Progression in an Artform Through Covers

It has been over a year since I put anything up over here. Observations, though, have been coming fast and furious lately.

Anywho, here I wanted to discuss a deep idea I've been having, and this is likely only an opening thought-organizing-party.

This main thesis is about how WEIRDNESS in a medium, or an aspect of life, is one of the propulsive things that progresses that medium or aspect of life.

Small anecdote: My younger brother, as a teenager, hated fashion, hated the idea of spending money of looking "preppy" or "popular" or like your closet was supplied by the Gap. He would deliberately wear combinations that he felt were ridiculous and that he thought other people---the same people he loathed---would ridicule. He also hated malls, but one day he and I had to pick something up at our local mall.

When we passed the storefront to a place called Pacific Sunwear (now known as the cooler and abbreviated "Pac Sun"), my brother was aghast at what he saw: three mannequins in the window all dressed exactly like he was. He wasn't a follower, he was a trendsetter, and in the decades since then, he's kept his edgy decisions on the forefront of weirdness. (At that same time I dressed like a pot-farming hobo.)

The industry of comic books, when viewed through an artistic-endeavor lens, can be tracked through any number of movements. Right here, right now, I'm looking at one specific title, and I like how the entire gamut of the late '80s Copper Age through the mid '90s Modern Age and the crash is seen in the covers of this one specific title.

I'm talking about the second volume of DC's "Doom Patrol", a series that saw Grant Morrison redefine the idea of what superhero comics could be and then auger in DC's Vertigo imprint.

In the beginning it looked like an 80's comic:

The Doom Patrol was always a haven for weird stuff anyway, that idea was really driven home once Grant Morrison took over the writing details. Right away, with his first issue, #19, he altered the title page. We can see with this first tweak the off-set double-o that will eventually come to define the design ethic that comes:

Eventually DC gave Morrison free-reign to fully redesign the cover look, and for a single issue this was the result:

By issue #27, the look that would come to define this bizarre superhero book has been set. The title design and Simon Bisely-painted covers were the norm for years. It was during this time that comics were drawing much attention, what with killing off Superman and breaking Batman's spine.

Those years led to an even more fracturing of the medium, and eventually the Doom Patrol title design reflected that.

Combined with the ultimate non-superhero-yet-mainstream-company comic Sandman, and other more adult-themed titles like Swamp Thing and Animal Man, Doom Patrol helped introduce the world to DC's mature line Vertigo. Issue #64, the first non-Morrison issue since #18, was the titles first Vertigo imprint:

Vertigo has since moved on to mostly creator-owned content. This is the look that this volume of the title would end with. The weirdness helped shape the medium from both the inside and the outside.

How is not the argument being made here, just a discussion of the signposts of that movement.