Saturday, July 6, 2002

DC'S VERTIGO PANEL

Jill Thompson is writing and drawing Eternal Horizons, a 192-page manga-style book featuring Death, Delirium and Despair - the female faces on the Endless.

The story, from an idea by Sandman creator Neil Gaiman, plays off the events from The Sandman: Season of Mists, chronicling what the three members of the Endless did with the souls that were misplaced when Lucifer abdicated his rule of Hell.

"A while back, Karen (Berger, Vertigo executive editor) and Neil approached me about doing a big manga-style comic that was based on the Sandman mythos, most hopefully from Season of Mists," Thompson said during the Vertigo Panel at Wizard World Chicago on Friday.

"Hopefully this will satisfy Sandman fans and introduce manga fans to something they may have never picked up before."

The book will be black and white, with gray tones.

"What's going to be really cool about the book is it's going to look like a manga book," Vertigo editor Shelly Bond said. "It will be smaller-sized and thick and chunky."

In related news, work continues on The Sandman: Endless Night hardcover, written Gaiman, who teams with Moebius on a Destiny story, Milo Manara on Desire, P. Craig Russell on Death, Bill Sienkiewicz on Delierium, Gaetano Liberatore on Destruction, Miguelanxo Prado on the Sandman and Barron Storey on Despair. Dave McKean provides the cover.

"That will launch the big 10th Vertigo anniversary early next year," Bond said.

In other news from the Vertigo panel:

* Sgt. Rock: Between Hell and A Hard Place is a 128-page hardcover by writer Brian Azzarello and artist Joe Kubert.

"It's humbling, is what it is," Azzarello said of working with Kubert.

Azzarello said he's about a third of the way through the story, which is "a straight World War II story with a little bit of a twist."

* Jim Lee will be painting covers for Brian Wood's Fight for Tomorrow six-issue series.

* Brian Bolland will provide the cover to the Zatanna one-shot written by Paul Dini. Bond said an artist has been chose, and hinted that it was someone who had worked on Gen13, Kabuki and Scarab - presumably Rick Mays.

* Mark Buckingham's story arc on Fables, starting with #6, is called "Animal Farm" and deals with the characters who can't pass as humans. DC's Bob Wayne said that Fables #2 should follow Fables #1 as a sellout.

* J.G. Jones is doing eight covers for Y - The Last Man.

* Judd Winick makes his Vertigo debut with Blood and Water, a six-issue series set in San Francisco that is illustrated by Tomm Coker. The story centers around Adam Cohen, who once was a happy, healthy young man. Now he's dying of a variety of illnesses. Then he learns that his best friends have the key to eternal life: vampirism.

* Following Vertigo Pop: Tokyo will be Vertigo Pop: London, by Peter Milligan and Phillip Bond, and Vertigo Pop: Bangkok, which will be written by Vertigo Pop: Tokyo writer Jonathan Vankin.

* Look for even more specifics and comments from the Wizard World Chicago Vertigo panel soon here in The Continuum.