5 out of 5

We’ll go over my take on Vertigo once again:

During its inception, Vertigo was an oddball camp of mostly Sandman and then some straggler titles like Shade, The Changing Man.  But it quickly became an interesting place for some random one-shots and minis.  Not always up my alley, as they seemed still geared toward your Sandman fantasy / erotica-lite reader, but it was definitely a place to go for certain type of audience.  And then Preacher.  Around this time, the imprint started to encompass a wide field of creativity, opening us up to what felt like the golden years.  You still had your Sandman audience, but – perhaps thanks largely to the overseas invasion that came with Ennis (and sure, stretched back to much earlier than this) – we started to get a whole bunch of wacky stuff from all different genres.  Lots of limited series of varying lengths which was great, and offered what the majors often didn’t: clear start and end-points.  But of course, the ongoing Preacher model was probably desirable from a profit point of view, and thus, when Y the Last Man became a “crossover hit,” it felt like the honchos at Vgo started having big dreams and the publisher seemed to shift almost exclusively toward what felt like bids for TV deals or hip ideas that would sell as trades in Bigger Box stores (…eventually, y’know, online.)  This worked okay for a little bit, especially when Dark Horse was still only Hellboy and Image was Savage Dragon and the just-starting religion of Robert Kirkman.  But eventually… it didn’t seem like Vertigo was offering much that felt, I dunno, not a little CHECK ME OUT on some level.  It no longer felt like a seal of value.  It’s been that way for a while.  And now that DH and Image stepped up their indie games (and a slew of others…), Vertigo has felt more and more like the old man trying to get the kids’ attention.

Recently, though, they started publishing some quarterly anthologies.  This felt like an old-school Vgo move – stuff that didn’t have automatic appeal, stocked with stories by new names.  Unfortunately, the anthologies weren’t composed under the clearest concept (‘color’ themes), and so the issues didn’t really gel to me.  But it was a step in the right direction.

Strange Sports is the leap forward.

Strange Sports is exactly the type of oddball book classic Vertigo would’ve published, lacking the hip design and forced concept of the color / SFX quarterlies.  It’s exactly what the title suggests: tales about Strange Sports.  Some of them are violent; some of them are humorous; most are both; and a couple – thankfully only a couple – are sombre.  The reason these issues were so much fun is because the ‘strange’ concept (matching it with other older anthologies from Vgo like Weird Western Tales and the like) puts the writer / artist firmly into the out-there world comics can so well detail, and pretty much lets them write whatever sci-fi / horror / humor piece they want, with most admittedly being some variation on “in this sport we kill each other” but almost all of them entertaining.  It’s a perfect topic that offers a huge range of creativity but it’s near impossible to miss the point, something the other anthologies mentioned have a huge problem with (although the SFX book released so far is a much better offering than any of the color issues).  Each issue of Strange Sports – 4 tales per book – is quality, with truly only a couple of tales being just okay, the rest tons of fun.  And great covers!  And kudos to making the last tale in the last book match the cover of the first issue; gotta appreciate foresight like that.

I’d run down issue by issue, but I don’t have the patience for that after my ramble above.  I haven’t heard of the majority of the creators.  A recognizable name – Ivan Brandon, Paul Pope – will pop up in each book, but SS isn’t relying on it or pushing it, making it seem more like the right stories were selected and not just everything based around a name they hope would hook buyers.  Best of all (and I think a partial goal of any anthology), there are some new names here to definitely keep an eye on.

Please buy these issues so Vertigo keeps publishing more of this stuff.