Vertigo: First Cut

Another Monday, another Vertigo Spotlight column. Did you read House of Mystery #1 yet? Oh man, what a great book! Check back to Comicsbulletin later this week for my review of that issue as well as and other new Vertigo books.

In the meantime, let's discuss Vertigo: First Cut, which will be in stores this Wednesday. It's a hefty trade with 168 pages of pure gold, collecting seven premiere issues of Vertigo's finest series. With a price tag of $4.99! Oh man, that's cheap, especially for a book with a fascinating array of stories. It's like you're in a chocolate factory, and you're allowed to take a bite out of every bar. Some like white chocolate, some go for pure, others want caramel and nuts in their bar. But remember: there is a story for everybody in this trade.

Still can't believe that price: $4.99. I can guarantee you Vertigo will not make a dime on that one. No, this is just a beautiful teaser for us Vertigo fans and readers who haven't had the pleasure of picking up one of these comics.

I'm pretty jazzed up about it because we actually are going to give away one copy. Yes, you read that right. One lucky winner will get a free copy delivered to his or her door. All you have to do is correctly answer the question at the bottom of this column. And if you want me to autograph it or let my little nephew doodle over it, that will be no problem. Ha Ha!

So let's dive into the chocolate bars extravaganza.

ARMY@LOVE:
Rick Veitch is somewhat of a legend in the la-la comic land. I must say I enjoyed his Vertigo graphic novel Can’t Get No a lot. It is wicked and strange with a good sense of emotion.

Veitch writes, does all the artwork and provides a lovely cover for Army@Love. And he does this month after month. This is an accomplishment by itself that deserves some major kudos.

His art is fine, as always. He is a master at drawing greatly detailed characters. Just look at the stubbly back and chest of Loman. I like those kind of details; it defines a person. The details that Veitch provides on a person's face are more comical than realistic, but it fits this story.

The main themes of this series are sex and war, but these two subjects feel so far apart when sharing the same pages. It's very much in your face satirical comedy with some twists on current political event in Iraq and Afghanistan. Army@Love is a LSD trip, that isn’t every bodies cup of tea.

CROSSING MIDNIGHT:
The setting is Japan. A boy and girl are twins, but one is born before midnight, and the other right after… which isn’t a good sign.

Mike Carey is perhaps mostly remembered for his run on Lucifer. He created a grand fairy tale, but too often I felt lost with its vast amount of characters and sub-stories. Crossing Midnight is also a fantasy/fairy tale. The art that Jim Fern provides for this book isn’t the best I've seen from him, sadly to say. It's all too clean and a little emotionless for my taste, but I also have a feeling that this has been done deliberately to create a minimal style that embodies the Japanese culture.

But let me be clear that it is my own shallowness that I'm having trouble looking past Fern's drawings to let this book fully bloom. Carey knows how to write a great story; he's done it a number of times with his great Hellblazer stories.

DMZ:
As a comic reader I'm as biased as everybody else, but here in my capacity as wannabe comic book… ehhm… journalist, I will try to be impartial.

For the most part.

Don't laugh, damn it, I do try!

But with a series like DMZ I can't stop myself from standing on your rooftop and shouting: This is a world shattering classic book!

I have never served in the army. I've never been part of any partisan group fighting for freedom. I'm not one of the young guys who are sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. I have never held or shot a weapon of any kind.

But DMZ opens my eyes. Freedom is a precious gift. Brian Wood succeeds in tearing me out of my comfortable chair, and throwing me right in the front line of a civil war. I'm so close to the frontline that bullets fly left and right, both from friend and foe. My emotions are being torn apart while I watch this civil war massacre unfold. America is at war. Not with terrorists or a foreign country. No, it's at war with itself. And Manhattan is supposed to be the DMZ. There is hunger, disease, mayhem. The people of New York are right in the middle of a trauma that makes 9/11 seems like child's play. Matty Roth is a journalist who tries to cover this important story. Wood and artist Riccardo Burchielli fleshed out this story so well that I'm that journalist. I run for my life, and life is terribly cruel here in the ruins of Manhattan.

THE EXTERMINATORS :
Are you allowed to have favourite comics when you write about them? Maybe it's not all that professional, but who cares? The Exterminators is at the top of my list, and Simon Oliver is the man who delivers all this greatness. Is there anything this writer can't do? The plot is too bizarre for words. The jokes are better than most sitcoms, and Oliver knows how to construct scenes where the maggots crawl right out of your comic book copy. I assure you that you never will look at bugs in the same way again!

The characters are odd, to say the least, and together they form a team to stop huge cockroaches from destroying our world. Oliver has laid out a grand scheme for this comic, with twists and turns that will raise the hairs on your back. The art of Tony Moore is lugubrious and masterly as ever. He knows what works in a scene and how to make us readers get on the edge of our seats, while moments later he leaves us with a nauseous feeling as we close the book. The book deserves all the credit and awards there are to give.

JACK OF FABLES:
Hilarious! That's the first word that comes to mind when thinking of Jack of Fables. Matt Sturges and Bill Willingham have created a fairy tale combined with the best humour Monty Python has to offer. You will never forget this lovely bastard and anti-hero, Jack. Every person who walks around in this book is worthy of a comic by itself. It's funny. It's dense. The car crash scene is my favourite. In here artist Tony Akins shows off his talents and makes you easily forget that this isn't drawn by Mark Buckingham, the grandmaster of Fables. The sheer enthusiasm splashes right out of the pages, and pushes Jack of Fables to even higher levels.

And ehhm…Goldilocks has never looked so fine as on the last page. Damn, I wish I was Jack.

LOVELESS:
In all honesty I have to confess that I'm not following Loveless as a monthly; I'm reading the trade paperbacks. Why I came to this decision isn't all that clear to me. Perhaps it's the fact that I don't like westerns that much, except those by Sergio Leone.

The end for this series is in plain view, but I hope with all my heart that Loveless won't end up on the bottom shelf. Writer Brian Azzarello apologized to his fans at NYCC that he let them down with this book, but I don't feel that apologies have to be said. If you read the first issue, or better yet the first trade, you will know this is a fascinating story, chock full of drama, action and sublime dialogues. It's the unrefined drawings that make this story a little tough to follow. The several mysterious characters aren't always easy to distinguish from one another either. This hampers the story. Slightly more detail would have made reading Loveless so much more gratifying.

SCALPED:
When political correctness grabbed hold, a stewardess became a flight attendant and an Indian became a Native American. Jason Aaron didn't get that memo because there is nothing politically correct about this ruthless crime story that is set on a Native American reservation.

Aaron knows how to build a story that has drama, sorrow and brutal action, without hitting any cliché buttons. Slowly I'm realising that we're witnessing comic book history in the making. Scalped is a milestone comic book, if you ask me. The story of Bad Horse is bone shattering and heart rendering in a psychological way, and with thousands of unstoppable bullets. Street fighting has never looked so brutal.

The dialogue and plot are sophisticated and just as good as works by James Elroy or Brian DePalma. This is great crime fiction.

Well that's it from Vertigo: First Cut. There HAS to be a story in here that is to your liking. And for those of you who are already familiar with all of these featured Vertigo titles, think of First Cut as a great present to give away to one of your buddies. Talking about presents, I almost forgot to give you the question so you can win you own free copy. You can email me at "info@martijnform.com" and when next week's column is up, I will announce the winner.

So here is the question: In the Jack of Fables comic book how old is Jack?

The person who emails me the most creative and accurate answer (as judged by me) will win a copy of Vertigo: First Cut.

If you win, do me the pleasure of putting it on your coffee table for some weeks. Then whenever company comes over, you get to serve them more than milk and cookies. Trust me: your guests will love you for it.

Also in store this week:100 Bullets #91

DMZ #31

The Un-Men #10

Young Liars #3

It's going to be great Vertigo week!

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