X-Statix writer Peter Milligan shows up again this week over at Vertigo.  Milligan at Vertigo is usually worth a look, not least because he was responsible for Shade the Changing Man, a comic which made the career of Chris Bachalo and isn't available in trade paperback for some unfathomable reason.

Anyhow, Vertigo Pop: London is the second of the Vertigo Pop miniseries which, in theory, are supposed to be about pop culture around the globe in some vaguely defined way.  The first miniseries was Vertigo Pop: Tokyo, which was more of a broad comedy about cosplay fans and the mafia, but was a fun read nonetheless.

London is the story of Rocky Lamont, lead singer in 1960s rock band the Idle Hands.  Of course, the basic character idea is fairly straighforward - Rocky's entire life remains based around the fact that he was in a really good band forty years ago, and these days, he's just the bloke who was in a really good band forty years ago.  Rather than burning out the way he'd hoped, he's gone into a slow and dull decline with a trophy wife and a series of dreary albums.  Now it's his sixtieth birthday, and it's time to do something about it by recruiting a protege.  Of sorts.

Like Tokyo, the tone is comedy-drama.  Although most of the characters are broadly drawn from stereotypes, Milligan makes them rounded enough to get away with that.  The trophy wife has rather more dimensions to her character than normal, and the poor beleaguered drummer making charity albums at least gets to turn round the drummer jokes.  ("As you keep reminding me, I'm a drummer.  I leave philosophical questions to guitarists.")  They're proper characters in well-established roles.

Rocky's choice of protege is Sean, a busker who represents everything he's bitter about - somebody with better looks, who's much younger, and has no discernible talent whatsoever.  (Something that's conveyed by having him sing "Wonderwall."  I approve.)  He's kept more to the background this issue, but the relationship's got obvious promise in an odd couple sort of way.

The plot moves along fairly obvious lines until the rather surprising last page, which yanks the story back into territory that's a little more familiar for Vertigo.  Still, Milligan is one of those writers where I can forgive predictability in favour of entertainment.  Besides which, the final scene is certainly not predictable.

On art, Philip Bond does a good job comparing the rundown present day rockstar with footage from his wide-eyed past.  Bond characters tend to look like solid cartoons, and that's a perfect look for this sort of storyline.  He's a great artist who doesn't get as much attention as he should, because his style isn't really right for most mainstream comics.  But here, it's right at home.

Another good start from the Vertigo Pop line, even if it looks to have an equally tenuous relationship to the supposed premise of Vertigo Pop.

Rating: A

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