Books of Magic

One thing that often bugs me about DC comics and Vertigo is how they are completely seperate imprints/lines/whatever, rarely if ever crossing over or acknowledging the other's existence, yet are extremely tied into each other when you go into the history of the characters. John Constantine and the Swamp Thing were interacting with mainstream DC when they first came to be during Allan Moore's glorious run of Swamp Thing (which I oughta go through one day on this site). But as time has gone on, the Vertigo DCU characters have become more and more distant from the mainstream DCU, still in the universe, but more as background characters or entities. While I understand all of this both for creative and marketing reasons, I still think this is a shame. I'm not saying that John Constantine should be appearing out of nowhere to aid the JLA or that the Endless should be subject to some scheme by Darkseid to steal their power or anything like that, I'm merely saying that they should be more firmly placed in the DCU, as they can only gain from it. Exhibit A) Books of Magic, Neil Gaiman's tale of Tim Hunter, a down on his luck British kid with glasses who learns he could become the greatest magic user the world has ever known. What's that? Harry Potter? O, right, this came out way before Harry Potter. It's a great read that takes Tim through every part of the DCU/Vertigo's magical characters. It has so many Magic-related characters that show up in it, in fact, that I'm counting every magic-user in the book as part of it's cast, so those cameos down there are only of non-magical folk.

Body Count (does not count those that take place in past or future):1
1.The (Jim Corrigan) Spectre turns a dude into stone. Harsh.

Number of Mano-A-Mano Fights:0

Number of Kisses: 1
1.John Constantine and Zatanna kiss at a airport

Cameos (particularly of the gratuitous variety):20
1.Vandal Savage
2.Jonah Hex
3.Tommy Tomorrow
4.Space Cabbie
5.The Original OMAC
6.Space Ranger
7.Night Girl
8.Tellus
9.Element Lad
10.The White Witch
11.Dream Girl
12.Tharok
13.Cosmic Boy
14.Lightning Lad
15.Mano
16.The Persuader
17.Saturn Girl
18.Emerald Empress
19.Validus
20.Darkseid

Geographic Coordinates given:0

MVP: Doctor Occult and his bizarre female side of Rose Psychic.

LVP: Dr. 13, who ends up sounding like a complete fool when he talks of how magic isn't real in the (DC) Universe. Because lord knows that all of the stuff that happens in the DCU can be explained through science.

Quote of the Book: “Where humanity gets it wrong by your time, is in imagining Atlantis as having any kind of quantifiable existence. Which of course it hasn't; not in the way they imagine anyway. There have been quite a few Atlantises, will be quite a few more. It is just a symbol. A symbol of the art. The true Atlantis is inside you, just as it's inside all of us. The sunken land is lost beneath the dark sea, lost beneath the waves of wet, black stories and myths that break upon the shores of our minds. Atlantis is the shadow-land, the birth-place of civilization. The fair land in the west that is lost to us, but remains forever, true birthplace and true goal. “ -Some old dude from Ancient Atlantis