The 40 Years fo Comics Project - Day 261: Nightside #1, December 2001

I remember getting this comic in at my store. There was something in the solicitation about it being one of Marvel's first creator-owned titles. I think. To be honest, that cover is really all that ever sticks in my head about this comic. But it is indeed creator-owned, copyrighted by Robert Weinberg, a name I am not familiar with.

The story's a typical urban horror-fantasy. Human detective plys her trade amongst the vampires and werewolves that inhabit the "nightside" of the city. Maybe back in 2001, this was somehow innovative (remember, this was probably just as Fables was starting up), but it just feels dated now.

I don't have much else to say about this comic. It's not the worst thing I've read. It's not the best. It was a random selection (I cleaned up my storage room today, so my comics are a little more accessible. More random shenanigans tomorrow!).

The 40 Years fo Comics Project - Day 257: The Girl Who Would Be Death #1, December 1998

There was quite a hullaballoo when this comic came out. It had been a few years since Gaiman's two Death miniseries, so the thought of a new one from Vertigo was rather enticing.

Until, of course, they told us it wasn't really about Death, but about someone trying to trap Death, a la Roderick Burgess. Not quite as exciting.

That said, until today that was all I would have been able to tell you about this series. I may not even have remembered the trapping Death bit. This is one of those comics that found its way into the collection via my store, and has gone unread in the 15 or so years since. And it was pretty good. Good enough that I'd pick up the rest of the mini-series...if the price was right.

The comic is nicely atmospheric, due in part to Dean Ormston's amazing lines, but also to Caitlin Kiernan's poetic captions. There's a sense of invocation in the sounds of the words, the images that are strung together.

Not sure quite yet what to think or say about the characters we've been introduced to thus far. In some ways I can see in them the movement of Vertigo comics that eventually led to my no longer bothering with them - there's this real morbid introspective vibe I get from these comics, which is cool, though I have to ask the questions about why such morbidity is necessary to carry forward a plot - at some point it becomes an end in and of itself, which I think is just self-indulgent. The characters in this comic are in danger of that: self indulgence to the point of insignificance. Not to say that they're all the way there, and Plath's character is remarkably well-realized. It's just this underlying angsty-ness, like the 9th season of Supernatural. I find that lots of "mature" comics will just let the angst take over and mistake it for depth.

A lukewarm review, I guess. I must admit I continue to check out Vertigo titles every now and again. Prez is pretty good, though I'm well behind on it. But it's not like the early 90s, where I would have read every Vertigo title had I the time or (as this was during the dark days of my break from comic collecting) inclination. I wonder what changed.

More randomness on it's way! See you tomorrow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 122: (After) Life in Gothland #3, 2001

I usually pull my covers from the Grand Comics Database. In the odd case that they don't have a cover, I'll scan it and submit it to help make the database comprehensive. Then I'll link to the issue page from the graphic above. What's interesting about this comic is it's the first that I've come across that has absolutely no entry on the GCD. I've taken steps to remedy that, but considering the size of the archive and the size of the fandom, the fact that this comic hasn't yet been entered is pretty crazy to me. That said, once the page is up, I'll add a link to the graphic above.

(After)Life is one of the comics I know best in my collection, but only from a particular perspective. My database alphabetizes automatically for me, and, as it should, places titles that are numbers before the alphabetical listing. What I didn't realize before entering this comic is that punctuation, like those parentheses, come before numbers. So every time I open up my database, there's (After)Life in Gothland #3, staring at me from the top of the list, wondering why it is that in the years that I've owned it, I've never read it.

Consider that question remedied.

Thankfully, there is a text feature on the inside front cover that catches one up, otherwise I'd have been totally lost. That said, the comic is very much indicative of that late nineties, early 2000s goth comic movement that gave us things like Lenore and Gloomcookie. The comic is neither abysmal nor spectacular, but it entertains in good proportion. There's lots of leather-clad goths (the action takes place in a goth club), lot's of gender-bending and non-normative sexuality, which was the purview of such independent comics back at the beginning of the millennium. There's also lots of silly magical stuff going on, with the whole of the goth club being populated by imps who ride around inside goths. Oh, and there's an old pagan god sitting at the bar complaining about the quality of the whiskey, which I think was my favourite thing about this book.

The story ends on a cliffhanger, and I wonder if any more of the series was published. Usually I'd go to the GCD for that information, but I appear to be on the leading edge of that question. It's probably for the best. Having discovered Alien Fire a couple of days ago, I think it's best to limit my collecting of ridiculously obscure titles to one, otherwise the frustration might be too much.

I'll continue digging through the miscellaneous A section of the collection tomorrow. Though perhaps (After)Life should have a section all its own, "Punctuation Misc." perhaps. That said, I think I'm also going to delve back into Adventurers, and see what's up in volume 2 over the course of the next week as well. So many plans, so little Tom. See you tomorrow!