DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint has been responsible for some of the best comics of the past couple of decades, including Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, Garth Ennis’ Preacher, Brian K. Vaughan’s Y: The Last Man, and Bill Willingham’s Fables. We’ve also recommended our readers check out Vertigo’s excellent ongoing series Saucer Country. Plus, in 2013, Vertigo got fans excited with a Time Warp anthology released as a one shot from the publisher.
Time Warp was actually a resurrection of a classic sci-fi anthology series published in the late 1970s. This one launched with a bang, enlisting the talents of tons of recognizable names from the world of comics and elsewhere.
Time Warp included the work of Damon Lindelof, Jeff Lemire, Matt Kindt, Toby Litt, Mark Buckingham, Dan Abnett, Peter Milligan, Ray Fawkes, Simon Spurrier, Gail Simone, Rafael Albuquerque, Tom Fowler, and others.
If you’re a regular comic reader, you almost certainly know many of those names, but even comic-eschewing geeks will recognize Damon Lindelof, he of Lost and The Leftovers fame. Whether he’s worthy of inclusion alongside folks like Jeff Lemire and Gail Simone…well, we’ll leave that for you to decide.
Time Warp ended up being a one-shot and not an ongoing series, though fans were definitely keeping my fingers crossed for the latter. Science fiction as a genre lends itself well to the anthology format — consider The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, amongst others — and I’d love to see us get a high-profile, ongoing series of the sort.
Getting bigger names on board with their own unique stories sure seemed like a way to entice this happening across other comic book houses and publishers. Showcasing different creative teams and styles in a single oversized comic is a way to draw in fan interest especially when it comes with name brand entities. Time Warp wasn’t the biggest comic around, but Vertigo has established itself as place to bring unique and fresh (and more mature) stories into the space.
