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Anthology comics are considered sales poison these days so few are launched, which is a shame because there is a horde of talent out there that would shine in the short-form format. Vertigo is giving it a whirl with STRANGE ADVENTURES, an anthology which will launch in May and include eight ten-page SF stories. Highlights include the first chapter of SPACEMAN, the new Azzarello/Risso series. Peter Milligan, Scott Snyder, and Jeff Lemire will also be lending their talents to the book.

The cover is by Paul Pope but Mark Buckingham supplies a variant, seen above.

1 COMMENT

  3. Cool. Anthology sales may be better if you have the right talent attached — no clue, though. Price point will be a major factor of course.

    Still, looking forward to this!

  4. Coincidentally, I recently unearthed in my collection a few copies of TIME WARP, DC’s short-lived sci-fi anthology from 1979-1980. SF comics can produce some great work indeed, so I’m looking forward to this new project. Plus, y’know, Ultra The Multi-Alien!

  5. 1. Hmm. Spaceman — Is that pronounced Spuh-CHEM-in?

    2. @Steve Maser: DC’s 80-Page Giants are currently priced at $5.99 for 70-ish pages of all-new stories and their DC Comics Presents line of 100-page reprint books are priced at $7.99, so I’d say that at the most, Strange Adventures will be priced at $7.99, which is the same price as the upcoming revival of Dark Horse Presents.

    3. OTOH, the thing that I object to about this anthology is that it’s all 10-page stories. One of the reasons that DC’s anthologies never catch on is because they consist of nothing but short stories of (generally) 10-to-12 pages. That’s, IMO, too short a page count per story to entice casual readers to keep coming back for more. Even when they’re serialized stories like the three features in the current Weird Worlds anthology. Thus, even Spaceman being a serial is underwhelming news simply due to the fact that it comes in 10-page installments.

    Moreover, Marvel has basically trained casual readers to treat the anthologies as entirely unnecessary clearing houses for inventory material and test pieces for new talent. Often, but not always, a new artist teamed with an experienced writer or vice-versa, but sometimes a fill-in to allow a pro who’s new to Marvel to tread water while waiting for a slot on a regular series or event-tie-in-miniseries to open up.

    Yawn. Wake me up when DC finally decides it’s serious about doing anthologies ’cause this ain’t it. No matter how good individual stories might end up being.

  7. “Eight 10-page stories” would have me assume this is a four issue mini-series, especially since DC’s standard book is now 20 pages long. If this was just one single 80-pg giant there’d be no need for all the stories to be the exact same length, right?

  8. Yes, I’m sure when that customer goes into the comic shop, picks up that new anthology, flips through it and decides not to buy it, it’s entirely marvel and dc’s fault. Why, even now I can hear the executives at marvel and dc speaking to me through my special foil helmet, telling me not to buy their product, especially the anthologies. Their evil plan to trick people into not buying their comics comes ever closer to fruition.

  10. So looking at Wikipedia, Vertigo did this back in 1999 under tha same title as a four issue miniseries. Guessing this will be similar?

  11. “Yes, I’m sure when that customer goes into the comic shop, picks up that new anthology, flips through it and decides not to buy it, it’s entirely marvel and dc’s fault.”

    Yes, yes it is. Never attribute to an evil plan what’s clearly the fault of editorial incompetence.

  13. And that potentially replaces the 4 books they are canceling that I currently read, so I guess that’s a wash slightly in my favor…

  14. So, apparently, the “first chapter of the Spaceman serial” is a preview of a stand-alone series or miniseries?