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Wojnarowicz was a fascinating guy—a
polymath, an activist, one of the so-called "NEA Seven"; he could be brutally political or oddly lyrical, and his connections run to the oddest places: his image of buffalo stampoeding to their deaths over a cliff was used by U2, of all people, for their "One" video.
For a while, Vertigo was really courting the Downtown NY art-hipster scne, weren't they—trying to capture a chunk of the Fantagraphics market (whereas now, with VertigoPOP, they seem to be chasing the Oni market). I mean—a Lydia Lunch project, coming out of DC? Whodathunkit? There was a real feeling that anything could happen.
Ted McKeever seemed ubiquitous then: he was drawing Rachel Pollack's DOOM PATROL, Lydia Lunch's TOXIC GUMBO, and his own INDUSTRIAL GOTHIC and... um... the one whose title I can't remember (two issue series about twins... sugar something?). So did Terry LaBan, who did some storylines for THE DREAMING as well as the hard-boiled shaman one-shot MUKTUK WOLFSBREATH.
My favorite LaBan project, though, was THE UNSEEN HAND. Phantsmagoric road-trip across Eartern Europe. Not a "lost classic," perhaps—the execution wasn't that great—but it had tons of promise and some wonderful ideas. It was let down, I think, by LaBan's lack of storytelling chops: he came from the world of autobio alternative comix, and just didn't have a grasp on the sort of action-movie pacing that the book required. It could till make a great movie, given the right adaptation and director.
Then there was CHIAROSCURO, artist Chas Truog's follow-up to his cartoony superheroics on ANIMAL MAN, which was... a bio of Leonardo da Vinci?!? Again, not perfect, but occasionlly effective, and earns marks for effort.
Lots of weird, throwaway DC Universe-related projects in the early days of Vertigo, too... Louapre and Sweetman's take on DR OCCULT, Pollack and Allred's version of THE GEEK, a DR THIRTEEN one-shot... Chaykin and Garcia-Lopez's TWILIGHT...
But also there was the touchy-feely New Age stink of JM DeMatteis to contend with, as with THE LAST ONE (would that it were so!), SEEKERS INTO THE MYSTERY, yet another repackaging of BLOOD: A TALE (how fucking pretentious is that little subtitle?), the umpteenth repackaging of the insufferable MOONSHADOW...
Lots of floundering for identity, post-SANDMAN, but a fair bit of interesting work, too. |
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