Saturday, July 14, 2012

Alan Moore's Revenge On DC Comics?

It is interesting to note that DC's longest running comic book (aside from Mad Magazine, which started at EC Comics and DC bought later) is Hellblazer, starring a character created by Alan Moore, who has had, of course, a number of disagreements with the company, to put it mildly.  Though DC restarted all its comics last year with new number 1s, Hellblazer dodged the revamp bullet since it is currently under the Vertigo imprint.  The series, launched in 1988 (at least as marked by the official publication date, which means it probably ended up on the stands in late 1987), is closing in on its 300th monthly issue.  So DC's inadvertent standard bearer is no longer Superman, but instead a working class English magician who consorts with demons, smokes constantly, drinks excessively, swears fulsomely, and has a reputation for screwing people over?

One would think The Magus had planned it that way.

Still, it's a fun horror series.  It's had its ups and downs over the years, but the early stories by Jamie Delano were quite great, and the series has featured good work over the years by Garth Ennis, Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean, Paul Jenkins, Sean Phillips, Warren Ellis, Mike Carey, Leonardo Manco, and some others.  Currently, it's a bit hit or miss under Peter Milligan, and I'm wondering if it'll make it long past issue 300, but for now it's the flagship of  the company.

Alan Moore probably gets a chuckle from that.

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