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| Cover by Rafael Grampa |
The
Unexpected #1 – various writers, artists and editors
DC Vertigo,
$7.99
No sooner
had the monthly anthology been declared dead than it began to make a
resurgence. The recent relaunch of Dark Horse Presents — back in print
form, and thankfully without the MySpace backing — and DC’s Strange Adventures showed that not only
was there a market for these comics, but also top-level talent who were willing
to jump on-board. Now DC’s Vertigo
imprint is getting in on the action with The
Unexpected which delivers much of what we’ve come to expect from the
publisher in terms of both content and creators. Where it differs from past Vertigo
anthologies, though, is in its pairing of established names with fresh new
talents.
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| Script and art by Dave Gibbons |
The title,
almost certainly deliberately, hearkens back to Roald Dahl’s morbid and macabre
short stories, and their rather successful TV adaptations. Rather than willowy ladies gyrating in frontof a fire to introduce these tales, though, we have a frankly bizarre cover from
Rafael Grampa — a lady wearing a furry pig-head and candy-striped chaps, about
to bludgeon a pair of drive-in lovers to death with a mace. From here, anything’s possible.
Indeed, the
stories on offer inside are wildly varied, from post-apocalyptic survivalism,
to folk legends and magicians. The
latter subject kicks the whole series off with a story — written and drawn — by
Dave Gibbons. Taking equal parts Jason
Lutes, Christopher Nolan and Michael Chabon, it tells of an immigrant escape
artist and his early success in New York. The beauty of Gibbons’ work makes this tale
entirely his own, and it plays out like a skillful card-trick. Exploiting the limits of the form to its
fullest, he frequently sends the reader back and forth through the panels,
scouring for the sleights that make the narrative fall perfectly into place,
and the subtleties that build his characters with an almost complete absence of
dialogue. And, like the best magic
tricks, even when you figure out how it’s done, you’re still left in awe of the
skill of its practictioner.
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| Script by Alex Grecian, art by Jill Thompson |
It’s a hard
act to follow, but the trio that follow manage to keep up with Gibbons’ high
standard. G. Willow Wilson and Robbi
Rodriguez spin a frightening fable about the limits of humanity, with its
monstrous implications being even more unsettling than the very visible
horror. Similarly subversive is Alex
Grecian and Jill Thompson’s short about an image-conscious zombie. Thompson’s art is sumptuous enough to sell
the premise and the writing sharp enough to make the character breathe across
the scant few pages, with the twist subtle enough to feel genuine. Josh Dysart and Farel Dalrymple’s parable of
racism follows and keeps the momentum.
Picking up threads of depression-era literature and adding a touch of
the gothic proves to be a winning combination, and it’s a joy just to see new
work from Dalrymple.
From here,
though, the quality becomes less dependable.
The names you expect deliver — Brian Wood, Dave Lapham, Emily Carroll —
all come through with solid material, but others feel too forced or downright
unoriginal. Joshua Hale Fialkov’s
narrative of a cheating lover returning as a ghost feels all-too familiar and
thinks it’s a lot cleverer than it actually is.
In the same way, the preview of the new series, Voodoo Child — even if it’s title wasn’t cringe-inducing enough —
feels like a retread of too many old Vertigo series with some faux-history
combined with some cursory mythological elements. It doesn’t bode well for the future of the
already dwindling imprint.
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| Art by Emily Carroll |
Perhaps it’s
due to a lack of overall editorial control of the book — no single editor is
listed, rather each story is curated by a different person — that prevents this
from being the slam dunk it needed to be.
Instead, it becomes everything that was wrong with older anthologies,
having the reader lay out twice the normal amount for the issue, when only half
the stories are actually worth paying for.
— Gavin Lees
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