASTIC MAN to the DC roster, […]
New Class of Vertigo: Jeff Lemire
Jeff Lemire is a giant in both the indie world and the mainstream DC Universe. He, along with Scott Snyder of Batman and American Vampire fame, have been embraced in recent years as a sort of new class of Vertigo creators. In fact, so much so that a New York Comic Con interviewer once […]
The Blastoff Art Gallery – Hellblazer
We kick off Vertigo Month with the newest banner from our Artist-in-Residence Elena Casagrande! Click to see the image at full size!