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SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2007

NEW YORK COMIC CON: VERTIGO NATION PANEL

NEW YORK -- Maybe it wasn't such a great idea after all.

Vertigo executive editor Karen Berger on Saturday at New York Comic Con said she was going to try to make her panel more interactive than Vertigo panels had been in the past. No sooner than she got started with her presentation, a member of the audience began to verbally berate Y: The Last Man writer Brian K. Vaughan, criticizing him for his use of Asian characters.

After a few uncomfortable moments, Berger tried to restore order, asking the man to leave. He continued blasting Vaughan, before being escorted out with some final obsene gestures.

Things quickly settled down, though, and the panel went on.

Below are some highlights.

* Brian Wood talked about Northlanders, his Vikings series with artist Davide Gianfelice. A fan of Vikings since he was 10, Wood said he did extensive research, reading all the sagas.

"They literally changed the world," he said.

* Percy Carey expressed thanks for to editor Casey Seijas and the Vertigo staff for assisting with his autobiographical original grpahic novel, Sentences: The Life of M.F. Grimm, drawn by Ron Wimberly.

"I had to learn the structures and they were very patient with me," Carey said, noting that Vaughan's Y: The Last Man and Alison Bechdel's Fun Home were inspirations.

* Artist Jock on Faker, written by Mike Carey: "It's got humor, military people, drugs, sex and some nakedness."

The story involves four college students, who, after partying hard, wake up to find they are five.

The mini-series will launch in July.

* The Cairo graphic novel, written by G. Willow Wilson, a journalist, with artist M.K Perker, is targeted for 2008.

* Berger showed the cover to Un-Men #1, featuring the characters introduced way back in Swamp Thing #2. Editor Jonathan Vankin described the book, by John Whalen and Mike Hawthorne, as "a creepy horror mystery."

* Talking about Army@Love, Rick Veitch said the series about a war five years in the future is based on current events.

He noted that when wars are portrayed, they're usually viewed as tragedies at first, with satire 10-15 years later.

"I thought it might be fun to leapfrog over the schmaltzy stuff and go right to the satire right now, when it counts," he said.

* Vaughan said his next comics project will be for Vertigo. "I want to finish Y strongly first before coming up with the next thing."

* A fan set off a discussion about whether Vertigo was becoming more a brand than an imprint, noting that the Vertigo logo is used more often without a connection to DC.

100 Bullets writer Brian Azzarello noted that Vertigo has more diversity than ever before, and that, plus quality story-telling, were reasons Vertigo might be viewed as a brand.

"We like to think of ourselves as the HBO of comics," Berger said.




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