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Sep 26, 2016

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 579: Tales from the Edge 1994 Summer Special, August, 1994

http://www.comics.org/issue/762899/

From the gentle drama of Concrete to....well, to a very strange place. Vertigo's success in the early 90s allowed for a far more experimental side of comics storytelling to emerge from the shadows, if only briefly. Today's comic is emblematic of those that emerged. The styles of art in the book are hardly traditional (though there's a couple of tribute pieces that are very traditional), the stories are just on the edge of actually being stories. It wasn't an easy comic to read (not for the subject matter, but the actual physical make-up of the book), but it was certainly a rewarding one. I'm always pleased to jump into something that reminds me of how far out comics can actually get. There's much of The Cage in this collection, much of the McKean Sandman covers. There's proof of the fact that that shining Vertigo moment in 1994 (when we had the advents of The Invisibles, Preacher) let us see that there was a market in the mainstream for comics that were decidedly un-mainstream.

Tales from the Edge, it seems, was an ongoing anthology title, at least for a little while, though I think this comic is the only one in my collection from Vanguard Studio Productions. I'll have to keep my eye out for other issues.

Onward!

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