DC's relaunch of its 52-title superhero line in September made headlines, and now the publisher is upgrading its mature-reader line, Vertigo -- but on a smaller scale.
Four new titles launch this month, three ongoing and one miniseries. DC recently published a preview, given away free at comic shops, with seven pages of each new series.
The title I'm most excited about is "Fairest," a companion title to "Fables," which has run more than 100 issues (and various miniseries) extrapolating adventures of fairy-tale characters as if they have always existed -- immortal (if enough people remember them), enchanted and hiding just outside our perceptions.
Remember the Prince Charmings from "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves," "Cinderella" and half a dozen other stories? Writer Bill Willingham posits that they're all the same guy, which means he's something of a cad (but charming). Jack Frost, Jack the Giant-Killer, Jack Sprat -- all the Jacks, every one, are the same guy. Which means he's not terribly stable, but he does get around. You get the drift.
In "Fables," we've met formidable women: Snow White (wife of the Big Bad Wolf), Cinderella (an ultra-competent espionage agent), Beauty (of " ... and the Beast," mayor of Fabletown) and so forth. We've also met women with problems, such as the emotionally damaged Rose Red and the cursed Sleeping Beauty.
A second title setting my comic-book senses a-tingle is "The New Deadwardians," a miniseries set in a world mirroring England's post-Victorian period, where the lower classes have become zombies, and the upper classes have become vampires to protect themselves. The middle class is still human, but even so London homicide detective George Suttle usually has little to do, given that most people are already deceased.
That changes in the first issue, where an aristocrat turns up dead -- well, deader -- and Suttle must investigate the murder, which promises to show how the world got this way. Vertigo has already tested these waters with two "Victorian Undead" series -- starring Sherlock Holmes fighting zombies and vampires -- and if that's any indication, "Deadwardians" ought to be good, wholesome, corpse-ridden fun.
I'm mildly intrigued by "Saucer Country," starring the Mexican-American (and female) Gov. Arcadia Alvarado of New Mexico, who is planning to run on the Democratic ticket for president until she appears to be abducted by aliens. But the fourth title, "Dominique Laveau: Voodoo Child," doesn't do much for me.
