It's been a while since DC's Vertigo imprint launched a successful ongoing series, at least if you don't count the spin-off book Jack of Fables.  But it's not for want of trying, nor for want of good reviews - Scalped, Crossing Midnight and DMZ have all been well-received.

So a new ongoing series from Vertigo is at least worth a look.  Their newest offering is Si Spencer and Simon Gane's The Vinyl Underground, a series about a group of occult detectives in London.

Magic, pop music and a London setting?  Isn't this a little familiar?  At first glance, it certainly sounds rather similar to Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie's Phonogram, a series which explored the blurring of art and magic with great success.  Does the world really need the same idea by Vertigo?

Well, here's the good news.  The Vinyl Underground is nothing whatsoever like Phonogram.  In fact, despite the record label cover, pop music only plays a very peripheral role in the first issue.  This is a totally different series.  It's about four mostly fashionable characters investigating occult murders in London.

That's the good news.

Here's the bad news.  The Vinyl Underground is nothing whatsoever like Phonogram.  Which is to say, while Gillen and McKelvie's series had a strong central premise, a charismatic anti-hero, and some interesting ideas about the cultural position of pop music and the transformative effects of art, this book is about four mostly fashionable characters investigating occult murders in London.

Our four heroes use their practical and mystical skills to investigate magic-related crimes in the capital.  Morrison Shepherd is a minor celebrity who picked up a degree in criminology during an implausibly long 18 month jail sentence for cocaine possession.  And seriously, since when are people serving that long in jail for possession of non-dealer quantities?  Abi is the daughter of a witchdoctor.  There's a guy with the nickname of Perv who has a technical conviction as a sex offender and was abused as a child.  And there's Leah King, "the only on-line porn star who never goes all the way."  Does Spencer seriously believe that there are no soft porn models on the internet?  Apparently so.

These are not interesting characters.  They are merely clumps of random back story that sound as though they ought to be a bit edgy.  The book doesn't even have the courage to make Perv an actual sex offender - it's at pains to stress that it was only a technicality, so any taboo-breaking is at the most inoffensive, surface level.

Artist Simon Gane clearly loves the work of Phillip Bond, and who can blame him?  But despite the best efforts of inker Cameron Stewart, the end result is simply a comic that desperately wishes it looked as cool as something drawn by Phillip Bond.

Our four fashionable-yet-empty, superficially adult characters hide out in an underground headquarters built into an old abandoned Tube station, and from there, they fight evil.  What does all this add up to?  Not a Phonogram clone, to be sure.  But Torchwood's low-budget cousin... yes, yes, that's about it.  And the world doesn't need a second Torchwood.  It could do quite happily without the one it's got.

On the strength of its first issue, Vinyl Underground is a technically competent book, but a wholly uninspiring one.  It has a checklist of stock elements signifying edginess, in place of interesting characters or ideas.  Vertigo has done, and is doing, much better than this.

Rating: C-

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