Talk:Vertigo Comics/Archives/2020

Past tense

It is not typical in English to refer to things which existed for a time, but no longer do, in the present tense. We do that with individual creative works like TV and comics series, because they generally do continue to exist as observable objects even after they are no longer being produced, but not with marketing imprints that are defunct.[1][2][3] -Jason A. Quest (talk) 17:58, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

The problem I have is that the imprint still exists even if it's been retired. Vertigo isn't a company or a person; it's a just a label of another brand (DC). DC could easily bring it back someday, like they did with Milestone and WildStorm. That other articles on defunct imprints refer to them in the past is WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS and not a valid reason to argue for it. JOEBRO64 18:06, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

That argument is absurd. Literally anything that isn't irrecoverably decomposing in the ground could be "brought back" if someone decided to do it. Epic Comics could be brought back. (Someone did, but it's dead again.) Malibu Comics could be brought back. Cookie Jar TV could be brought back. Burger Chef could be brought back. The Whig Party could be brought back. The Roman Empire could be brought back. But no one has brought them back, so they don't exist in the present, whcih is why we refer to them in the past tense. That isn't an "other stuff exists" argument, it's a "how English works" argument. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 18:47, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Those examples are even more absurd. First of all, Vertigo is just a name. Does the name still exist? Yes. Does the company that used the name still exist? Yes. So do we say it still exists? Yes. OTHERSTUFF does indeed apply here, and Epic and Malibu should be also changed as they're also just imprints of a still-intact company. Comparing this to a restaurant and a programming block is a non-sequitur (as both were absorbed by another company and as such vanished), and the Whig Party and the Roman Empire completely ceased to exist (and really, trying to compare a comic imprint to a massive empire? The two aren't even remotely similar). Vertigo didn't. It's a name that's retired. If someone retires, does that mean they don't exist anymore? Saying it's in the past tense now makes no sense, if you're thinking about how reality works. JOEBRO64 21:14, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

No, a "retired" brand and a retired person are fundamentally different things. And the distinctions you're trying to make between the examples I gave are arbitrary and confused. For example, what happened to Malibu Comics and what happened to Burger Chef were in fact the same thing: each was sold to a company which dissolved it. Neither entity exists today; they are in the past. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 04:32, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

This is an MOS issue. "By default, write articles in the present tense, including those covering products or works that have been discontinued." Etzedek24 ^{(I'll talk at ya) (Check my track record)} 22:44, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

But a publishing imprint is not a "product" or a "work". Vertigo was a brand and accompanying business unit at DC that were discontinued and dissolved. I invite you to look at List of defunct consumer brands and see what tense those articles are written in, based on that guidance from MOS. For example, the Nash Rambler "is" a car, but Nash Motors "was" a car manufacturer/brand. And if you think all of those articles about defunct business entities should be changed, the place to make that argument is not here, but on Talk:MOS. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 04:32, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

(Responding to request for help from the refdesk.) This one is a fairly close call, but my feeling would be that as long as comic books of a given imprint exist, so does the imprint. Similarly I would say that the Edsel brand still exists as long as there are a few individual Edsel cars around, even in museums. I'm not an expert on publishing so there could be some subtlety I'm missing. --Trovatore (talk) 18:47, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Do you think then that we should also change all of the articles about defunct automobile makes and other discontinued brands to present tense? This is a question with broad implications, which is why I raised it at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 20:39, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Well, it certainly wouldn't be all of them, because some are already in present tense (in particular the first one I looked up, Edsel). I'm not convinced this really needs to be consistent across all of Wikipedia, but if the question is raised at an individual article, my intuition at the moment is that a brand should be in present tense as long as any of its exemplars are still around. --Trovatore (talk)

WP:MOS also says, in the second paragraph, that "editors should avoid ... unnecessarily complex wording." Using "is a discontinued" in place of "was" falls on the wrong side of that recommendation, since it means precisely the same thing but is five times the length. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 12:30, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 27 August 2018

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Moved to Vertigo Comics. No consensus for proposed title DC Vertigo, but consensus does favor Vertigo Comics for solid policy-based reasoning. (non-admin closure) В²C ☎ 16:37, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

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Vertigo (DC Comics) → DC Vertigo — official and common name; also more concise and a natural disambiguator. JOEBRO64 14:35, 27 August 2018 (UTC) --Relisting.  — Amakuru (talk) 21:56, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Original close, overturned with agreement from closer at move review

The result of the move request was: Moved to DC Vertigo. WP:NATURALDIS is clear about "Using an alternative name that the subject is also commonly called in English reliable sources, albeit not as commonly as the preferred-but-ambiguous title. Do not, however, use obscure or made-up names." Since Vertigo is not available, we return to the next best thing, and in this case the proposed title aligns with the company's official name. And, FWIW, news search for "DC Vertigo" produces ~8000 results. No such user (talk) 11:19, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

I don't think "DC Vertigo" satisfies COMMONNAME. It's been known as simply "Vertigo" (or "Vertigo Comics", like their domain name and their @tag on both FB and Twitter) for 25 years, and this modification to their official branding hasn't changed that substantially. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 16:36, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

I agree with JasonAQuest, I don't think that "DC Vertigo" is the most common name for this imprint.★Trekker (talk) 17:05, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

Even if it's not the common name, I still think the page should be moved. Just "DC Vertigo" removes the need for a disambiguation term in the page title. (And technically, it's been known as "DC Vertigo" for a while—look at the cover of the very first Vertigo comic) JOEBRO64 17:17, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

And yet, people don't actually call it that, which is what COMMONNAME is about. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 17:46, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

Are you kidding me? Literally every article I've seen since March calls it "DC Vertigo"... JOEBRO64 19:53, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

You may have missed a few.[4] To the extent that news articles are using the new branding, it's largely because they're working from press releases that push it; whether it will get picked up in regular usage and replace the everyday "Vertigo"... remains to be seen. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 22:11, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

Whatever, but "DC Vertigo" still satisfies WP:NATURALDIS and WP:CONCISE. JOEBRO64 22:23, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

So does "Vertigo Comics", which has the added virtue of being widely used and an industry-standard pattern ("___ Comics"). -Jason A. Quest (talk) 22:46, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

If reliable sources written after May 2018 use "DC Vertigo" with significantly more frequency than just "Vertigo," then we should too per WP:NAMECHANGES. I don't follow this subject enough to know, and the terms don't lend themselves to easy search result comparisons. Argento Surfer (talk) 15:27, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

• Support Per WP:NATURAL, regardless of its common name._{ZXCVBNM (TALK)} 12:38, 2 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per COMMONNAME. Echo what above comments said about using RSs to gauge the name, but for now the disambig is fine because I don't think I've ever heard the company referred to as DC Vertigo. Etzedek24 ^{(I'll talk at ya) (Check my track record)} 00:54, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
• Relisting comment - it was decided at move review, with agreement from previous closer No such user, that this be relisted for another week.  — Amakuru (talk) 21:56, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
• I'd like to suggest a little more prominently that it be moved to Vertigo Comics instead. While this has never been its official trademark, it has long been referred to that way by people and the media,"vertigo+comics" as well as matching the company's own domain name vertigocomics.com, Twitter handle @vertigo_comics, and Facebook page name facebook.com/vertigocomics. It's also a natural way of disambiguating, because it follows the format used for the articles of nearly every other comics publisher/imprint: "(_____ Comics)". It's COMMON, CONCISE, and NATURAL. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 23:07, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

I support the above comment, move to Vertigo Comics. Etzedek24 ^{(I'll talk at ya) (Check my track record)} 20:44, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose DC Vertigo, "DC" is a recognized logo not a name, and it does not check out as the COMMONNAME. Prefer, tentatively support, Vertigo Comics, also matching a url (https://www.vertigocomics.com/), and passing the google ngram test where "dc vertigo" fails. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:38, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

List of publications

The Publications section is obviously redundant to List of Vertigo publications. I don't have a strong opinion about which way the merge should go (lying: it should go to the separate article) or what it looks like (true), but it really should be done. (Don't suggest that I do it: I would simply delete them as indiscriminate data which should instead be summarized with just the most noteworthy examples.) -Jason A. Quest (talk) 17:58, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

 Done After ~3.5 months of no opposition, the merge to the list is now complete and replacing with a {{main}} link. I cross-checked all the titles that were in Vertigo Comics#Publications against the super set in List of Vertigo publications. In this edit I added the only titles missing from the list page: The Dark and Bloody, Jacked, Savage Things, Survivors' Club, Unfollow, and The Wolf Moon. -2pou (talk) 23:41, 11 May 2020 (UTC)