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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 31, 2024 16:33:50 GMT -5
DC Direct Currents #69 (December cover date, 1993)
The Spectre gets another special cover in an attempt to drum up sales, I imagine. I guess it may have been partially that, but Spectre's covers were always kind of their own special thing. That's not really what they were doing. Vertigo was initially advertised as "the dark corner of the DC Universe." Titles like Sandman, Hellblazer, Animal Man and Doom Patrol had started out in the DCU and remained there. There wasn't an attempt to shoehorn in every Vertigo title though. |
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Post by codystarbuck on Jul 31, 2024 18:03:52 GMT -5
DC Direct Currents #69 (December cover date, 1993)
  DC's other big cash cow gets his own monthly series. It would last a respectable 66 issues before coming to an end in 1999. I'm not sure how popular Lobo remained in the decades afterwards. It feels like he was product of the 90s. Peter David brings us an Aquaman miniseries, Time and Tide, that takes a look at at his origins and early career while setting up his new ongoing book. Bloodlines reaches its conclusion in case anyone cared. There's a Two-Face flipbook that features Golden Age art by Joe Staton on one side and modern art on the other. Doug Moench and Kelly Jones are back for another Batman Elseworlds tale called Dark Joker -- The Wild. The Spectre gets another special cover in an attempt to drum up sales, I imagine. There's a Jeph Loeb/Tim Sale Batman Halloween Special that also has a fancy cover. DC adapts Stalone's Demolition Man, and finally there's news about the first Milestone crossover which is designed to launch a second wave of titles. Speaking of crossover events, I had no idea that Vertigo tried to do one with their annuals. It was called Children's Crusade and it began with a special written by Neil Gaiman and penciled by Chris Bachalo. I guess they were trying to present Vertigo as a shared universe, but it's a little disappointing to see them pull the same commercial trick as the regular Marvel and DC lines. That said, it appeared difficult for them to keep up with the pace of putting out two new books a month. The second preview this month is for the new Sandman Mystery Theatre arc, The Brute. Between the Vertigo and DC Universe solicitations there's another volume of Gregory, which gets lumped with Streets in the mysterious "others" section. Looking through the solicitations, a lot has changed since I first picked up this newsletter and became enamored with the titles I could never afford. Alan Grant is no longer doing The Demon or L.E.G.I.O.N. Mike Grell has left Green Arrow. The Bierbaums are no longer doing Legion of Super-Heroes. The era that I loved is over. Children's Crusade didn't really work, in my opinion and it was too much through the eyes of young characters (Tim Hunter, the Dead Boy Detectives, etc) and that wasn't what the "adult" readers of Vertigo wanted. I don't believe they repeated the idea, unless my memory is failing, again. Gregory was in the "others" section, since it was part of the Piranha Press imprint, which included creator ownership, to attract new talent. It was edited by Mark Nevelow and used more new talent then established, with their biggest successes being the 4 Gregory books, the two Epicurus albums from Sam Keith and William Messner-Loebs and Kyle Baker's Why I Hate Saturn, as well as the anthology Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children. It was launched in '89 and Nevelow left in '91 and DC tried to make it more commercial, before shutting it down, in 1994. Paradox Press replaced it. The last project from it was Howard Cruise's Stuck Rubber baby, which was still being produced, when the axe fell on the imprint and it was published under the Paradox Press name. As it was, the publishers were heading towards a cliff, as the catering to speculators was about to see the market collapse and then get worse, when Marvel's owners tried to go the self-distribution route. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 31, 2024 18:07:17 GMT -5
I believe that the last books that carried the Paradox Press imprint were the various Big Book of...the last of which came out in the year 2000.
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Post by commond on Aug 1, 2024 4:37:50 GMT -5
DC Direct Currents #69 (December cover date, 1993)
The Spectre gets another special cover in an attempt to drum up sales, I imagine. I guess it may have been partially that, but Spectre's covers were always kind of their own special thing. That's not really what they were doing. Vertigo was initially advertised as "the dark corner of the DC Universe." Titles like Sandman, Hellblazer, Animal Man and Doom Patrol had started out in the DCU and remained there. There wasn't an attempt to shoehorn in every Vertigo title though. That part I get. Constantine was guest starring in Shade, the Changing Man the same month that Vertigo published Children's Crusade. I just felt like it was the same commercial trick that was rampant at the time. You had all these publishers creating new lines and new universes and having crossover events. Vertigo felt like it should be above that. The idea behind these crossovers is that you bought the bookend specials and all of the annuals involved even if you didn't read the monthly books so that you had the complete story. I thought Vertigo was above that sort of thing. Previously, they'd had the Jam special and it felt like they were giving you a choice of books you might like, not trying to get you to read all the titles they publish. It doesn't seem very on brand for Vertigo, but like Cody said, I don't think they ever tried something like this again. They may have been under some sales pressure as well. |
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Post by codystarbuck on Aug 1, 2024 12:00:59 GMT -5
I believe that the last books that carried the Paradox Press imprint were the various Big Book of...the last of which came out in the year 2000. That was their main content, yes, which we used to get at Barnes & Noble. They had at least one, if not more unpublished book in the works, The Big Book of Wild Women, which was announced and solicited, but never released. It was supposed to include features on people like Bettie Page, Lola Montes, Tura Satana, Rusty Warren, Anis Niin and Victoria Woodhull. Paradox Press was intended yo be non-superhero graphic novels and published Road To Perdition (aka Road to a Crib from Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima), A History of Violence, the Gon books, a reprint of Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics, Brooklyn Dreams and a reprint of The Bogie Man. Plus all of the Big Book of....series. I bought a few of those, with the one on the 1970s being my favorite. Lots of fun stuff there. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Aug 1, 2024 12:15:09 GMT -5
I believe that the last books that carried the Paradox Press imprint were the various Big Book of...the last of which came out in the year 2000. That was their main content, yes, which we used to get at Barnes & Noble. They had at least one, if not more unpublished book in the works, The Big Book of Wild Women, which was announced and solicited, but never released. It was supposed to include features on people like Bettie Page, Lola Montes, Tura Satana, Rusty Warren, Anis Niin and Victoria Woodhull. Paradox Press was intended yo be non-superhero graphic novels and published Road To Perdition (aka Road to a Crib from Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima), A History of Violence, the Gon books, a reprint of Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics, Brooklyn Dreams and a reprint of The Bogie Man. Plus all of the Big Book of....series. I bought a few of those, with the one on the 1970s being my favorite. Lots of fun stuff there. I bought all the Big Books. Super fun and a nice introduction to some artists I didn’t already know. I feel like I got a few from the remainder section of B&N. The rest were EBay back before shipping charges went nuts. |
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Post by Calidore on Aug 1, 2024 12:55:52 GMT -5
Plus all of the Big Book of....series. I bought a few of those, with the one on the 1970s being my favorite. Lots of fun stuff there. Same here. I really liked the line in general, but the 1970s one had things I actually remembered. Also reminded me of things I'd totally forgotten about, like Space Food Sticks. |
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Post by codystarbuck on Aug 1, 2024 13:20:43 GMT -5
That was their main content, yes, which we used to get at Barnes & Noble. They had at least one, if not more unpublished book in the works, The Big Book of Wild Women, which was announced and solicited, but never released. It was supposed to include features on people like Bettie Page, Lola Montes, Tura Satana, Rusty Warren, Anis Niin and Victoria Woodhull. Paradox Press was intended yo be non-superhero graphic novels and published Road To Perdition (aka Road to a Crib from Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima), A History of Violence, the Gon books, a reprint of Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics, Brooklyn Dreams and a reprint of The Bogie Man. Plus all of the Big Book of....series. I bought a few of those, with the one on the 1970s being my favorite. Lots of fun stuff there. I bought all the Big Books. Super fun and a nice introduction to some artists I didn’t already know. I feel like I got a few from the remainder section of B&N. The rest were EBay back before shipping charges went nuts. Yeah, we got a couple of the later ones in the Bargain section. For a time there, we were getting quite a lot of comic book-related material for that area and the company had a license to reproduce a couple of reference books, for a while. At different times, we got the Don Martin boxed set, the Fantagraphics Complete Willie & Joe (the Bill Mauldin cartoons), the Taschen DC 75 years book, the Les Daniels collector set versions of his Superman and Batman books, some of the Big Book series, a bunch of trades for the Now Comics Speed Racer series, with some of the most amateurish art I have ever see in a published comic, Gene Simmons' Dominatrix trade, the Kiss collected book and a hodge podge of Marvel trades and some DC. For whatever reason, the Big Books were classified for the Humor section, rather than the Graphic Novel section, like everything else. Usually, we only carried the newspaper stuff in the humor section, apart from the Disney and Archie reprints. At one point, we got in the Dark Horse trade collection for Richie Rich and maybe one of the other Harvey reprints and they were classified for the Young Reader section. Usually that was for newer stuff and any kind of classic reprint was either humor (for newspaper strips) or Graphic novels, for comic book stuff, regardless of the original target demographic, since they are nostalgia collections. I think the only people who looked at the Richie Rich book were adults, as kids had no frame of reference. Good collection of stories, too,,,including a couple I distinctly remembered reading. |
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Post by commond on Aug 1, 2024 15:33:20 GMT -5
DC Direct Currents #70 (January cover date, 1994)
 Slow news month. War breaks out in the Dakota Universe, and Milestone Media overextends itself by adding two more titles. There's a new Judge Dredd/Batman book. I don't think I read this one. Cam Kennedy does the art. There's a new season of Showcase, and a collection of The Batman Adventures that would have made a nice little Christmas present. Vertigo has nothing. It's just Death merchandise. Tim Hunter returns in Arcana Annual #1, which promises to set the stage for a new ongoing series.
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Post by codystarbuck on Aug 1, 2024 16:27:18 GMT -5
I had the Batman Adventures trade, which helped me catch up, as I mist the first half dozen issues. I had turned my nose up at it, as a kiddie book, until I heard otherwise, in CBG, and discovered that it was the Best Batman book of the day and best series in a long time.
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Post by commond on Aug 2, 2024 16:25:43 GMT -5
DC Direct Currents #71 (February cover date, 1994)  Here we have DC cashing in on the recent success of the Superman books with a couple of miniseries and two new ongoing titles. Is it too much of a good thing? Superboy and Steel were popular characters, so I guess it was worth a shot. Superboy ran for 102 issues. Steel lasted a more modest 53 issues. It's interesting to me that Robin and Superboy had long runs in solo titles after one iteration had been killed off and another written out of the continuity. It's a big month for fans of the Batman animated show. There's an adaptation of Mask of Phantasm, and the Mad Love one shot. The Mad Love comic by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm won an Eisner for Best Single Issue and is easily one of the best single issue comic books DC produced in the 1990s. Meanwhile, the Simon and Kirby character Fighting American is brought back for a 90s spin, there's a odd looking Elseworlds story where Batman becomes a Green Lantern, and the Legion of Super-Heroes have become fugitives. They're ratcheting up the production of these Elseworlds stories after only appearing sporadically during the early part of the 90s. I've never read Tom McCraw's run on Legion. I wonder how good it is. I suppose it doesn't really matter since Zero Hour is about to wipe the Legion out of existence. Lastly, we have the ridiculous Lobocop. I thought we'd moved beyond this stuff when Lobo got his own book but apparently someone thought Lobocop was worthy of being published. I should be more supportive of it since it was drawn by New Zealand artist, Martin Edmond, who was a bit of a hero in our eyes since he was doing work for publishers in the States, but sorry Martin. RIP. On the Vertigo side, their flagship title is gearing up for its final story. That's... not ideal. From what I recall, The Kindly Ones wasn't well received as it was being released. Gaiman was writing for the trade instead of the floppy and the pacing felt off at times. There were delays between issues, and people found Hempel's art difficult to follow. What should have been a big deal kind of flopped. Vertigo also has a reprint of the Death AIDS awareness story, and an interesting looking miniseries focusing on The Un-Men from Swamp Thing. FWIW, Scarab is solicited as a miniseries from issue #3. Ted McKeever takes over as the artist on Doom Patrol from issue #75. I have the vaguest of memories of picking Ted McKeever Doom Patrol issues up in dollar boxes, or whatever the equivalent of a dollar box was in New Zealand. I really liked his art as a teenager, but it has not aged well for me as an adult. The Kevin O'Neill Showcase '94 cover should have been the cover of the month. 
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Aug 2, 2024 16:56:40 GMT -5
DC Direct Currents #71 (February cover date, 1994)On the Vertigo side, their flagship title is gearing up for its final story. That's... not ideal. From what I recall, The Kindly Ones wasn't well received as it was being released. Gaiman was writing for the trade instead of the floppy and the pacing felt off at times. There were delays between issues, and people found Hempel's art difficult to follow. What should have been a big deal kind of flopped. Vertigo also has a reprint of the Death AIDS awareness story, and an interesting looking miniseries focusing on The Un-Men from Swamp Thing. FWIW, Scarab is solicited as a miniseries from issue #3. I don't think that Gaiman was writing for the trade as that just was not a thing at the time. I think the issues were that it was a very long storyline, that there were delays that made a thirteen issue story take sixteen months to come out, and a lot of people were, at least, not used to Hempel's art (I hated it at the time, but I loved Sandman enough that I didn't care). It is, by far, my least favorite storyline of the series for a variety of reasons. |
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Post by commond on Aug 2, 2024 17:37:17 GMT -5
The idea of writing for the trade came from Gaiman's interview in the Sandman Companion, though he refers to it as "book form."
Here's the entire quote:
"By the time I was plotting The Kindly Ones, I knew the entire storyline would end up being collected in book form. I therefore chose to pace the story in a way that work would perfectly for a book -- but that would not work very well for a monthly comic, as it would be too slow at the start and too fast at the end."
He goes on to discuss how he deliberately chose not to reorient the reader at the beginning of each issue, or reintroduce characters that hadn't appeared for some time. He also discusses how some monthly readers complained that they didn't feel like the story was being done for them and that they were just being used to subsidize the book.
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Post by codystarbuck on Aug 2, 2024 21:31:42 GMT -5
Wait, I thought Kevin O'Neil was banned, completely, by the Comics Code Authority. Yet another comics legend proven false? Or was that just at the stat of his work for DC?
I was well used to Hempel, thanks to Gregory and Jonny Quest. I just felt the story was lacking and definitely failed to create tension, as you knew Dream could not die, because he was one of the Endless. You knew he would still exist, in another form, which destroyed any danger within the story. Sometimes I think Gaiman is another who has trouble with endings, though it varies a bit. After years of his work and that of friend Kim Newman, and collaborator Terry Pratchett, it is safe to say he was the weakest writer of the three, though no less inventive than the other two or inferior in his use of language. I think he is not as polished in some of the more technical areas. Neverwhere has similar problems.
Mad Love was pure awesome!
I maybe the only one; but, I quite enjoyed the Fighting American mini. Compared to the original it was lacking in satire or pure laughs; but, it was a decent mix of satire and adventure and a little bit smarter than the average superhero book of the time. better than Liefeld's use of the character. You could do a lot with that character, today, with a really sharp satirist writing it.
Lobocop is a case, probably, of someone concocting the name, as a joke, and then a story being built around it. I used to draw a cartoon on the marker boards, in our classroom, when I was going to Supply Corps School, for the Navy (6 month school, to learn the job of a supply officer), called RoboChop (supply officers are called "Chops" or "porkchops," because the emblem of a leaf with two acorns, from an angle, looks like a porkchop), to parody some of the topis were were learning. He carried a barcode scanner in place of his weapon.
We were the businessmen of the Navy; we didn't get much glamor and had to settle for a sense of humor. We also used to talk like pilots, with our hands, while telling stories of submitting requisitions, calling it Top Chop.
Like I say, chicks didn't clamor for Supply Officers, you had to console yourself with humor.
Our Fiscal New Year's Party was awesome, though!
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Post by commond on Aug 3, 2024 17:40:28 GMT -5
DC Direct Currents #72 (March cover date, 1994)  This month we've got The Power of Shazam! hardcover graphic novel by Jerry Ordway, who is credited as one of the architects behind Superman's return to greatness. If I'm not mistaken, he also does a decent job of capturing the essence of Captain Marvel. Meanwhile, Anima becomes the first Bloodlines character to get an ongoing title. It ends after 16 issues. A bunch of shit has been happening in Green Lantern and it all culminates in issue #50. I think this is the storyline where Hal turns bad. There's a countdown to Zero Hour, which is kind of cool actually. John Francis Moore gives us a Superman prestige one shot called Superman: "Under a Yellow Sun" a novel by Clark Kent. They were pretty serious about this Green Lantern overhaul as they even cancelled Green Lantern Corps Quarterly. Valor dies in his title setting up a time paradox. Uh oh. This cover by Brian Stelfreeze makes me wanna lay down some cash.  Across the line, they're trying to integrate the Bloodlines characters into the fold. I have this over-riding memory of it not working, but they sure as heck tried. Green Arrow is holding a pair of guns. That book has gone downhill fast. What the f--- is this Guy Gardner Warrior getup? I had blotted that from my memory.  That's gotta be a top 10 worst costume of the decade. On the Vertigo side of things, does anyone remember Grant Morrison & Mike Millar's run on Swamp Thing cos I sure as hell don't. Research tells me that Morrison only wrote the first four part arc, and then Millar took over and the book was ultimately cancelled. All of which is probably why you don't hear much about Morrison & Millar's Swamp Thing. Hellblazer celebrates its 75th issue. There's a backup story where John meets Kit for the first time. Man, did I love Kit. Maybe one of my favorite all-time comic book characters.
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