Let's Talk About '90s Vertigo, The Revolution It Started, And How Marvel Ruined It

Hi, I’m David Harth, and we’re going to do some more badmouthing Marvel. Like, not right away. First, we have to get into some Vertigo stuff and why it was woke before woke was a thing. Also, stay tuned till the end, because next week, we’re totally going to do some stuff we haven’t done here yet, something that is going to surprise everyone.

So, let’s do a history lesson first. It all begins in the ‘80s.

The formative moment of ‘90s Vertigo is Alan Moore. DC brought him over from England and he took over Saga Of The Swamp Thing. He transformed it from a cliche monster book into something special. It became a horror book but a smart one and Moore threw everything into it. Sometimes, it gets labeled the first Vertigo book, but that’s not exactly correct. It’s the proto-Vertigo book, the one that started the ball rolling when it comes to a lot of things. Moore brought a sophisticated eye to the book’s horror and nailed the characterization. While it definitely took place in the DC Universe, it didn’t feel like anything else on the stands. It motivated DC to grab more talent from the UK, starting comics’ British Invasion.

Talent like Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, Garth Ennis, and Peter Milligan came over, and that was the genesis of Vertigo. Gaiman was the first one to get a book. Moore taught him how to script, and he and Dave McKean did Black Orchid, a minor success that motivated DC to let him try a new series starring the Sandman. The rest is, of course, history. Morrison would get Animal Man, a miniseries that would lead to an ongoing. Black Orchid and Animal Man’s success would get the ball rolling even faster, and then The Sandman would hit.

Now, I read The Sandman before I read Moore’s Swamp Thing or Morrison’s Animal Man. I still haven’t read Black Orchid. So, when I first read The Sandman, I was blown away by how Gaiman wrote it. I wouldn’t find out until years later that Gaiman was basically aping Moore’s Swamp Thing style up until the book’s third story arc, “The Dream Country:. To me, it was just genius horror writing. It was Vertigo.

(Also, if I’m being honest, it wasn’t the first Vertigo book I read; that was Preacher, but I’ll get there)

Vertigo had a feel to it. It was horror, sure, but it was more than that. It was personal and had genuine feeling. It’s something that went through every Vertigo book I’ve ever read, but there was also something else. See, while millennials and zoomers like to think they invented wokeness and positive representation of LGBTQ+ individuals, that was a Gen X trait. Like I was a kid in the ‘80s, and the pop culture of the ‘80s was super gay. In fact, if you look behind most American pop culture, there’s a whole lot of queerness. Vertigo put that right upfront. For someone reading comics in the ‘90s, this was the first place you read about gay characters in comics who weren’t stereotypes. Just about every story arc of The Sandman had a gay character of some kind, and they were never the evil gay person stereotype. They were people. They just loved those of the same sex.

The first positive trans character I ever encountered was Wanda in “A Game Of You”. Wanda was a pre-op transsexual, scared of the surgery, but she was no less a woman, and her neighbor Barbie, the story’s main character, treated her that way. Now, there are plenty of people in the comic who misgender her, who deny her womanhood, and she is killed before the end of the issue because of the actions Barbie, her two lesbian friends, and a ruthless ancient Greek witch. Barbie sees her one more time and gets to really see her after stopping her parents from misgendering her on tombstone. It’s a beautiful moment, and while one can say Gaiman probably should have let Wanda live, the whole point of the story was that no one could tell you who are but you. That’s where the name of the story came from. We are all playing the game of you, and the point is finding out who you are. Wanda knew, and the world tried to tell her otherwise, but she knew. So did Death.

Vertigo also had more trans characters that broke molds. Doom Patrol had Danny the Street, a living transsexual street. Morrison wasn’t out as nonbinary back then, mostly because they didn’t know what that was back then, but their books were full of LBGTQ+ representation (more on that later). After they left Doom Patrol, trans woman Rachel Pollack would take over the book and introduce a new character, Coagula, who was also trans. I’m pretty sure these were the first instances of positive trans characters, and Pollack was the first openly trans writer. Enigma, by Peter Milligan and Duncan Fegredo, would be another comic that focused on trans and queer issues, as the title character came to terms with who they were. Again, this is all from the early ‘90s.

And then there was The Invisibles.

The Invisibles is Grant Morrison’s magnum opus. I’ve talked about it before. It also had the first trans hero I ever read about, Lord Fanny, and was queer as fuck. Morrison was a club kid. They went out, did drugs, danced, and brought the ‘90s dance club scene to book. There were gay men, lesbians, trans character, S&M clubs, positive black role models, all kinds of stuff that was taboo back then. But see, that was Vertigo. Vertigo was a revolution in comics. They were for mature readers, and they dealt with mature subjects. There was sex and violence, but it showed us that this was normal for readers who were rarely exposed to positive queer portrayals. This was okay. These characters were heroes. They were people. They were just like everyone else.

Now a days that doesn’t seem weird, but it was what we needed to see back then. Even Preacher, while not as woke as other Vertigo books, still was a look at how toxic masculinity affected the relationship between Jesse, Tulip, and Cassidy. Oh, and it was violent, funny, profane, and had so much nudity. Teenage me loved it.

So, I’m trying to say that Vertigo showed us the way. In the fucking ‘90s. Now, I’m not going to sit here and say the ‘90s were perfect, but it was the beginning, and Vertigo took that beginning and went crazy with it. It was showing its readers the future and how the world and entertainment should be and was going to be. It was a success, and success gets noticed.

And along comes Marvel.

So, nowadays, Marvel plays the woke game very well, but for the most part, it feels fake. Like, you can kind of tell that the company is doing it for the money, and while the writers are down for it, if it wasn’t what made money and made Marvel look good, Marvel would not do it. Now, Vertigo’s heyday was the ‘90s, and that was the time when Marvel started as god of the industry and then went down the tubes chasing the collectors market. Things got better, and they had money to throw around towards the end of the ‘90s, so what did they do?

They got the Vertigo writers.

The Preacher team of Ennis and Dillon were first, and they did Punisher: Welcome Home, Frank. It’s phenomenal, but it’s not Vertigo, and it certainly doesn’t say anything about society. Morrison left DC after finding out how much of The Invisibles got stolen by the Wachowskis for The Matrix and that Warner Brothers did nothing about it. They began injecting the Vertigo sensibility into things at Marvel. Still, one could feel Marvel resisting it as much as possible. Marvel Boy and New X-Men felt queer, but you could tell Marvel was not about that life. Before New X-Men really got off the ground, something else happened- 9/11.

I was 20, three days from my 21st birthday that week and I can draw a line between my life before and after and its effect on pop culture. Marvel threw all in with the conservative, military-driven direction society took. Now, Marvel had a lot of Vertigo talent at this point, including the editors who made it special. They had writers like Morrison. And what did they do? Did they follow in Vertigo’s footsteps, take what those creators did there, and bring it to the mainstream? Did they fight the power?

Of course not.

They chased away Morrison, who went back to DC, and threw in with the jingoistic 9/11 fervor, most obviously with the works of Mark Millar. Marvel played along with the rest of the pop culture, even putting out a terrible Two-Gun Kid book with the classic Western hero as the most stereotypical gay character ever. Marvel had the kind of talent that could have made things special, including gay creators like Robert Rodi and Phil Jimenez, and what did they do? The worst things possible.

It’s stuff like this that make me think so badly of Marvel. Why buy the best talent in the industry and then not let them do what they did best? Why not put more representation into their books? Vertigo wasn’t some small arthouse imprint; they were best-selling, critically acclaimed comics, and the creators Marvel got from it were stars. They could have taken a chance, but it wouldn’t be until years later, when the sea change of society started, that they would go woke.

When Vertigo was doing its LGBTQ+ stuff, it never felt like they were ticking boxes. It was natural. These characters were here; they were queer; get used to it. When Marvel started doing it, it not only felt like ticking boxes, it totally was. Ike Perlmutter, president of Marvel, was a staunch, Trump-loving conservative. You think he was letting Marvel do this stuff because it was the right thing? Nah, dude, it was because of the money. Marvel stopped being a pioneer decades ago, and even before the Mouse took over, they were about that life.

Marvel in the 2000s was still the biggest publisher. They had a stranglehold on the sales charts, and they could have taken the chance to do what Vertigo did on a large scale. They had the talent. What did they do? Business as usual. They didn’t take the chance because what rules at Marvel? Money.

Today, Marvel gets all the credit for being woke, and if what they’re doing works for people, great. I personally have praised the X-Men books lately for being as diverse as possible. However, I have few illusions that they are doing it for the plaudits for the rest of the line. The X-Men have always been queer. They need to be. Elsewhere? Yeah, I don’t buy it, Marvel.

Vertigo just did it. They told stories, and there was a lot of stuff in those books that were unlike anything ever seen before. Marvel took their talent repeatedly over the years and went for business as usual until recently and then started making a big deal of how great they were for having queer characters, women as big heroes, and characters who weren’t only white in big roles. Marvel, as usual, gets the credit, but they don’t really deserve it.

That said, Vertigo was really white, but back in the ‘90s, racism felt like it was over. Well, we were wrong there. So, millennials and zoomers win that one. Our rap music was a lot better, though. You didn’t see people getting crushed at Wu-Tang Clan concerts while they indifferently kept rapping.

So, that’s all for this week. Next week, we’re going to hit a first for this column. I’m going to talk about my complicated relationship with Geoff Johns and the DC comics of the 2000s. That’s right, it’s time to talk bad about DC. I know you’re shocked. So, come back next week, follow me on Twitter, all of that stuff.