The Importance of Vertigo II

Vertigo 2000’s

 

American Century was a comic book series published by DC Comics as a part of the Vertigo imprint starting in early 2001. It was co-written by Howard Chaykin and David Tischman.

The story concerned a former American pilot who fakes his death and goes on the run in the 1950s. Chaykin intended it as a "left-wing version of Steve Canyon", and wrote all of the issues. The comic ran for approximately two years.

Harry Block, a World War II veteran, fakes his own death and makes his way to Central America to create a new identity for himself as Harry Kraft, a hard-drinking smuggler. During a war in Guatemala, a CIA operative blackmails Block into assassinating Rosa de Santiis, a popular leader in opposition to the CIA puppet dictator General Zavala. Afterward, he heads back to the United States, taking a road trip from Hollywood to Chicago to New York, exploring myriad avenues of 1950s American culture.

The Importance of Vertigo I

Vertigo 1990’s

 

100 Bullets is an Eisner and Harvey Award-winning comic book written by Brian Azzarello and illustrated by Eduardo Risso. It was published in the USA by DC Comics under its Vertigo imprint and initially ran for one hundred issues.

The initial plot of 100 Bullets hinges on the question of whether people would take the chance to get away with revenge. The mysterious Agent Graves approaches someone who has been the victim of a terrible wrong. Graves gives them the chance to set things right by providing them a handgun, the eponymous 100 bullets, and documentation of the person primarily and personally responsible for the recipient's woes. He informs the candidate that the bullets are completely untraceable, and any law enforcement investigation which uncovers one of these bullets will immediately stop.

Though all of the murders enabled by Agent Graves are presented as justifiable, the candidates are neither rewarded nor punished for taking up the offer, and appear to receive nothing other than personal satisfaction for their actions. Several people have declined the offer, while others accept. Those that accept see their actions unfold with varying levels of success or failure. The attaché and Graves' "game" is later revealed to be only a minor part of a much broader story.

State of the Union DC Variant

The Crisis

Crisis on Infinite Earths

1985

The Anti-Monitor tries to destroy the DC Multiverse but succeeds only in merging it into a single universe; numerous characters die, including Supergirl (Kara Zor-El) and the Flash (Barry Allen). Series to spin out of event; Man of Steel, Green Lantern Corps.

Plot Summary
Crisis on Infinite Earths is a 12-issue American comic book limited series (identified as a "12-part maxi-series") and crossover event, produced by DC Comics in 1985 to simplify its then 50-year-old continuity. The series was written by Marv Wolfman and illustrated by George Pérez (pencils/layouts), along with Mike DeCarlo, Dick Giordano, and Jerry Ordway (who shared inking/embellishing chores). The series removed the concept of the Multiverse in the fictional DC Universe, and depicted the deaths of such long-standing superheroes as Supergirl and the Barry Allen incarnation of the Flash. As such, it is one of the most important events in the DC Universe, and continuity in the DCU is typically divided into pre-Crisis and post-Crisis periods.

The title of the series was inspired by earlier crossover stories involving the multiple parallel Earths of the Multiverse, such as "Crisis on Earth-Two" and "Crisis on Earth-Three", but instead of lasting two to five issues and involving members from many superhero teams from many parallel worlds, it involved virtually every significant character from every parallel universe in DC's history. It in turn inspired the titles of four subsequent DC crossover series: Zero Hour: Crisis in Time (1994), Identity Crisis (2004), Infinite Crisis (2005–2006), and Final Crisis (2008).

Prior to Crisis on Infinite Earths, DC publications were notorious for continuity problems. No character's back story, within the comic books, was entirely self-consistent and reliable.

State of the Union Marvel Variant

Avengers Disassembled

2004

Scarlet Witch goes insane and kills or incapacitates the current  Avenger-roster, bringing to an end the Avengers as we knew them (main story-arc in Avengers #500-503, Avengers Finale, September-December 2004.). Meanwhile Thor brings about the end of Asgard (Thor #80-85, 2004).

Plot summary

The story begins when the Avengers Mansion sensors warn the residing Avengers of an intruder, quickly identified as Jack of Hearts, who had died saving the life of Ant-Man's daughter Cassie Lang. Jack inexplicably detonates, killing Ant-Man (Scott Lang) in a blast that destroys half of the mansion. The Vision crashes a Quinjet onto the site, only to attack the survivors of the explosion, carrying a small army of Ultron robots which attack the survivors. During this attack, She-Hulk goes into a frenzy, resulting in her tearing Vision apart. In the aftermath of this first wave of attacks, most of the previous Avengers (even reserve members such as Spider-Man) and other heroes such as Daredevil arrive at the mansion. An enormous battlefleet of alien warships appear in the skies and begin wreaking havoc. Finally, a wounded Hawkeye sacrifices his life to save his friends by destroying an invading Kree warship.

In the end, it is revealed that the Scarlet Witch was behind these seemingly random attacks. She had been driven insane by the loss of her children years earlier; the children who actually had been magical constructs the Witch had subconsciously created from the essence of the demon Mephisto. Due to the use of her powers causing subtle 'reality warps' whenever she uses them to any great extent, continued use of her powers has driven her increasingly closer to insanity, until, finally, she has gone insane, believing that the Avengers 'took' her children away from her, and seek to do so again. In a final confrontation, the Avengers - aided by Doctor Strange - manage to stop Wanda, and she is subsequently taken away by her father Magneto, who acknowledges the mistakes he made in raising her.

A few months later, the Avengers team gather in the remains of the mansion. Quicksilver explains what has happened to his sister (the Scarlet Witch), and Tony Stark reveals that the Avengers cannot come back together due to a lack of necessary funds to repair such a high level of disaster. As the Avengers part company, they all discuss some of their favorite moments in Avengers history, such as when they first came together, when they discovered Captain America, the Kree-Skrull War, the marriage of the Vision and the Scarlet Witch, the fight with Michael Korvac, and the Ultron Unlimited crisis. As the team splits up, they are greeted by a large crowd of civilians, all of them thanking the Avengers for what they have done over the years.

Back in the early 1980’s—those ancient days when people still used typewriters, listened to vinyl LPs and most of us didn’t have a VCR let alone have to pay for TV—I was making my way in life, such as it was, listening to whatever music I could get my hands on, I thought Encyclopedia Brown and Choose Your Own Adventure were it, and was slowly starting to voice my opinions. 

State of the Union

I know a remarkable man named Ben:  one of the most genuinely considerate people I’ve ever been blessed to meet, He wasn't one for meditation or chanting and, as far as I know, he never had visions of the future:  His nature was rooted in his simple, honest humanity.  And he once said—I’m totally paraphrasing here, so if I mangle it blame me, not Ben—what van, and by what river.  

I understand it.  There are times in life when the the universe really does open itself to us, when life-changing revelations flood our very being and transform our perceptions of ourselves and our world.  When that happens, when we’ve been so irrevocably altered by our encounter with the Ineffable, the impulse is to run through the streets screaming, “This is IT!  This is IT!  This is IT!”  Now Ben is a reader, gravitates toward the fantasy and more importantly the graphic novels.  Whenever I go to lift something heavy, I'm still reminded of moving his book collection one afternoon.  Now back many years, and I did go online recently to see if this was still around, Ben belonged to a book club, and it is still around.  The Science Fiction Book Club as it were, I said, really?  Well I was always big on reading, and this little book club had a very small section of graphic novels available to club members.  I do remember browsing the selections available, but alas, couldn't come up with the required commitment of the initial book order to become a member, but there was something that I did want, and waylaid Ben into buying it on is next order, at his discounted member price.  Now up to this time in my life, the only crossover event I had followed was The Death of Superman, although honestly, I didn't get all the issues that tied into it.  That story was shit anyway, and forever ruined comics, in a very general way, and taught us, that even in comics, no one stays dead forever.  Now I have no idea what else Ben ordered with that book, or if he is even a member of that book club anymore, but the book was Crisis on Infinite Earths.  So it begins, now there are plenty of reviews of that crossover, and it's far reaching influences on other major events, so I won't bore you with that.  Simply, I liked it.  I liked it a lot, written well before I was able to decide what comics I wanted to read, it was always referenced in about every comic store you walked into in the mid 90's.   And in that time, working retail jobs, earning about 80 bucks a week, if I really pushed the hours, I wasn't going to spend the 10 or so bucks on a single issue, knowing that a 12 issue commitment would cost me probably close to that 80 bucks.  But it was always something I wanted to read, the posters that hung on comic shop walls fascinated me.  In fact, even to this day, that cover art on the book still fascinates me.  

Valiant Comics 1988-2004

I was sixteen or seventeen when I first read Magnus Robot Fighter.  The book had been sitting on my shelf for weeks—on the pull list for that month, I don’t recall who’d recommended it, but I believe it was issue 25 that I started with, due to the collectible cover of that issue:  a page or two in and my mind went white. From the first word I was hooked by Ostrander’s rich characters, his flowing language, his extraordinary ear for dialogue, his effortless ability as a storyteller.  His compassion most of all.  Those two interlocking tales of the Magnus and Rai settled into my cells, into my soul, and left an imprint that remains just as deep, just as true, more than fifteen years later.  Magnus Robot Fighter instantly became one of my Favorite Books of All Time—and it remains so to this day.