I have great memories of reading ‘Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children’ and ‘Gregory’ in the late 80’s. Books like this opened my mind to the kinds of stories that comics could tell - and did so even before the advent of Sandman.
I mean, Paradox gave us ‘Road to Perdition’ and ‘A History of Violence.’ And Piranha gave us a ‘Prince and the New Power Generation’ comic book written by Dwayne McDuffie!
I don’t know if any of it has been digitized, but if the powers-that-be are going to consider putting Vertigo on DCU eventually, I’d hope they’d at least consider the DC imprint that once pioneered alternative comics for the company.
A History of Violence was rebranded under Vertigo when the movie came out in 2005, so it might still be under that label.
Can’t say for sure about the other titles. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re creator owned though. DC may not see much financial incentive to digitize that work right now.
I’m curious to check out some of the Paradox Press titles myself. Are they any good?
Oh yeah, I’m aware that a lot of this stuff was moved to the Vertigo imprint and that a large portion of the rights were returned to the creators (also unheard of in the late 1980s!).
Just pointing out that while the loss of Vertigo is indeed a sad event in DC Comics history, there were imprints before it - which means that there will inevitably be new imprints that will continue to blow our minds in the future (Black Label or otherwise).
And yes, there were a lot of great titles that came out of Pirahna/Paradox. I mentioned Gregory in the OP, but there was also Why I Hate Saturn, Epicurus The Sage, Stuck Rubber Baby and Fast Forward. Heck, Paradox even published a version of Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics.