Through a Glass Darkly

ver·ti·go (vûr'tĭ-gō')
n. pl. ver·ti·goes or ver·ti·gos

1. 1. The sensation of dizziness.

   2. An instance of such a sensation.

2. A confused, disoriented state of mind.

[Middle English, from Latin vertīgō, from vertere, to turn; see wer-² in Indo-European roots.]

1a. Introduction

I'm probably an atypical comics reader.

I didn't come to comics through animated shows or friends playing with action figures on the playground. Aside from Batman, in my youth, I was never really into superheroes. I liked horror, fantasy, science fiction and mystery. Although superheroes are a sub-genre of science fiction, in general, most of them never really clicked for me.

Anyway, in the next section is part of the initial column that I wrote for my now defunct "Scary Monsters & Super Creeps". I hope you'll forgive reusing an old column, but it lends credence to what will come. If you've already read it, feel free to skip down to 1993.

1b. Moore Repurposed

Do you remember the first comic that you ever bought?

Do you remember the circumstances surrounding it? Whether you were a kid with your friends, riding your bike up to the local 7-11, and you had an extra sixty cents to spare, so you bought that issue of Amazing Spider-Man that was sitting there with a Lizard cover that looked cool? How you sat down and pored over the pages before lending it to Jimmy, who returned it without a cover and chocolate prints all over the pages.

Well, I have an eidetic memory, basically, I remember everything. I can tell you what the first movie I saw in theatres was: ET: The Extra Terrestrial. I can tell you what the first adult novel I read was: a hardcover edition of HG Wells' stories including War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, and The Invisible Man, given to me by my grandfather when I was four and I devoured every page. The spring of that year was also the first time I kissed a girl, Margaret, as she was five and going to Kindergarten the next year, starting off a long string of affairs with older women (I've never dated anyone younger than me).

I thought it would be interesting to start off the "first" column discussing "first" things like my first comic. Yet, through all of this, I haven't got a clue what my first comic book was. This suggests to me that it was something bought for me before my second birthday -- which would mean before 1983. It's somewhat strange, because usually you can hand me anything in my vast collection of stuff and I can tell you when I got it and the circumstances surrounding it, but I can't remember that.

I know that I would have got it at the Jerseyville General Store, which had a rack of comics that changed regularly, usually carrying DC and odd small publishers, never any Marvel there. Marvel books I had to get in Ancaster at the Zehrs there. Both the Gene Colan and Ed Hannigan Batman stick in my mind, I remember having Batmans around #350, but I couldn't tell you which ones. This is my problem actually, my earliest comic books I don't have anymore. Either they were thrown out, given away, or destroyed in some, way, shape or form. It really wasn't until '84 or '85 when I got my first long box that I really paid any attention to what I had and where I kept it and even then things I "didn't like", didn't get put it the box, it was mainly reserved at first for Swamp Thing, horror books, Batman and Detective Comics from then on.

Up until Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, I wasn't exactly what you'd call a comics "collector", I was just a reader. I honestly didn't care if I got the next issue of Batman or not, it was just another form of entertainment, and often I could get better out of old sci-fi and horror novels. Swamp Thing was what changed my mind. Moore's stories, with richly textured art from the likes of Steve Bissette, John Totleben, Stan Woch, Ron Randall, and Rick Veitch, just drew me in. They were exactly what a young horror fan needed in addition to the black and white magazines, Stephen King novels, and the bad horror b-movies I used to watch on Sunday afternoons, like It Came from Outer Space and Horrors of the Black Museum.

Now, I'm not going to lie to you and tell you, "I was there from the very beginning." I wasn't. I read several of Marty Pasko's Swamp Thing issues before Moore and really didn't care for them, it made me pretty much ignore the book on the stands, even when the writer changed. The first issue of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing I bought was #38. It was illustrated by Stan Woch and John Totleben, and quite simply I bought it because it had underwater vampires. That may sound silly now, but to my four year old brain, I heard "underwater vampires" and I automatically thought "cool", or whatever it was that kid's then said when they thought something was neat.

For those of you who haven't read it, let me tell you a little bit about it. The story takes place during the American Gothic storyline, the one where Swamp Thing is state-hopping at the bidding of John Constantine. Basically, it's your "town overrun by vampires" story, but with a twist. As the years progressed, a group of vampires discovered a perfect way to exist without being bothered by pesky things like sunlight by moving underwater in the dark, living in the sunken town of Rosewood, Illinois. There's your high concept there that hooks the kids, like me. Basically, from there, it's up to Swamp Thing to stop the underwater vampires, who've started to breed, from coming back up out of the water and killing whatever they feel like. Simple, isn't it?

It continued into the next issue with "Fish Story", and that may be one of the reasons why I continued reading the book, but dressed up in an intelligently told tale, were all of the things that I loved from the horror b-movies I watched. Now that I can look back upon this with more "worldly" eyes, I can see that Moore was playing with the classics, turning them on their ear, and creating something that was true to the heritage of the "monsters" and yet completely fresh and different. He did it in these two issues with vampires, then werewolves, zombies, serial killers, and the haunted house. As a horror fan, I just ate this stuff up like candy.

Honestly, though, it does show you a method to Moore's madness that you can see is even true today. He's very good at taking something old and making it new, giving it a fresh spin. Swamp Thing has its roots in all the old horror stories, Watchmen grew out of Charlton, Tom Strong and Supreme both come from Superman and Captain Marvel, and so on and so forth.

It's amazing how he does it.

2. 1993

Let's put a few things into perspective. In 1993, I was twelve. If you didn't clue in already, I was a strange kid. A little better than a year before, I had been hooked by X-Men #1, which was more or less my gateway into Marvel Comics. Even though I liked the adventures of Marvel's merry mutants, my heart still lay with DC. They just seemed to have more interesting stories, more willing to do things that were outside of the box. In 1993, my preteen brain was blown when DC started a new imprint "suggested for mature readers".

Although many of the books had carried that moniker beforehand, by labelling them under "Vertigo", it somehow felt a little more illicit. At first, I though maybe the comic shop I went to was no longer going to sell me titles I had previously purchased. I was already reading Hellblazer, Swamp Thing and Sandman, but maybe I had just sneaked by in picking those up. Maybe there was content in there that my twelve-year old brain shouldn't be reading. Maybe by branding them separately, DC was signalling that these comics were "off-limits" to me.

Thankfully, this wasn't the case. I squared things with my parents - showing them what I was reading - and they squared things with the comic shop - basically, I was allowed to buy anything I wanted. ...and so, branding the comics with "Vertigo", I was opened up to other titles. I loved Hellblazer, Swamp Thing, and Sandman, but what were these other pretty things that had somehow flown by my notice? Seeing things like Shade, The Changing Man and Doom Patrol bear the same logo, opened my eyes. I had sampled some of these comics before, but never really followed them too closely. By putting them all under one sign, I decided that I was going to have to read them all.

In January of 1993, with a March cover date; Vertigo launched with Swamp Thing #129, Hellblazer #63, Doom Patrol #64, Animal Man #57, Sandman #47, Shade, The Changing Man #33, and the first issues of two limited series, Death - The High Cost of Living and Enigma. Stories written by Neil Gaiman, Garth Ennis, Peter Milligan, Jamie Delano, Nancy Collins, Rachel Pollack. Art by Jill Thompson, Steve Dillon, Steve Pugh, Chris Bachalo, Duncan Fegredo. It was like crack. I've since gone back and filled in the earlier runs of Doom Patrol, Animal Man, and Shade; I wanted to see what they were like from the beginning.

3. A Road Less Travelled

For something that grew out of the strange and dark corners of the DCU, though, Vertigo has become something more. It became a place for creators to do their own work unfettered by the tamperings of corporate comics and the pressures of licensing and keeping characters "pure". It has seen such heights as Preacher, The Invisibles, Fables, Y - The Last Man, 100 Bullets and Transmetropolitan. It spawned a brief-lived sister-imprint in Helix and countless limited series and graphic novels. It has been publishing comics on its own terms for over sixteen years.

As such, I though it would be an excellent source to mine for material; the only problem is, where to begin?