I recently picked up Fogel's Underground Price and Grading Guide v.1, as I'm getting a bit more into the undergrounds, and I'd like to know a bit more about what I'm getting into. The guide is quite liberal in its definition of "underground," and tends to include the comics that are more commonly known as "alternative" within that definition. Which I don't mind, of course. I like to watch evolutions of genres, which this feels like to me.
Vortex is a title I expected to be included in the guide, but wasn't. It's predecessors, such titles as Star*Reach or Andromeda are there, but for some reason Vortex is not. The publisher, also named Vortex, is represented by, at least, Howard Chaykin's Black Kiss. All this said, the task of tracking independent and small press comics is nigh impossible. Let's leave it at that.
This issue was fun. One of the stories continues from an issue of Andromeda that I have, so I'll have to go back, and then also see if I have the rest of the story in any subsequent Vortex issues. This series is one of those that I see all the time in dollar bins and such, but never really had much interest in - I have a contentious relationship with science fiction. My favourite sci-fi writer used to Robert J. Sawyer. His books are still utterly brilliant, but I made the mistake of reading a couple of his speeches from conventions, and he came across as a really narrow-minded kind of guy. His thoughts on religion and its place in human existence sounded, to me, much the same as Richard Dawkins's view. This, to me, was a strange point of view for someone who crafts stories for a living to have. I think we need to believe in stories. It's just when we start mistaking them for reality that the problems begin.
Thus, I tend to read little sci-fi because I was disillusioned by one of my heroes. Which I should just suck up and not let it ruin an entire genre for me. Look at that! Instant online therapy. Perhaps a week of science fiction comics....?
More to come...
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