NYCC 08: THE VERTIGO PANEL

[MattBrady]

Reporting by Michael C Lorah

In a near-capacity panel room, editors and creators from DC/Vertigo gathered to discuss the status of their comic book line, announcing new titles and discussing new developments in existing favorites.

Moderating the panel, Senior Vice President and Executive Editor, and line founder, Karen Berger announced the panelists, including editors Shelley Bond, Will Dennis and Jonathan Vankin, and creators Jason Aaron (Scalped), Brian Azzarello (Loveless, 100 Bullets), Mark Buckingham (Fables), Joshua Dysart (Unknown Soldier, Greendale), Amy Hadley (Madame Xanadu), Grant Morrison (Seaguy, War Cop, Me and Atomika), David Tischmann (Greatest Hits), G. Willow Wilson (Air, Brian Wood (DMZ, Northlanders, Demo), and Russ Braun (Jack of Fables covers).

Berger noted that this panel might’ve been the first Vertigo panel for which nobody was late. She also thanked the audience for coming and noted that she was “thrilled” to have a large-scale convention in New York. Each of the creators got a strong round of applause as they were introduced, including hoots for Azzarello and a particularly noisy round of applause for Buckingham, who arrived during introductions.

The first slide shows a cover from the new House of Mystery, by Bill Willingham, Matt Sturges and Luka Rossi. Berger explained that the original House of Mystery was her first title as an editor at DC, so she’s come full circle and she’s very excited about this new take on it. It’s the story of a waitress who winds up trapped in the House, without knowing how it happens. Everyone who is trapped in the House has to tell a story. Focusing on the woman, Fig, and her hope to escape, each issue will have an embedded short story by Willingham and various artists – Berger mentioned Jill Thompson and Bernie Wrightson – giving the series the best of anthologies in the context of a continuing storyline. Sam Weber will be illustrating the series’ covers.

Following with a slide of Madame Xanadu #1, debuting in June, by Matt Wagner and Amy Hadley. The story will be giving Madame Xanadu an origin.

Hadley expanded, saying that the story spans several periods of time and noted that she’s had to do “lots of history research.” The series will give Xanadu “more of an identity.” When Berger joked that Madame Xanadu doesn’t get any older, Hadley teased, “She does a little bit,” and continued to say that “there’s a love interest going on in there.” Berger concluded by teasing that readers will finally find out why she’s called Madame Xanadu, before showing Matt Wagner’s variant cover for issue #1. “If you want two issues, we won’t complain!” she laughed.

Air, by the Cairo creative team G. Willow Wilson & MK Perkar, will be, according to Berger, “refreshingly different.” After Cairo, Berger wanted Wilson to do something else with Vertigo. Willow described the genesis of the series by describing a layover at an airport in Amsterdam. A journalist who has traveled extensively in the Mid-East, with Visas on her passport for Iran and Egypt, she was pulled aside by a young stewardess at the boarding gate. Wilson wondered how the conversation might’ve gone if the stewardess and herself had been cooler, and if they’d lived in a comic book. After the audience’s laughter quieted, she explained that she feels flight has maintained a certain mysticism, despite the political issues of a post-9/11 world. The series follows a flying-averse stewardess on a zany adventure around the globe. “It’s a ton of fun to write,” she told the crowd, and then suggested that its high concept might be described as Umberto Eco and Hiyao Miyazaki creating the TV series Alias.

Berger confirmed that all the new Vertigo series will get sneak previews in the backs of existing titles, so readers will be able to sample them in whichever Vertigo series they are currently reading.

After a nice round of applause for DMZ, the panel moved quickly on to Brian Wood’s new series Northlanders, which drew noticeably less enthusiasm. Wood offered that the second story arc in Northlanders will be painted by Dean Ormston and focuses on the very first recorded Viking raid on England. “The book wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t tell that story,” he said. The third arc will be drawn by his Local collaborator Ryan Kelley.

Greatest Hits, written by David Tischmann and fully illustrated by Glenn Fabry, will be a Vertigo superhero book. The Mates, Tischmann told, are the superhero equivalent of the Beatles in our society. The series is about a documentary filmmaker who follows the Mates, and how this affects his relationship with his father. Tischmann continued saying that if superheroes were real, they’d probably be like rock stars and the series will be exploring that. Fabry is doing “an amazing job,” he concluded.
Berger noted that each of the covers, to the headache of the legal department, will be a take off of a classic rock album cover.

When the cover of Scalped was shown, Berger asked how many of the audience were reading the series, and approximately one-third raised their hands.

Two Hellblazer spin-offs followed. Chas: The Knowledge, by Simon Oliver and Goran Sudzuka, taps into the knowledge of British cab drivers. Berger joked that it’s strange that he’s not there, since when Vertigo began it was only Berger, Matt Wagner and all British authors. Now, “we have only a Scot,” she laughed, as Morrison waved a smile to the audience. In London, cab drivers have to apprentice and study a guide of all the alleys and back streets, because the city was not laid out cleanly, and the premise is that Chas must use his knowledge to untangle a n underground supernatural web that helps to dictate the flow magic in London. Unfortunately for Chas, John Constantine’s in southern France with his girlfriend, so he has to deal with the problem himself. Oliver is a former cab driver, so the story will be completely accurate.

Hellblazer: Pandemonium, by original Hellblazer writer Jamie Delano and Jock, has Constantine sent by Scotland Yard to Iraq, where an ancient force is bubbling up, and only Constantine can fix it. John falls in love with a woman who may or may not be a spy, and the tale will have Constantine in Baghdad dealing with current political situation and echoes of the past.

James Jean’s covers for Fables will be collected in a coffee table book titled The Fables Cover Book. Willingham conducts a Q&A with Jean in the book, which ships in October and will be a great item for any art lover, even those who don’t read Fables.

On the subject of Fables, the cover for issue #75 was shown. Editor Bond bowed out, saying that Bill Willingham promised to fire her if she said anything about the story. Fortunately for the audience, Mark Buckingham was present and did not seem similarly under duress. Buckingham described the issue as double-sized “and I’ll probably have to draw it in a weekend.” Fabletown finally takes the war to the homelands, and nobody will be safe. Bond shouted that somebody will die. Berger remarked that every comic says nobody is safe and somebody will die, prompting Buckingham to note that drawing 56 pages in a month may kill him. An upcoming cover for Jack of Fables was shown then.

Joshua Dysart was given a chance to talk about his new series, a revamping of the old DC property Unknown Soldier, to be illustrated by Alberto Ponticelli. It will focus on an all-new Unknown Soldier. When Vertigo asked him about revamping the Unknown Soldier, Dysart started to think about the lore behind the Unknown Soldier, lore that exists in many countries, and what ties those elements together. He then started to explain the current conflict in Uganda to the audience, as the series will be set in and focused on that conflict. After taking a trip to Uganda (on his own dime, he laughed), Dysart wants to tell “good, fun comics, but still be responsible to the realities of the situation” in Uganda. The trip was the only way he could get the information he needed to represent the story accurately. If you have a chance, he offered, everyone should travel to Uganda. The southern areas are flourishing, despite the war-torn ravages of the north. Tourism and capitalism will save Uganda, he joked.

Two recently debuted series, Young Liars and Vinyl Underground were shown. Prompted by Berger, one in five members of the audience raised their hands to say that they’d read the first issue of Young Liars.

With 100 Bullets nearing an end, Berger noted that Azzarello no longer tells either herself or editor Will Dennis what is going on. He and artist Eduardo Risso share long, secret gazes at each other, but nobody else is allowed to know what’s going on with the series. Azzarello, with his dry, sardonic wit, described the cover shown, a silhouette of an execution next to a tree, with a skull under the Earth, as a metaphor of his past and present, which got a laugh from the crowd.

Berger briefly showed covers for the upcoming second Vertigo American Splendor series, by Harvey Pekar and various artists, and then the cover of Army@Love Season Two. The second Army@Love will be even more “outrageous and political” than the first, she promised. The first issue cover depicted the Mona Lisa in war fatigues, and each issue’s cover will be a take off of a famous piece of art.

After a riotous round of applause, Berger gave the floor to Grant Morrison to discuss the return of Seaguy, teasing that he has a better accent. Morrison greeted everyone with a rowdy, American-tinged “Hello, everybody,” a far cry from his soft, Scottish voice. Describing the first Seaguy series as being about childhood, Morrison told the audience that the new series will be metaphors for the teenage years and adulthood. Talking a mile a minute, and gesturing frantically all the way, he described probably a dozen events from the book, and then said that they were only from the first half. In the second series, subtitled Mickey Blue Eyes, Seaguy is restless and gets a “seedy new little companion, evil little parrot” who watches over him. After getting into more trouble, Seaguy decides world doesn’t work how he thinks is does and is relocated, by outsiders, to Spain and given a new identity. Because of mad cow disease, cows are protected species and Seaguy is trained as a matador, who now all buy sexy clothes and attempt to get the cows into high heels. The series explains how Seaguy deals with this, and then his attempt to get back to his old life. Morrison also introduces Pablo the 100-year-old beekeeper, who talks a bee, bzzz bzzz. Only after Seaguy tapes him talking and speeds the tape up, he hears, “I’m warning you, Seaguy, you’ve got to get out of there.” “Beyond that I’ll tell you no more,” Morrison concluded. The next miniseries will be titled Seaguy: Mickey Blue Eyes, and the third and final series Seaguy Eternal.

After Berger asked about other projects Morrison is working on at Vertigo, Morrison launched into an impromptu talk about two more unannounced projects.

War Cop deals with what Morrison sees as the fetishization of the soldier, and video games teaching you to kill. He explained that he feels sorry for guys being “sent to die” and relates soldiers, in some ways, to the emo guy who cuts himself, as an expression the culture’s dark side. A sci-fi book set five years in future, it will tell of soldier back from a war who wants to keep fighting a war. It then evolves into kids vs. adults for soul of the country.

Also announced by Morrison, to the apparently surprise of the panelists, suggesting that it won’t be seen soon, was Me and Atomika, a satire about a 15-year-old girl, Atomika Bohm, who kid falls in love with her teacher, who turns out be like a villain “from Dr. No or something.” Morrison concluded that it will explore what it would be like to be 15 and have James Bond trying to kill you.

November sees the release of the fourth and final Essential Sandman volume, which Berger says will have a ton of bonus material. However, the big Sandman-related announcement was the comic book adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Yoshitaka Amano’s The Dream Hunters. Four issues, adapted and illustrated by P. Craig Russell, debuting in September. Russell will be nearly done drawing the entire project before the first issue ships, Berger noted.

The floor opened up to audience questions, Buckingham was quickly asked about introducing more African or Asian fables into Fables. Buckingham replied that they are set on wrapping up many ongoing plotlines right now, but after #75, the series will definitely be exploring the fables of other cultures. His favorite arc was the Arabian fables.

Several questions were directed to Morrison, who confirmed that, yes, as described in The Invisibles, the original name of London was Lou-on-Down, though he was unsure of the spelling or original language from whence the name originated. Another audience member told Morrison that having read The Invisibles for the first time recently, she was enamored of the plotline involving Byron and Shelley (from the early part of Invisibles vol. 1, and she wanted Morrison to know that at least one reader loved that part of the saga. Morrison thanked her and told the audience that the story was a dramatization of the struggle between utopia and chaos.

Asked if any other series, beyond 100 Bullets and Y: the Last Man, will be ending, Berger confirmed the cancellation of Loveless and Un-men, saying that unfortunately there was “just not large enough audiences. Not everything catches on.” Azzarello interjected, speaking about Loveless: “I failed you guys on that book. I didn’t do enough to generate an audience,” and described the book as having a birth defect. However, if the opportunity arises to tell more stories, he would love to revisit the characters.

Berger continued, saying that it is a tough market. Vertigo created a new way of looking at comics, it is harder for books to find an audience. “It’s great that the industry has so many great books to choose from, but it’s unfortunate that so much gets lost,” she concluded.

One member of the crowd asked if Vertigo is publishing more spins on DC properties as an effort to catch more audience, but Berger told him that it is “pure coincidence.” She described Vertigo as “still primarily creator-owned and driven.” Editorially, there is no difference in their philosophy between developing DC properties of creator-owned storylines. “It’s been a long time since we’ve done a lot of DC-spin-offs,” she remarked. The questioner assured her that he enjoyed both aspects of Vertigo’s output, and Berger confirmed that they enjoy both as well.

She then confirmed that, yes, American Virgin is a casualty of business, but she was proud of its two-year run. Vertigo’s policy is to always wait for the first trade to see how readers respond to that before considering any cancellation. An impromptu quiz showed that approximately half of those in attendance wait for collections rather than buying monthly comic books. Half buy original graphic novels. One third buy series in serial format and in collected form.

The informal survey prompted someone to ask if Vertigo will be publishing more original graphic novels. Berger asked him to come to tomorrow’s Vertigo panel, which she said will be almost exclusively devoted to upcoming graphic novels.

With 100 Bullets and Loveless ending, will Azzarello still be working for Vertigo?

Leaning forward to answer the question, Azzarello was cut off by Berger, who confirmed that Azzarello and Risso will be working together on something new for Vertigo. “It’ll be Hawkman,” Azzarello joked, getting a laugh from the crowd.

Asked why anthologies don’t sell, Berger noted that even in prose, anthologies are a tough market to crack. Vertigo published several anthologies in the late 90s, and though everyone involved enjoyed working on them, the sales simply didn’t justify creating more.

Morrison, when asked about the increasing popularity of the occult in the mainstream, said that he would definitely still be exploring the occult in his comics, but offered that “2012, it’s too mainstream. It doesn’t need me anymore.”

Morrison also told the audience that he would not be returning to the Doom Patrol, saying that he doesn’t like to “revisit things. No more doom patrol. Totally not.”

On the status of collecting Flex Mentallo, Berger would only say, “We should be, but I don’t have an answer for you.” Morrison laughed, “I don’t think they want his name on the title, in case Charles Atlas rises from the grave.”

Will Vertigo get any animated features, similar to what DC is getting with Superman/Doomsday or New Frontier. Berger said that it is unlikely, but they would entertain an offer.

A fan asked if it is hard to get audiences for war comics, and Azzarello laughed that “Secret War is selling really well.” We’ll see how Unknown Soldier, Berger noted. “Military fiction is very popular in prose fiction, so hopefully we can grab some of that. The Other Side did very well for Vertigo” and Azzarello’s Sgt. Rock novel with Joe Kubert was received well. Vertigo is also publishing Rick Veitch’s Army@Love and Morrison’s War Cop. Dysart added that he is “not the kinda guy to celebrate war, and there’s a lot of the celebration in the media,” so he’s very curious how the market will embrace a book that has an ambiguous take on violence in society.

Berger said that they could only take one more question, as convention personnel had waved a “five minutes” sign. Told that the sign actually read “Please finish,” she laughed and made a mental note to see her eye doctor.

The final question was if the panelists see the audience for Vertigo comics, or comics in general, growing. Berger replied that Vertigo’s “backlist has become our frontlist,” as collections generate most of their sales. “Some monthlies sell well, some don’t,” but she confirmed that Vertigo is committed to monthly comics. “On some books audience is growing, and the culture is coming into comics. And Vertigo’s a great place to start.”

Return to the New York Comic Con 2008 mini-site...

[Parademon]

I love reading reports on Vertigo telated panels as everyone associated with the line seem to give genuine answers to questions and accept that their books could be cancelled at any time so they just have to make the most of them whilst they're being published.

[Hobowatcher]

I think its pretty obvious where Morrison got the Parrot idea...

However, I don't agree on how he views soldiers. Most soldiers don't sign up to do damage to themselves or other. Its the people that send them that have an unhealthy attraction of violence.

Un-Men...

[Duke Jupiter]

The P. Craig Russell news is what I was waiting for. Keep him busy, Vertigo - that's all I ask. Never enough PCR-drawn comics in my collection, that's for sure!

- DJ

[nietoperz]

That PCR Sandman adaptation has me salivating already!

[Tomwaitsfan]

SEAGUY2ISCOMINGSEAGUY2ISCOMINGSEAGUY2ISC OMINGSEAGUY2ISCOMINGSEAGUY2ISCOMINGSEAGU Y2ISCOMING

[Moriarty]

Sorry to see Loveless has been cancelled.

[ShinAkuma666]

Humm, sorry to see Un-Men cancelled (wich I planed on getting the first tpb soon) and Loveless.

Its very sad to see these Vertigo series get cancelled one after the other.

A suggestion I have beside publishing more OGN and limited series would be that instead of ongoing series, the creators could approach the story with a 12-18 issue run, open for more, that way they would not have to rush to the ending when a series is cancelled...

I love Vertigo, always have, but I am so weary of cancellation, since it happened to so many titles lately, that I will wait for 3 tps at least before I try a new series.

[ljacone]

Very much looking forward to both House of Mystery and Unknown Soldier, two of my favorite 70's DC properties (what's next, a Vertigo-revision of The Green Team? Actually, that would be pretty cool...). 100 Bullets had to end eventually, and I need to catch up on it, but a bit surprised see both Loveless and UnMen go as well. Hopefully some of these new series will catch on and have nice, long runs.