I stopped reading Fables around volume 4-5 (i don’t clearly remember because honestly nothing after Animal Farm remotely qualified as memorable,) but none of it moved beyond the level of Gaiman pastiche for me.

In what way specifically is Fables a Gaiman pastiche?

Both use established characters is really as far as it goes.

Sandman was about using stories to talk about story telling, Fables is pretty much X-Men or Buffy but with characters from Fairy tales.

I’d go as far to say that Vertigo being the publisher is the only link between the two.

You can complain that I’m tasteless, but whatever, if disliking the Juno-meets-Naruto aesthetic of Scott Pilgrim is tasteless, I don’t want to know what tasteful is.

Oooh nice, bringing in something else to counter… nice trick.

If you don’t like Scott Pilgrim that’s your loss, it’s got as much to do with this as Fables does with Sandman.

In fact, the only thing I’ve ever read by Willingham that stood out as a unique voice that held my attention was Ironwood, and that was mainly because it was about centaur blowjobs and hardcore fucking. Outside of that, Thessaly: Witch for Hire was completely disposable and the first 2 years of Fables didn’t fare much better.

You can complain that I’m tasteless, but whatever, if disliking the Juno-meets-Naruto aesthetic of Scott Pilgrim is tasteless, I don’t want to know what tasteful is.

Also, it’s bizarre to say that Scalped has bad sales, and then say ‘if it wasn’t for the trade sales’… they count as sales.

You also didn’t account for DMZ or Northlanders…

The truth is, the only person who ever had success at Vertigo writing like Gaiman, was Gaiman himself.

All the other hits have been quite different.

The simple fact is, if you want to last longer than 2 years in Vertigo’s current climate, your best bet is for a Gaiman inspired metafictional series about the nature of fiction, and a cursory review of Vertigo’s sales numbers basically confirm this.

Secret Six and Young Liars were my bests of the week. I still can’t believe that Catman, Ragdoll and Bane (!?!?) are some of my favorite characters in mainstream comics – seriously, someone is doing excellent character development work on Bane? – but this is the Simone I love. YL is so good; I just hope that it was within plan to warp it in under 20 issues. Any word on the Lapham to Avatar rumors that were floating around? Who’s publishing this Sparta USA book?

And as I now officially have “Take a Chance On Me” stuck in my head, I take back any thanks from this comments start, Burgas. I’m a Billy Joel fan too (70s stuff, anyway), but this is too much!

The points about Fraction are all spot on. I miss Casanova. I’m still hanging on to Invincible Iron Man for some reason, but that’s tenuous and I think I have actively disliked his other Marvel work that wasn’t on Thor or where he was partnered with Brubaker. Why can’t they pair him with an artist that suits his sensibilities? Why all the photoreference and cheesecake pencillers?

I’m in for more Unwritten out of respect and appreciation for Carey and Gross. But I’m leery too, and it has nothing to do with the Boy Wizard thing – is there anything new that needs to be said about the stories as spirituality theme mined by Gaiman/Morrison/Moore? Air seemed to be doing the same thing, when I dropped that. Is this Vertigo’s new fantasy trope?

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Jax: Dang, I should have caught the fact that Eden would have said “nappy.” I don’t know, if I were writing people from other cultures, I’d be so terrified of making a mistake that I’d be sure to check up on things. Doesn’t anyone at Marvel know any Aussies?

Due to our slow but sure Americanisation through the TV, so people would say ‘diaper’ – although they would occasionally get called out on it (‘What are you, an American’ – said as if you were spitting the word!), however, presumably not someone who is living in the desert and covered in paint.
On that – although some Aborigines do still put on paint and such for ceremony’s, or tourist dollars, someone just sitting around painted up is about as likely as a Native American sitting around in their feathers all painted up and such.

Hell, I thought it was weird when Ellis two Aborigines painted up in The Authority, as he had been down here a couple of times…

Of course, at least Eden wasn’t African American, until he found out he was related to Gateway, at which point he was an Aborigine, until they decided that was a boring plot, and he was back to African American… Ahh Marvel, ‘they all just look the same’….

OK, fair enough.

I didn’t have any answer for the two nearly nude women comment.

Check and mate, Apodaca.