Beyond the British Invasion : Uncanny Spatiality and Critical Expert Selection as Markers of Vertigo's Poetics

When it launched its platform in 1993, Vertigo did much more than simply gather comics series scripted by British writers, it actually carried out an important expert creative and critical act. By selecting specific titles and repatriating them to a new publishing space, Vertigo performed a critical ‘re-reading’ of the disturbing poetics of displacement and crossing over that underlie Swamp Thing, Animal Man, Hellblazer, Shade the Changing Man, Sandman, and Doom Patrol. In fact, the migration of these titles to the Vertigo imprint ‘doubled’ and, in a way, revised these series’ uncanny treatment of spatiality in its widest sense, that is how these narratives destabilize or disorient readers and characters alike by mixing various fictional worlds or diegetic and textual realities whose spatial and temporal dimensions are intertwined and porous. The imprint has championed this particular poetics of uncanny spatiality in extradiegetic materials and promotional artwork, especially in the 1990s. This paper examines the resonance of this poetics in some of the imprint’s early editorial discourses and promotional artwork. It argues that uncanny spatiality has functioned as foundational pillar in Vertigo’s desire to present itself as critical expert selector in the American comics field. In so doing, this paper calls into question the relevance of the British Invasion narrative to explain the emergence and popularity of the imprint; the British Invasion is undoubtedly part of the Vertigo story, but there is much more that can explain Vertigo’s success and game-changer status in the industry.