Vertigo: the First Few Months (1992-1994)—According to The Comics Journal and Wizard

Abstract

This paper documents the early critical reception of the Vertigo imprint in the United States in 1992-1994 by focusing on its predictably limited coverage in a mainstream national newspaper, The New York Times, and comparing how it was addressed in the period’s two main comics news and criticism magazines, the highbrow Comics Journal and the fan/collector-oriented Wizard, the Comics Magazine. Despite their largely irreconcilable approaches to the medium, both The Comics Journal and Wizard perceived Vertigo as a successful combination of authorship and editorship, although the former magazine expressed its appeal in terms of the critics and the latter in terms of fans and the back issue market. The imprint was technically an offshoot of DC, one of the two heavyweights of the mainstream comics industry, but both magazines treated it as an entity analogous to and potentially capable of competing with high-profile alternative publishers.