Vertigo Resurrected: Winter’s Edge is, to put it quite simply, a story collection in graphic form, featuring a heavy-duty roster of writers and artists — Gaiman, Bolton, Ennis, Milligan, Jones — and that’s just off the top of my head. And, as story collections tend to be, this one’s a little uneven.
Of Gaiman’s contributions, “The Flowers of Romance,” which opens the volume, is an evocative little narrative about the last satyr. John Bolton’s art is perfect, and Gaiman has left Bolton some room to maneuver: the graphics carry as much of the narrative as the script. The show-stopper is another Gaiman story, “Death: A Winter’s Tale,” a spare little narrative by none other than Morpheus’ sister. Jeff Jones’ graphic work makes this one: sketchy, stark, rough-edged, brushy drawings with almost no shading, they are a perfect match for the story and character. Jon J. Muth, the colorist, picked up on the idea quite well — color is unobtrusive, watercolor applied sparingly and always just right.
There are a couple of John Constantine stories, including “All Those Little Girls and Boys,” an internal monologue scripted by Garth Ennis and drawn by Glyn Dillon in a spare style that leaves room for the acid colors by James Sinclair to set the mood. Another is an illustrated story by Dave Gibbons, “Another Bloody Christmas” — and given that it’s Constantine, you know he’s not just swearing.
These are just high points — the stories are at least good, sometimes better than that, and we get some new takes on Swamp Thing and Tim Hunter as well as Cain and Abel, and some that are none of the above. Although there’s an ostensible theme, it’s more present by assumption than any other way, and there’s no consistent mood in this collection, which might have served to give it a little more coherence. It’s a series of one-offs, something nice to dip into during breaks in doing something else.
(Vertigo, 2011)
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