Following on from my re-read of Hellblazer, this summer I moved on to what I call the Big 3 names of post-Sandman Vertigo. I talked about Garth Ennis and Warren Ellis a little bit then, but I haven't talked much about Grant Morrison, beyond my admiration for his runs on Animal Man and Doom Patrol. I also haven't talked much about Preacher or Transmetropolitan, which at the time were some of my favorite books.
When talking about Garth Ennis's Preacher, Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan or Grant Morrison's Invisibles, I always think of them as their masterpieces, in that I can't really think of a more personal book that any of these authors has written since. Ennis's The Boys is a TV show now, and Morrison was instrumental in rewiring the DC Universe after he moved on from Vertigo, but I don't think anything of theirs has really landed as strongly as these three books did.
I started with The Invisibles, because of the three it's the book I know the least, and of which I remember the least. I have the first two collections, and the last one, so the story is a little disjointed when I read it again. And I have to admit that the gap doesn't do it a lot of favors. Given the preoccupation with 90s conspiracy theories, it feels the most dated of the three, and in my opinion suffers from the worst excesses of Morrison-being-Morrison. One example is all the conversations where one character is talking to another about something, and the second character responds by talking about the weed they're smoking at that moment.
He does do a nice job of tying everything back at the end that he's been teasing since the start, but the book never quite gelled for me the way some of Morrison's other work did. For example, Batman Incorporated felt more like what Morrison did best - unearthing lesser-known DC characters and giving them a new spin.
Preacher was up next, and of the three I think it holds up the best, though it can sometimes also feel quite dated. That, however, is mitigated by the themes that Ennis writes about, like male friendship and religion. In a lot of ways it's a spiritual sequel to his run on Hellblazer, specifically the aspect of a being born of a union between angel and demon, and I think it's done the best job of showcasing Ennis's preoccupations without the nihilism of his later work (for example, Crossed or Punisher MAX).
My collection of Preacher trade paperbacks also has a large gap, between the first five and the last volume. However, the volumes I do have present enough of the story Ennis and Steve Dillon were telling to feel like they're paying off in the final volume. Still, there are enough references to things that happen in volumes 6-8 that I'd like to revisit those books, and maybe one day reread the entire run from start to end.
The final one is Transmetropolitan. It came at around the time that I discovered Warren Ellis's other work in the WildStorm Universe, particularly Planetary and the Authority. Once again, it feels rather dated, though for different reasons than Preacher or the Invisibles - one aspect is the way he demonstrates his antagonist, the US President (as based on then UK prime minister Tony Blair), destroying the US constitution. I'm sure this read fine until January 2017, but the Trump administration has proven impossible to satirize or predict, and the Smiler just feels implausible now that we've seen it actually happen here.
It's also a little weird reading the wish-fulfillment of the protagonist, Spider Jerusalem. He's this witty, angry journalist who has a pair of attractive attendants (both of whom he sleeps with), and who everybody loves because of his words. He also wins all his physical fights despite being skinny and weedy, which is a bit absurd after reading Preacher.
I've called Transmetropolitan Warren Ellis's masterpiece, because it deals more with his personal preoccupations, but I like the Authority and what I've read of Planetary a bit better - he himself may not like superheroes but he wrote them damn well, especially as deconstructions of the genre.
Now, I've called these guys the Big Three of Vertigo, but there's a Big One that I'm missing, and that's Neil Gaiman's Sandman. I have the great misfortune of not owning any of the Sandman trade paperbacks, so I won't get to revisit that story on this go-round. But I'd like to, since I've probably read more of Gaiman's work after Sandman than I have of the other three above (apart from Morrison).
It's instructive to read these books again, especially after such a long time, and to understand them with twenty more years of life experience than I had when they came out. But it's also kind of a shame that there hasn't been a comparable work to any of them since, neither from the authors themselves or from their peers. Still, it's been exciting to revisit these personal visions of three of comics' most celebrated writers, and to see where I get the DNA of a lot of my own work and interest.
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