How is Vertigo like Dark Horse Manga?

That would be because they have little to no success launching new titles, and the only things still working for them are those that have worked in the past.  You can see this most clearly in the two new collections I read this week:  Paul Cornell and Ryan Kelly’s “Saucer Country” and the latest “Fables” spinoff series “Fairest.”  One of these is pretty decent.  The other is very disappointing.  Find out which is which immediately after the break.

Now I really wanted to like “Saucer Country,” as I’ve liked everything I’ve read from Cornell so far.  By all reasonable logic, the fact that he was now giving us his first creator-owned title (or at least as creator-owned as Vertigo gets these days) should’ve been his chance to show us that he was just being held back by having to work with superheroes all these years.  What we got, was a slack, confused would-be thriller that comes off as more self-indulgent than anything else.

Arcadia Alvarado is the governor of New Mexico and is about to announce her candidacy for President of the United States.  She also has memories of being abducted by aliens along with her ex-husband.  This proves to be a real shock to her campaign manager and longtime confidant/father figure Harry, and new take-no-prisoners strategist Chloe, who would’ve taken off in an instant if not for the book deal she was promised.  There’s also Joshua, now a former teacher at Harvard due to his UFO theories, who is soon brought into the fold to offer insight into this… which he gets from the naked “Pioneer 10” couple only he can see.

Though the idea that the aliens are invading and Arcadia is the only one who can stop them, by using her political connections and directing her campaign trail through hotspots of UFO activity, is brought up in the first issue there’s not a lot of urgency attached to it.  Instead the story bounces back and forth between her, her husband’s struggles to understand what happened to them, and efforts by fringe elements to utilize this to their own ends.  By the end of the volume, the threat of an alien invasion feels secondary to Cornell taking us on a tour of UFO theory and mythology.  The final issue, which has Joshua going on about this stuff at length should’ve galvanized the reader to this concept (Mike Carey did this a lot better in the first volume of “The Unwritten”), but it just feels like an interminable slog.  Though the art from Kelly, with less impressive contributions from Jimmy Broxton and Goran Sudzuka, makes it all go down a little easier this is a real mess.  It’s not hard to see why the single issues have been crashing down the monthly sales chart.

At least there’s still “Fables.”  While “Jack of Fables” ultimately turned out to be fairly underwhelming, this first volume of “Fairest” does a great job of capturing the charm and whimsy of its parent series.  Seeing as how it’s written by creator Bill Willingham, that should come as no surprise, and his presence means that this will likely be the one volume that all “Fables” readers pick up.

This is especially for anyone who is still wondering what happened to Briar Rose and the Snow Queen after they were carted off by goblins a couple volumes back.  Things pick up after we’re introduced to Ali Baba and he frees a lowly bottle imp who was tasked with studying our world’s customs for the Adversary.  This means that he’s (intentionally) annoying the audience by spouting lots of catchphrases and pop-culture references that make no sense to anyone in his world as he leads Ali to the pair of sleeping royalty.  What ensues is Willingham’s retelling of Briar’s story, rejiggered to fit this world, and to set up its main antagonist as the villain for this story as well.  We’re also treated a bit of a love triangle between Ali, Briar and the Queen which is more interesting for how it ultimately works out than for any chemistry the characters generate between them.

So even if the love story is a bust, the tale itself is generally amusing fluff that will please fans of the franchise.  Helping matters immensely is the detailed and gorgeous art from Phil Jimenez.  I mentioned last week about how I was disappointed by the art in the original graphic novel “Werewolves of the Heartland?”  Even though Jimenez was operating on a much stricter deadline (and there are some near-indistinguishable assists from Steve Sadowski as proof of that) he turns in some work that perfectly captures the high fantasy escapades of the story.

That’s not all this volume has to offer, as the format of “Fairest” is that of an anthology title which will feature a rotating cast of creators.  First up in that area is frequent Willingham collaborator Matthew Sturges who teams with Shawn McManus for a hard-boiled, though whimsically-drawn, story of Beast tracking a killer in 1940’s-era Los Angeles.  It’s a good enough take on the genre with Beast acting the part of the grizzled private eye who is tracking a serial killer who also happens to be a Fable as well.  The problem is that the revelation of who this Fable is more likely to make readers go “WHY?” than anything else.  It’s certainly an interesting twist, but one that ultimately feels pointless in the grand scope of the series.  I can only hope that Sturgess or someone else is planning to do more with it because otherwise I can’t really see its point.

Of course, that’s the trouble with anthologies as the quality is going to be uneven with all of the different creators contributing to them.  I feel confident enough in the “Fables” brand that I’ll want to keep buying volumes, but I can’t even muster the interest to pick up the next volume of “Saucer Country” to see if it gets its act together.  To be perfectly honest, I’m more interested in seeing what Cornell does on the new “Wolverine” series he’ll be doing at Marvel next year.  Vetigo may still have “Fables” but without new and vital series to complement it, the imprint will eventually wind up becoming nothing more than a shadow of its former self.  Supposing it isn’t there already, that is.