Actually, it could be crabs.

(My zodiac sign is Cancer and I was born under an Aquarius Moon.)

Um, what were we talking about? Oh yeah... Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman. Stranger things have happened, and he did allow action figures and cast statues. I even have his autograph on the special last issue. It is not impossible.

The thought of pre-release stackers with Merv Pumpkinhead and The Corinthian makes me tingle.
Biz,you sound like you have access to DC editors so my assumptions must be wrong.I had assumed that the new Shadowpact team would end up including a lot of the Vertigo Trenchcoat Brigade types.

Well, not personally, I'm just going by what I've read in interviews.

It's funny you should mention the Shadowpact, though. According to rumor, John Constantine was going to be member of that team while the mini-series was still in the planning stages, but because of the new Vertigo policy, they went with Detective Chimp instead.

Yeah, I did read through a little fast. Sorry about that...

However, I think that the argument I made works both ways. I don't see DC denying such franchises the oppurtunity for a massive ad campaign and continued advertising as the cards are continually played.

I think if anything they'll merely make UDE do a Vertigo themed set. Hellblazer, Swamp Thing, maybe more Batman? I know it's not Vertigo but Gotham is dark enough to not hurt the internal theme and at the same time could be used to show the difference between a Super Hero team and the Vertigo characters.

Plus Swamp Thing had a big story in Gotham. :p Yes, I am a big Swamp Thing fan, why do you ask? lol

That's very interesting. You could very well be right then. Wasn't aware of that.

-Mike

Well, you'd think that if DC thought that way, they wouldn't have put a ban on Vertigo characters appearing in their mainstream universe titles in the first place.

I think this is just one of those instances when they're more concerned about their P.R. than their pocketbook.

Yeah, and that's not the first time it's happened either. They also wouldn't let Geoff Johns use Dream in JSA, despite the fact that he got Neil Gaimen's permission first and everything.

Thanks for the info guys. I have to say thats very disappointing but I guess I (grudgingly) see where they are coming from. I just really wanted to play with an Endless deck...

Don't give up yet! There are Endless possibilities here (is there ever such a thing as a good pun?), and they do listen to everything we say. Rest assured that someone in the UDE offices will actually explore the possibilities with DC in the very near future if they haven't already. We will keep talking about it, and they will see our passion for it, and we may actually get it someday.

Just to give you guys a little extra hope, here's something I just remembered:

Swamp-Thing is mentioned in Floronic Man's flavor text.

A couple of things:

1) I highly doubt Alan Moore would ever give permission to do an ABC set. I think MacFarlane would be an easier bet for Spawn - at least he can be convinced by cash;)

2) One problem with Vertigo is that much of it is creator owned, which creates issues. It will be more likely to see Vertigo characters in other sets tha a straight Vertigo set.

3) As for Constantine, it's actually a pretty good film; I like it, I own it - it' just the nit-pickers who can't get over Constantine being a black-haired Californian with Neo's voice;) But if you look at Reeves' body language and the way he carries himself, he does a fairly impressive job. For the record, it made about a hundred million worldwide - he problem was that it cost that much to make, so while it wasn't a flop its budget was unrealistically high.

As for Swamp Thing, don't even get me started on that film. Although I agree with stu - Adrienne is a sultry minx, that one =)

That's a hard habit to break.

One thing about Alan Moore. He is a mage. He is deeply connected to Chaos Magick channels. He can be swayed.

I'm working on it.

id like to start by saying there probably isn't a one of you who is a bigger "milligan" shade the changing man fan than i am- i was positivly obsessed with the comic for many years, and have accumulated quite the collection of original art and pages from the comic.

IF, and big if, UDE could crack the Vertigo mine, then Constantine would be our fore runner- followed by swampthing.

now, i may not have the ability to make stu tingle the way that biz does, but here's some food for thought...

chaos counters-

imagine the havok a shade deck could do.

change target players formation

discard x number of cards, opponent discards x+1 cards

taget opponent gets a hair cut

this is making me tingle- ill atempt some shade related cards and post them later.

I tingle easily, thanks. Congrats on the original art stash... I do that with Promethea myself.

I was thinking the same thing about potential Shade Vs. cards... what abilities would correspond to "madness inducement"???

My guess with the 'want to keep Vertigo seperate from DC' thing is an attempt to keep control of continuity. If part of the reason for Vertigo is to get DC's distribution without the baggage that goes along with it [i.e. strictly following continuity 'rules', for example] than it would be problematic to do so while allowing for cross overs.

Of course, they COULD use Infinite Crisis/Multiverse to justify inconsistencies, or allow for small cross overs caused by alternate realities [in the vein of Squadron Supreme's encounters with the Avengers, and a lot of stuff going on in Batman/Superman at the moment, etc]

The whole thing gets derailed though when DC completely ignores the fact that Max Lord was a cyborg who no longer had his persuassion powers because they felt no one would remember it [despite the fact that it was mentioned quite blatantly in Formerly Known as Justice League, which was pretty much his last appearance before Identity Crisis and I Can't Beleive It's Not Justice League which was unfortunately delayed until after IC ... and thus featuring what must be Sue Dibney's last adventures]

But anyway ... I'm not sure where I was going with that ... except that Vertigo is pretty much "the benefits of being published by a large company but with the creative control of being independent of the big two" ... that's a bit of a balancing act, and the 'no Vertigo characters in the DCU' rule is likely to ensure editorial independence from DC for the Vertigo crew more or less ...

Random discard perhaps? Maybe exhaustion? [since forced discard is sometimes used to represent a mental attack, either through psychic means like Prof X and Emma Frost, or by psychological manipulation like the Riddler or Hugo Strange ... than a random discard could represent a mental attack causing madness. Also, exhaustion has been used to represent being manipulated ... so some sort of effect that exhausts an opponent's character and causes him to 'hurt himself', much like Prof X, World's Greatest Telepath, or Glorious Godfrey, could also represent rendering someone mad.]

It would take more than that to actually change the opponents reality. I would want to be able to make their decisions for the turn.