on Swamp Thing

I’m kind of stunned at Steve Bissette’s account of SWAMP THING abuses, inspired by some production errors in the latest edition of that title.

I was (pleasantly) surprised when visiting Neil Gaiman’s home last November that they were sending page proofs of The Absolute Sandman to Neil — to proof color, too, if I recall correctly. Nothing like that has ever, ever been asked of any of us connected to Swamp Thing. This shows where we sit in the DC/Vertigo universe pretty clearly — I’m just glad the generation after us (Neil, Grant, etc.) are afforded more caring and better treatment.

On the one hand, DC doesn’t consult Bissette or Totleben regarding reproductions of their work (despite the presence of multiple known problems with DC’s files, which the artists have offered to help correct). On the other hand, they not only run the new Sandman pages past Gaiman but also pay Todd Klein to completely re-letter Absolute Death, including 8 hours to design a totally new font for a single character. I have nothing but admiration for Todd (who’s done a bang-up job on our new League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), and bravo to him for convincing DC to let him make the project everything he always intended it to be. And I realize that Absolute Death is going to sell huge quantities and generate revenue that easily dwarfs the expense of Todd’s time. With the amount of money DC has made from Neil Gaiman books, they could well employ a full-time Gaiman Liason who stays in touch with Neil and makes sure he approves their every move (by my understanding, Scott Dunbier played something close to this role for Alan Moore for a while, though there was considerably less “approving” going on). Very few creators sell in those kind of numbers, and publishers unfortunately can’t afford to give everybody the full VIP treatment. But is not making your creators hate you really such an impossible task?

Oddly enough, Scott Nybakken seems to be the editor for both Absolute Sandman and the Swamp Thing hardcovers. Here’s him and Gaiman in 2006 calling for original art buyers who could help them reconstruct early Sandman pages. And the results were well worth it: Absolute Sandman is a revelation on par with the best film restorations, making Sandman (especially the Sam Kieth pages) a completely new, more beautiful book, thanks to Daniel Vozzo’s recoloring. The Kirby Fourth World restoration by Dave Tanguay and Drew R. Moore, edited by Anton Kawasaki, is flat-out incredible. When the budget and passion are there — even if the original creator is not — it’s clear that DC can produce outstanding editions. On Swamp Thing they seem to have had neither budget nor creator cooperation (though original series creator Len Wein contributes a helpful new introduction).

As a fan, I’m sorry to see that no recoloring has been done — Tatjana Wood made some great, bold choices, but many of them have become extremely dated, not to mention the color separations which were inaccurately placed to begin with:

(Note the sloppiness of the green along the bottom third of the page, the extra orange under Woodrue’s crotch, the arbitrary swaths of pastel painted across the detailed dead guys in the middleground, and the total washout of the background in screaming red. I guess Totleben’s inking style (with delicately inked shading and textures instead of bold Kirby outlines) simply didn’t lend itself to 1984’s color-separation techniques… By 1987 colorist Sam Parsons was making Totleben look gorgeous in Miracleman at Eclipse, I’m not sure by what process. And I confess I don’t remember the later Totleben/Wood Swamp Things from 1986; maybe they’re great?)

The linework beneath is stunning, from page one onward, but I’ve personally watched new readers pick up Swamp Thing and immediately put it down because “it looks bad.” If you’ve come straight from Fables and Y: The Last Man, exactly as Vertigo hopes you will, or if you saw the Watchmen film and have picked up another title from the same author and publisher, exactly as DC has paid money to suggest you do, you’ll have a really hard time getting over the hump of these colors. Again, I have seen it happen. Would the book sell better with a modern coloring job? Definitely. Enough to cover the expense of reconstruction? With the additional publicity, more enthusiastic endorsements, stronger word-of-mouth, and the possibility of paperback sales, quite possibly. While I’m at it, I also wish they hadn’t used this weird sticky semi-reflective ink/paper. Also, I want a pony.

More importantly, as a member of the industry, I’m even more frustrated that Moore, Bissette, and Totleben have become so estranged from their own work. It’s as though they were “grandfathered in” to the company with a certain level of respect written into their contracts, and while the industry has grown around them, DC is determined to keep them at that (low) level.

cosmos and color

Take a look at this! I’ve never heard of German artist Nic Klein before, but his cover for Annihilation colon Conquest em dash Starlord #4 is WAY too nice to be a Marvel book!

Browsing through, it looks like his covers aren’t uniformly this great — that he’s much more appealing with bright colors than dark ones, and for some reason he often goes dark. But this one made my day. And look! Pretty on the inside too! I may actually check out this whole Annihilation mess.

On second thought, some other parts of it are really uninspiring. How is it possible to make GIANT ALIEN CENTAUR DEATH ROBOTS look so boring? I cannot comprehend it. I acknowledge not everybody has the cojones to pull of a giant kilted space pimp, but come on, let’s have a little zing.

fig. 1: Giant kilted space pimp.

fig. 2: A little zing.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one

Over at The Savage Critic, Abhay Khosla reviews a new series from Vertigo, The Vinyl Underground. I haven’t read this comic, but I feel like I have, and I suspect that’s (a) why I enjoyed reading Abhay’s review and (b) why his reaction was so negative.

And yes, it’s another prong of the ongoing Great Vertigo Symposiblog of 2007 that’s spontaneously arisen in the last month. Like I said over a year ago, writing about American Virgin, “our shelves are filled with overpretentious underexecuted shortlived Vertigo series from the 90s.” At the moment, aside from a few stars (Fables, Y, DMZ, 100 Bullets) the bulk of Vertigo’s output feels like… bulk Vertigo output. As Abhay states (more clearly in the comments to his post than in the original post itself), The Vinyl Underground looks like well-trodden territory for the imprint, and I suspect the irritation comes less from a particular lack of quality in this book than from the sameness that it shares with its siblings, combined with that smug assertion of edginess and originality which is Vertigo’s trademark.* It’s telling that one character claims to be “the only on-line porn star who never goes all the way.” Abhay and Paul O’Brien have already poked fun at the naiveté of this line, but based on the reviews, she’s a lot like the book that contains her: asserting the novelty of a concept which has been done before and wasn’t really that interesting to begin with.

*the smug assertion, that is, not the edginess and originality. [Let the record show that back on The Engine I once suggested that maybe we needed a resurgence of “smirking” comics. Not sure where I stand on this at the moment. But I do like Matt Fraction.]

“Pull back for a double-page spread of… THE KITCHEN!!!”

Guy Major’s color palette, subtly mocked by Abhay, is problematic for me too in the PDF preview. The subtle gradients are certainly miles better than the dark ages of mid-90s Photoshopastrophes, but somehow they end up stiflingly warm and unexciting. Dull? Pale? One of those words. Again, it feels vaguely “Vertigo house style.” I much prefer Major’s coloring in Suburban Glamour, where he rightfully cranks up the pop (the blue in Astrid’s eyes and on Dave’s shirt!) to match McKelvie’s impossibly-charming visual style and carefree high-school setting.

(Is it possible for colors to be described as shiny vs. matte? I feel like that’s the difference here. Vertigo books feel very, very matte. Somehow you can tell even when you’re looking at both of them on a computer screen.)

This ties into a larger question of house style. Every publisher has an identity. Especially in the small world of comics, the taste of an editor does a lot to determine the look and feel of his/her books, from the simple decision of which projects to publish all the way down to details of execution (That’s what fascinated me about the last line of this Minx overview by Valerie D’Orazio). And once established, those patterns become self-fulfilling — Top Cow publishes Top Cow books because that’s what the fans want. And this is all well and good — I like that Oni books feel like Oni books. Top Shelf too. Publishers work hard to develop a public image. But at what point does “reliably consistent aesthetic” slide into “off-puttingly repetitious”?

At the point where a book lacks the unique magic that makes it stand out from the pack, I guess. And that’s not the worst thing in the world. Like I said before, Vertigo was putting out filler material even when Sandman and Preacher were at the height of their powers. Nobody bats a thousand. Thus has it ever been. The Vinyl Underground isn’t a Sign of the End for Vertigo (not that anybody said it was, I guess) — it’s just another book. (Kim Thompson once argued that more “just another book”s is what we need.)

Those covers are pretty sweet, though. Kudos to Vertigo for taking a chance with the layout.

PS. Of course, I’m sitting across from my bookshelf staring at Jonathan Hickman’s sublime The Nightly News, which is more what I was hoping the book would look like based on the cover. I’m with Todd here: IT’S LIKE, WHY DO THEY EVEN FRIKKIN’ MAKE OTHER COMICS?!