cartons inertia shopkeepers tabulations:interfaces:...

And Rob claims he did have a whole bunch of stories planned for the character, as well as a completely different origin/backstory.

Yeah, I subscribed to Wizard during this period (a little after this, actually; Andrew, that is so weird that you started with #23...so did I!), and my mom didn't care for it specifically because of covers like this (and a few other things...remember "Hunk & Babe"??).

A few years ago (a little after I started college), I condensed over 100 issues of this magazine into 3 or 4 manila file folders with everything that I found even remotely interesting. One is full of the big interviews and features (and there were some good ones: Jeff Smith, Frazetta, several on Alan Moore, Frank Miller, list goes on). Another is full of "Brutes & Babes", "Krash Kourse w/ Greg Capullo" and "Basic Training" (this one is in the care of my youngest brother now...he's occasionally an aspiring artist). My favorite, that I still read through fairly often, is full of all the reviews or blurbs about books that I wanted to hunt down (and have done an almost halfway semi-decent job at, thank you). Those were always my favorite parts of the magazine. Palmer's Picks has already been mentioned, Good 'n' Cheap usually had something interesting, and I really enjoyed the "Good Readin'" bits that were sprinkled throughout the price guide. I was disappointed to see them phased out (I don't think they even do Book of the Month or Secret Stash anymore, do they?)

Anyway, yeah, I used to really enjoy this magazine. What the hell happened?

(I'll go into a bit more detail, here, since it's significant. Todd McFarlane claimed to have created Venom, but he didn't come up with the black costume design--that was pre-existing from Secret Wars. He didn't come up with the symbiote, either, that was also Secret Wars. He didn't come up with the idea of the symbiote bonding to another host and it giving the host Spider-Man's powers; that was Michelinie. Michelinie also created Eddie Brock, his backstory and origin and reason for hating Peter Parker. In short, Todd McFarlane's claim to "creating" Venom rests on him altering the black costume slightly to give it big fangs and a slobbery tongue.)

(Likewise, when Rob Liefeld created Cable, he was just a cyborg commando. The whole thing about being Cyclops' son, the techno-virus, the connection between him and Stryfe, all of it was decided after Liefeld left when the X-book editors realized that they needed to have some answers in place to the questions fans were already asking. It wasn't that Liefeld had a different backstory for Cable--he had none at all, any more than Len Wein did for Wolverine when he first popped up.)

And to quote Peter David, who wrote often on this at the time: "More ownership, royalties, merchandising? All that boils down to 'more money'. We're giving them unprecedented amounts of money right now and they're still not happy."

I too kept a stack of Wizards until I moved house a few years ago and no longer had room for them. I started with #23 which featured a triple-gatefold Deathmate cover by Bart Sears.

(I think the 90s gets hated on way too much.)

As for the Image exodus from Marvel, and Marvel's relationships with creators changing as a result - while Lee, Liefeld and McFarlane may have been on astronomical page rates, and been carrying enough clout to warrant new X/Spidey titles, I think a major concern was a lack of ownership or consultation in regards to the treatment of characters they'd created. At this point, Marvel were pumping out Cable and Venom (for example) books, appearances and merchandise - Liefeld and Toddy Mac had no say in this.

Why not create their own Cable and Venom elsewhere, where they can control the characters every appearance, merch, etc?

I think what Wizard was sort of getting at, though, is that there was an opportunity cost involved in promoting and expanding their mature line rather than putting the same resources into their superhero line.

That said, they did already have several of the books going, and so with them in a line, you can just advertise them all at once as the vertigo books, as opposed to separate ads for each book.
(This being back in the time when companies actually put ads in their books for other books they sold.)

I think what Wizard was sort of getting at, though, is that there was an opportunity cost involved in promoting and expanding their mature line rather than putting the same resources into their superhero line. That wouldn't necessarily have meant copying Image; putting more effort into the Impact! line (such as getting it more distribution beyond the direct market), for example, could also have gained them new readers and grown their market share, but in a different segment of the market. These tradeoffs always exist, of course, but while Vertigo probably wouldn't have left them worse off it wasn't a sure thing that it would improve their position, either. At that point DC had lost ground just by standing still, so it was something to be concerned about.

(It's somewhat off-topic, but an examination of different attempts at creating new imprints at the big publishers would definitely be instructive. The pattern for success seems to involve working with and around existing properties (Vertigo, Marvel Knights) and/or expanding from an initial success (Ultimate Marvel, Marvel Adventures, and there's certainly a case for Swamp Thing being the seed for Vertigo--no pun intended.)

Yes, it was a bit surprising that the brand "Vertigo" became as popular as it did, but I don't think there was much risk for DC of their Mature Readers comics falling apart simply by putting them all into one specific imprint.

(I was also part of the target audience for Vertigo, being a college student who'd gotten into Sandman with the first trade paperback, and I don't remember it changing my buying habits any--I still bought Sandman and didn't buy any of the others, although budget was a factor there. I did read a friend's copies of SMT, though.)

Doug - those are excellent points about Vertigo, and I wasn't trying to be too snarky about the success and the fact that Wizard didn't see it coming. I just was amused by the fact that Wizard is taking them to task (it seems) because they weren't aping Image. They were trying something different, and just because it wasn't flashy didn't mean Wizard had to be so dismissive of it. But you're right - it was a huge gamble for DC.

1) DC, as already noted, wasn't competing well in the market.

2) Their previous attempt at a line aimed at older readers, Piranha Press, had produced a few critical successes but hadn't done well financially.

3) As Neil Gaiman has noted on his weblog recently, even Sandman wasn't really doing that well in terms of sales of monthlies at the time, and it was by far the best-known and most promoted title in their mature line.

4) The business model that's made Vertigo successful since then (monthlies as a loss leader to create interest in the collections, which become the ongoing source of revenue) was just starting to come into existence with Sandman. (Some of the Hellblazer issues that came out around this time are just now being collected, in fact.)

In other words, to all appearances DC was addressing its loss of market share by expanding its less financially successful range of titles and targeting a market it had already failed at targeting once. Looked at that way, it doesn't really sound like a recipe for financial success. (And, as noted, it wasn't Vertigo that allowed DC to recapture their market share.)

A few other points on the creative end:

There's a tendency, looking back, to blur different periods of titles together and just focus on the best runs. Looking at their launch titles, one might be tempted to think: Animal Man! Doom Patrol! Grant Morrison! Swamp Thing! Alan More and Rick Veitch! And so forth.

However, at the time Vertigo started a number of their titles were under writers who weren't nearly as well-received. Doom Patrol was under Rachel Pollack, whose style of weirdness was very different from Morrison's and didn't engage as many readers. Delano's Animal Man was in a similar position. Swamp Thing was under Nancy Collins, who was actively turning off many long-time readers by the major shifts she imposed on the personalities of the supporting casts. Black Orchid and Kid Eternity weren't being handled by the big-name creators who'd done the miniseries they spun off from.

Shade the Changing Man was three years into its run at this point, and without the previous issues available as collections it wasn't very new reader friendly. (Sandman was the only ongoing mature title with easy access at this point, in fact.) Finally, while it may seem odd now, Garth Ennis' run on Hellblazer was drawing criticism from those who felt it was just being used as a venue for scenes of extreme violence, which wasn't the direction of the title when it first appeared. (Yes, that's what made Preacher the imprint's next big success, but at the time some long-time readers found it to be a turnoff.)

In short, most of the launch titles weren't automatic creative successes, either. And how was their long-term success?

Kid Eternity: cancelled with #16 (Sep 1994)
Doom Patrol: cancelled with #87 (Feb 1995)
Black Orchid: cancelled with #22 (Jun 1995)
Animal Man: cancelled with #89 (Nov 1995)
Shade the Changing Man: cancelled with #70 (Apr 1996)
Swamp Thing: picked up for a while under Morrison and Millar, but cancelled with #171 (Oct 1996)

Sandman came to its natural end in 1996 as well. In other words, even with the added exposure and cohesion of the Vertigo line, two-thirds of its launch titles were cancelled in under four years. (Only Hellblazer and Sandman Mystery Theatre continued past 1996.)

It's easy to look back and see this as a "Dewey Beats Truman" sort of statement. At the time, though, there really were enough hits against the concept from both a financial and creative perspective to warrant some skepticism. That it's succeeded has been a tribute to its editors, but it wasn't a given at the time. And with the number of imprints that have failed since then (Helix, anyone?), it wouldn't hurt for publishers to remember that Vertigo was the exception, not the rule.

About 10 years later, I was working for a company that was advertising in Wizard. I had a business lunch with Doug, and I brought up the whole Iron Man vs. X-Men debate. IIRC, he seemed a little regretful to have been involved in the whole thing. In think he may have even said he was probably wrong to think that Iron Man would beat the X-Men.

About three years ago or so I started a new subscription to them after having a little extra money in my pocket and a bit too much nostalgia. It was... not so great.

And those grab bags? Every 5th one has a copy of X-Force #1.

I have a great X-Force story. I was one of those gullible fools who bought multiple copies of X-Force #1 with all 5 variants. I was young & naive. At a local mini-con a couple of years back, I cut a deal for some books. After terms were agreed on, I put in one last rider: "You have to take X-Force 1-5 with all the variants. I don't want anything back, I just can't throw them away." He immediately called the deal off. I can't even GIVE them away. They're a complete deal-breaker. DANG!!!

I was 13! Lay off!