The all-purpose Vertigo thread

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Rollo Tomassi
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Re: The all-purpose Vertigo thread

Post by Rollo Tomassi »

I rather enjoyed Fables. I haven't read all of them. I have a huge chuck from issues 11 thru 38, and then another run from 70 thru 92. I also knew who the "Adversary' is/was in advance of reading any of it, because of an off comment made by somebody in a forum when I hadn't started reading it yet. I wish I had bought issue 100 a few months ago, but balked at it's $10 pricetag. Seriously, the single issue 100 is as thick as a Trade.

I think we've already discussed how great Y: The Last Man is in another topic.

Some people think Jason Aaron is overrated, but I absolutely love Scalped.

I also enjoyed (am enjoying) The Unwritten. I'm pnly up to issue 10, but I recently purchased 11-17 on ebay.

The Northlanders by Brian Wood is great. It's a series about vikings. Each story arc features a completely different cast. Each one is compelling.

Brian Wood also writes DMZ which is a story where Manhattan has become a warzone like Bahgdad. I have a huge run of the middle of the series, but its enough to compel me to try and get the whole series.

Both Madame Xanadu and Unknown Soldier have ended, but their short runs were magnificent. I feel Unknown's run ended abruptly due to low sales and was dissatisfied with its ending, but I also felt it reflected the tone of the series.

And even though it was technically Wildstorm, I think Ex Machina is a Vertigo title in everything but name.


I didn't enjoy 100 Bullets. I only came in at the end for the last 10 issues or so, but not a single character in that book had any redeeming qualities whatsoever.

I also didn't much like House of Mystery. it didn't outright suck, but it just didn't interest me.
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Re: The all-purpose Vertigo thread

Post by Diabolical »

I think the only Vertigo titles I've read are Y: The Last Man and iZombie.

Y:TLM was awesome...for the most part.
iZombie is only 12 issues in. Its an odd, lighter book (and drawn by Mike Allred) that only features 1 atypical zombie (and a ghost, a werewolf, a mummy-ish guy and some vampires).
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Re: The all-purpose Vertigo thread

Post by anarky »

Rollo, I'd try 100 Bullets again, from the beginning. Though I'm not at the end yet, I can tell it's something you can't come into late. I think it's easily deserving of the praise it received. At first I preferred the "Graves shows up with a suitcase and gives it to someone, and here's their story" stand-alone stories* to the tales of the Trust and Minutemen, but they've definitely grown on me. I've got a feeling Graves and his crew are going to turn out to be dicks, but they're not completely without redeeming qualities; I just read one really good story today that honest-to-god is about Joe DiMaggio getting a case from Graves to kill JFK over his murder of Marilyn Monroe that really humanized Graves in just a couple of pages. (No names used, but there's absolutely no mistaking it, either.) Really, I think starting at the beginning will make the series seem better overall.

Fables is definitely another of the best I've read. Only problem is that it's still ongoing, so I'll catch up and start having to wait for trades, and there are several spinoffs the library doesn't have. (Not a single Jack of Fables, which appears to have lasted quite a while.) Even though I've got suspicions, please don't spoil the Adversary here.

I'll add Scalped and Unknown Soldier to my list of stuff to read ASAP, which currently includes the rest of Sandman and Y, Transmetropolitan, American Vampire, and Hellblazer. Probably a few others that I'm just not remembering are Vertigo, too.

*--Maybe. I'm finding a lot of the subplots aren't as stand-alone as they seem at first, and wonder if any will be by the time the series wraps.
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Re: The all-purpose Vertigo thread

Post by Rollo Tomassi »

Jack of Fables ran for 50 issues. The final issue actually came out only a couple weeks ago I believe.

I keep meaning to take a crack at Preacher. There's an ebay seller that has pretty much every issue for a dollar each, except for the first 10 or so.
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Re: The all-purpose Vertigo thread

Post by anarky »

Just read Fables Volume 4 (so I'm up on everything through issue #27, aside from #22, which is in the next volume, oddly enough). And I've got a theory about the identity of the Adversary already. I'm going to post who I think it is and why, in spoiler tags in case anyone hasn't read it and decides to later, and want you to just give me a yes or no. (Okay, if it's yes, we can discuss; if no, I want to stay in the dark a bit longer.)

The Adversary is Gepetto.

Although the early descriptions describe him as possibly being a satyr or wood-nymph, this, if not completely mistaken, is likely a puppet that Gepetto made.

Baba Yaga, in disguise as Red Riding Hood, is shocked to meet Pinocchio in person. She says she's heard quite a bit about him, and this comes as a shock to Pinocchio, who says he's from a kingdom so poor and remote that most Fables haven't heard of it at all. IIRC, in an earlier issue, someone mentions that the Adversary was from one of the remotest Kingdoms, which few Fables had even heard of.

There's no doubt that Gepetto is alive and making wooden soldiers for the Adversary, and not dead as Pinocchio thought. The wooden soldiers make abundantly clear that they consider Pinocchio to be their eldest brother, and Pinocchio considers Gepetto to be his father. It's implied Gepetto is the only person capable of making living puppets, and Pinocchio believes this means Gepetto is a slave. He intends to return to the Fable lands to find him. Of course, he's decapitated and stuck in wooden form, meaning that he can't conveniently reveal Gepetto's identity before Willingham wants it revealed.

Also, the soldiers say to Baba Yaga, when no heroic Fables are present, that they are the Adversary's elite, crafted in his image. I think they make a comment about being his sons as well. And they look exactly like grown-up Pinocchio.

If Gepetto's not the Adversary, this is a pretty good smokescreen Willingham's set up here.
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Re: The all-purpose Vertigo thread

Post by Rollo Tomassi »

That's a pretty good guess.
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Re: The all-purpose Vertigo thread

Post by anarky »

Read the next two Fables and the 1001 Nights of Snowfall last night.

Damn. I sorta wondered why the Seven Dwarves hadn't shown up, and it turns out they're not nearly as nice as the Disney versions. And they're dead. Killed by a most unexpected party. The story about Rose, Snow, and Frau Totenkinder would've seemed like a major continuity fart if this whole thing weren't written by one guy, so I'm sure there are reasons it seems to not entirely jive with some of the stuff Totenkinder has said in the regular series--the eye for continuity otherwise has been tighter than you normally see. (I'm going to guess she doesn't want Beast to know she's the same witch who cursed him, so she made it seem like she'd only recently looked into reversing the curse, and she left Snow and Rose out of her story about her return either to hide their involvement or for other reasons unrevealed.)

Luckily the library has up through Vol. 13, and it looks like they're only on Vol. 15 (published yesterday, in fact). So even if they're not getting them promptly, there's not much catchup in the end.
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Re: The all-purpose Vertigo thread

Post by Rollo Tomassi »

Reading interviews with various creators on CBR, I see Brian Wood's DMZ is ending with issue 72 (its on 66 now) and Jason Aaron said he'd be wrapping up Scalped around issue 60 ( I think its on 48 or 49 right now).
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Re: The all-purpose Vertigo thread

Post by anarky »

Adversary revealed, and I know now whether you were being coy with "That's a good guess." :)

I really want Bigby to show back up. Bigby's like Wolverine, without all the suck that's been heaped on him the past decade or so.
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Re: The all-purpose Vertigo thread

Post by vynsane »

anarky wrote:Adversary revealed, and I know now whether you were being coy with "That's a good guess." :)

I really want Bigby to show back up. Bigby's like Wolverine, without all the suck that's been heaped on him the past decade or so.
yeah, but bigby isn't nearly as awesome as boy blue turned out to be.
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Re: The all-purpose Vertigo thread

Post by jjreason »

I've read all of Preacher and a big chunk of Sandman (since this is the all-purpose vertigo thread). I would recommend Preacher above Sandman.
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Re: The all-purpose Vertigo thread

Post by anarky »

vynsane wrote:yeah, but bigby isn't nearly as awesome as boy blue turned out to be.
I meant he literally was like Wolverine. True, Blue out-badassed him by a country mile, but due in large part to the vorpal sword and the witching cloak. Bigby not only was a major badass in his own right, but he came up from being the runt of the litter, which is pretty sweet. There's also the minor issue of the Big Bad Wolf being a much more popular fairytale character than Little Boy Blue, making him pretty close to immortal.

Oh, and I just read the story where Mowgli found him in Alaska. So he's back now. :mabs:

Two incredibly minor, minor things about Fables: first, I'm still not sure I quite get the point of the first Red Riding Hood duplicate. To provide intelligence about who escaped from the castle to the Mundy world? That would require the goblins to know who the hell she was, which is possible, but, even as the most logical explanation, doesn't quite cut it. That just puts an awful lot of faith in the goblins, which the Adversary and his human minions don't seem to have. The only other possibility is to endear herself to Blue on the off chance Blue escapes and a sorceress can pretend to be another duplicate centuries later, which puts a ridiculous amount to chance.

Second, much more minor, I wish there'd been more focus on Flycatcher during the period where Blue and Pinocchio left for the Homelands, when he was released from "servitude" by Beast. I think we got one scene of him that showed he was bunking with Cole, but that was it. Everything else came up in conversation between Rose and Beast later. A scene of him going to the comic shop by himself would've been especially emotional, done right.

With 100 Bullets (really close to the end now), my only issue is that, as more Minutemen keep showing up, it's getting hard to keep them straight, especially with the way it jumps between points of view and time periods. Certainly doesn't help that there's Graves, Lono, Cole, Dizzy (and possibly Loop, I'm not sure if he's technically "in" or not), and the others all look more or less alike (Remi's scars notwithstanding). I keep finding myself thinking I'm reading about one, and some detail pops up that it's a different one, and I have to re-read a few pages. Other than that, incredible series so far. I love the little details, like the implication that Loop's father would've been a Minuteman in the 60s, but someone higher than Graves apparently vetoed it due to his being black.

JJ, I will definitely take into account that you recommend Preacher more highly than Sandman, given the praise you've heaped on Sandman in the past. (I still haven't caught up on that series.)

Speaking of which, with Fables, there's the main series (still ongoing), Jack of Fables (ended with #50), 1001 Nights of Snow, at least two Cinderella spinoff miniseries (the first one in paperback, and the second either just started or soon to begin), and something called The Literals, which I can't find much on since I don't want to completely spoil it. Anything else?

And can anyone shed some light on Sandman? Aside from the main series, what is necessary reading and what is "we slapped the Sandman name on this to sell something that's really unrelated"?
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Re: The all-purpose Vertigo thread

Post by jjreason »

Neil Gaiman's Sandman is the story of the king of dreams and his sister death along with a number of their friends, Lucifer for example. It's like a Shakespearean horror movie that you can only watch while you're asleep or something. Grab the first trade paperback someplace used and see if the issue called "24hrs" (maybe it's #8 or something of the entire run) isn't one of the most haunting (maybe horrifying is better) comic stories you've read.
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Re: The all-purpose Vertigo thread

Post by anarky »

I've got the first paperback and have read it. And a couple of other assorted ones, the incredibly rare "Comic-Con half price paperbacks of incredibly popular series" finds. It's easier to follow a series when you're getting monthlies, or even getting paperbacks as they come out; otherwise, it's this huge fucking mass of $10+ books to gather up. The library here has a limited selection of paperbacks; I might see how far I can get between their stuff and mine before I have to start buying more.

Is "24 Hours" the issue where some relatively minor DCU villain gets one of Sandman's artifacts (I forget which) and wreaks havoc in a diner? That was definitely one of the most disturbing stories I've ever read. Gaiman is one of the few comic writers (or writers, period) that I'd classify as a genius, because he's equally good at horror, straight-up superhero yarns, and children's stories. (If you haven't, read some of his non-comic work. Coraline and Anansi Boys are especially good, and I've got American Gods, The Graveyard Book, and a couple of others on tap to read when I get to them.)

But GODDAMMIT, I accidentally spoiled some major, major shit about Little Boy Blue. :(
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Re: The all-purpose Vertigo thread

Post by jjreason »

It's the diner deal yeah. Very memorable. I think the Sandman run should likely only be what, 10 volumes max? I'll check into it but I think was only 75 issues or something, nowhere near overwhelming in size. There were likely as many tie-ins and related specials, mini-series, what have you as there were main series issues. I never found the peripheral stuff as good, for whatever reason - kinda like all the x-men stuff that was just fluff and obviously being put out to capitalize on the success of the brand. I don't think the Sandman stuff was quite that watered down, but consider it non-essential (and no I haven't read all of it by any stretch, so maybe I'm talking out of my ass).

Checked it - 75 issues and 10 volumes of TPB on the nose.
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