2 out of 5

Vertigo: the Matador of the comics world.  (Or, like, Matador circa the 2000s… I’m not really sure what their operating status is right now.)  Many years ago, Matador was a stamp of approval as a label – like it or leave it, you’d at least be getting a dose of something new.  I always claim Pavement started the shift on this, but if I’m told otherwise by a historian, sure, fine: moving toward crossover appeal.  There was a partnership with Capitol, and suddenly Matador could sell equally to cool kids and pretend cool kids and those weird adults who know stuff that you wish they didn’t.  The 90s churned on, and more and more ‘name’ bands were popping up on the Matty roster.  In the 2000s – I’m thinking Interpol era – you could hear the predictable genre-baiting even in the band names, or the overly RIYL’ed press descriptions of whatever the newest Spin-cover hyped band was.  The label, to me, stopped meaning anything, and I would always listen to a Matador group with some skepticism.  Sometimes you’d still hear something notable, but often you’d get some acceptable singles that you would eventually realize were very pained attempts at sounding like some other band you liked.

So, Vertigo.  When the imprint started, and through the 90s, Vertigo provided a similar promise as early Matador: maybe it’s not up your alley, but it’s not something you’d read in the mainstream, with the benefit of higher production values than the other indies could provide.  Interesting anthologies and minis found their place in Vertigo; ‘Preacher’ defines this early era of anything-goes.  And then there was Y the Last Man; and then there was Fables.  Two books with incredible crossover appeal (you can point to Sandman as an earlier example but I still feel that had some very niche associations).  Flash forward some years, and the Matador comparison holds true: I rarely buy Vertigo anymore.  It always feels like it’s trying too hard to be quirky, to be shocking, or to be the next something.

The announcement of this quarterly anthology piqued my interest for sure, as Vgo hadn’t done anthologies in a while and I thought that was a pretty cool return-to-form – after all, anthologies can’t be mega-selling ongoing series that are easily hyped to the masses.  Unfortunately, this instead has just pounded those nails into the coffin that much more.

Firstly, perhaps most importantly: what the fuck is the theme?  What is Cyan?  Why the blue color scheme; why do some of the bits reference the color but others don’t?  There’s a blurb in the back about how the four intended anthologies are a tribute to color building blocks of comics, with the interpretation of the color up to the creators – a mood, a plot point, etc.  Fine, but that really seems like a justification after the fact, and doesn’t actually place and constraints on the stories.  So blame the editor or blame the creators that I get no sense of Cyan from this book?  This reminds me of the DEFY preview book Vertigo put out a while back, which had a similarly forced construction to it that just… didn’t make sense.  This is all unimportant if the content is good, but add it to the pile if the content is questionable, which it is.

A quick rundown: Some of these writers had no sense of withheld information – ‘Once Upon the End of Time’ by James Tynion IV, ‘So Blue’ by Amy Chu, or ‘Serial Artist’ by Shaun Simon – meaning that points where the stories could have left some pieces up to the reader to consider or elements that could have not been shown to punctuate something are… non-existent.  I didn’t feel like there was any point to me witnessing the stories.  Joe Keatinge’s and Lee Garbett and Jock’s contributions are oddball, and rather unsatisfying, but I would’ve rather had a book of tales of that nature that showed some thinking outside of the box.  ‘Rebolt’ is an average sci-fi dystopia-ish tale by Cris Peter; it’s not really the best thing for a short format and doesn’t do much to shake up the conventions of the genre.  Fabio Moon’s autobiographical-seeming bit is what it is.  I’m not big on the true-life style tales, but maybe you are.  Robert Rodi’s ‘Madame Bluebeard’ is smart and succinct, a highlight of the book, and Monty Nero’s ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ is what I want more of – it’s the only art style in the book that stuck out (all of the artists are quality, but the downfall of the overuse of Cyan makes a lot of the pages look-similar; Al Davison’s art on ‘Much Ado’ very much stands apart), and the narrative leaves room for the reader.

I was, honestly, looking forward to this, so I do feel I went in with open eyes.  Maybe it’s that the first story – ‘Serial Artist’ – doesn’t make any sense, and thus sets the tone, or maybe it’s just that I didn’t get a strong sense of vision from this collection of stories.  Both.  Meh.  We’ll see what happens with the next one.