Vertigo CMYK
Various creators
Vertigo Comics, 2015
Vertigo CMYK was originally published as four quarterly anthologies, each devoted to one of the four traditional building blocks of comic book coloring: [C]yan. [M]agenta. [Y]ellow. and Blac[K]. Every issue contained nine stories, each approximately eight pages long. So there are a total of 36 stories, from a wide variety of creators. The color scheme is an obvious hook, and in fact the stories in each quarterly do tend to emphasize the titular color in their palette. Sometimes the colors have themes associated with them as well: cyan is greenish-blue, which suggests "blue" themes, and of course black is associated with dark themes (and this section is indeed even darker than the frequently dark stories earlier in the collection). Magenta (a light purplish red) and yellow don't have such strong associations, but a few of the creators work them in anyway.
As always in an anthology each reader will find some hits and some misses. There is no denying the visual and thematic variety, though. For me the Cyan highlights included the twist ending of "918" (story and art by Mike Keatinge and Ken Garing); Jock's striking art (color by Lee Loughridge) for Lee Garbett's "Blue Sundae;" and "Breaking News of the Wonders the Future Holds," the first installment of Fábio Moon's recurring story at the end of each issue. Quiet slice of life stories featuring one central character which together form the highlight of the collection for me.
Magenta included the horror story "Bone White, Blood Red" by Rachel Deering, Matteo Scalera and Mereno Dinisio; Peter Milligan, Rufus Dayglo and José Villarrubia's oddly moving fetish story "The Show in the Attic;" and "Captives" by Michael Moreci, Andrea Mutti and Trish Mulvihill, in which a mental illness may actually be something real. This section was especially notable for indie-style stories, like Carla Berrocal's "Who Is Uber" and "Gem Pockets" by Annie Mok and Dawson Walker. Clearly Vertigo was really taking chances in the creator choices.
Yellow featured Gerard Way and Philip Bond's "Untitled," a trippy fantasy reminiscent of Bond's collaborations with Grant Morrison (color by Hi-Fi); "Playthings" by Marguerite Bennett and Bill Sienkiewicz (a surreal nightmare that involves a Yellow Room); Matt Miner and Taylan Kurtulus' "Amber," a touching story about two aging hipsters with a startling ending; and "The Cataphract of the Yellow Lotus" by Benjamin Read, Christian Wildgoose and Jordan Boyd, in which a commoner becomes a goddess in a kind of time loop.
The Black quarterly is especially rich in both variety and name creators. Francesco Francavilla contributes the spooky "The Dying of the Light;" "Super Blackout" (a phone app that affects reality) comes from Gene Luen Yang and Sonny Liew; and Jeff Lemire (with colors by José Villarrubia) adds a small chapter to his Sweet Tooth series in "Sweet Tooth: Black." Steven T. Seagle and Teddy H. Kristiansen reunite for "Fade;" "Black Death In America" is a powerful black and white social commentary about war and race from Tom King and John Paul Leon.
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