The Sunset of Vertigo Comics

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Today is a sad day in comic book history.

DC’s Vertigo imprint is being sunseted out in 2020.

Sunseting is a fancy way of saying they’re shutting down Vertigo. And it’s very sad when you realize the impact Vertigo had on the comic book medium over the last 25 years.

Founded by Karen Berger in 1993, Vertigo was a place where Comic creators weren’t restricted by the Superhero genre at DC Comics. Where they weren’t restricted by the comics code. It was a place where comic creators could tell stories in genres and from perspectives they couldn’t in the tradition DC Comics.

Over the 1990s and early 2000s Vertigo became known as a place for innovation imagination and creativity. It was the home of critically acclaimed comics like Sandman, Preacher, Promethea, Lucifer, The Invisibles, iZombie, V For Vendetta, Swamp Thing, and the long-running John Constantine: HellBlazer.

Under Berger’s vision Vertigo became an imprint where comic fans could find Comics that suited older readers with more mature themes and tasteful adult content. Vertigo brought older readers back to comic shops

And it brought lots of talent to DC. Garth Ennis, Warren Ellis, Neil Gaiman and many others made became household names at Vertigo.

Unfortunately, Corporate greed undermined the Vertigo brand. As bestselling Vertigo Comics became successful film adaptations, Warner executives got upset that many Vertigo comics were creator owned properties. And instead of paying those creators fairly for their film and TV rights, they sought to keep them from profiting on the intellectual properties they created.

With many creators owning their own creative properties and realizing how much they’d lose on the deal, they balked, took their characters to other imprints and left. 

Determined to get a bigger piece of the profits, WB execs still tried to take creators intellectual property rights away. First they demoted Karen Berger. Then they sought to change the contracts on the Vertigo properties they did have before firing Berger and sending Vertigo into limbo until its 25^th Anniversary.

What a screw job.

On that 25^th Anniversary DC sought to relaunch Vertigo with an inexperienced blogger as the new editor in chief and grossly unqualified creators like Zoe Quinn, Robbie Reyes and Eric Esquival as some of the creative staff. These So-called SJW comic pros were more interested in being online celebrities than comic pros and spent more time focused on Trump rants and generating online controversies with Comicsgaters like Richard C. Meyer (YouTube’s Diversity & Comics at the time)  and Ethan Van Sciver than presenting quality stories on their pages. 

And because they spent most of their time arguing with Comicsgaters on Social Media like Twitter, Most of the titles by this motley crew of inexperienced far leftists like Border Town, Hex Wives, High Level, and Goddess Mode were far below the standard Karen Berger established at Vertigo.  

All the new Vertigo comics these SJW comic pros produced barely got 10K orders and far less sales after being roasted by comicsgate Youtubers and comics reviewers.

Worse, thanks to the alleged sex scandals regarding Eric Esquval, Border Town wound up being cancelled before the final two issues could be published. The others Hex Wives, Goddess Mode and High Level got cancelled by issue #6.

Another Safe Sex was so obscene DC cancelled it before it went to print.

And another title Second Coming about a bumbling stumbling Jesus rooming with Sun Man was so offensive to Christians that it led to a petition of 200,000 signatures and a threat of boycott before it was pulled by Dan Didio and the rights given back to the creators who have published it elsewhere.

Ironic when you think about it. WB executives wanted to get more control over the rights of comic properties by screwing creators. Then a pair of comic pros create a comic so offensive that it leads to WB corporate being forced to give those rights back to avoid alienating Chrisitians and starting a boycott.

Maybe it would’ve just been cheaper to keep Karen Berger on and pay those creators fairly for those film and TV rights?

But No, WB just hasn’t learned that lesson about greed.  And because they haven’t learned that lesson about greed they’d rather just shut the once storied Vertigo imprint down rather than realize that NO SMART COMICS CREATOR is gonna go for a raw deal where they sign away their intellectual property rights under a crap “Work for Hire” contract in an age when they can raise up to six figures to publish their own comics online on Kickstarter or indiegogo and sell thousands of copies there.

With Vertigo being shuttered DC says it’s going to consolidate into three labels DC Kids, DC Comics and DC Black Label.

Three labels. Same incompetent leadership. Good luck with that.

Dan Didio and Jim Lee aren’t on the same level as Karen Berger. They’ve run DC for nearly 20 years. And in that time they’ve run it into the ground. Thanks to Didio and Lee, DC’s comic sales and merchandising are at an all time low with readers toy collector and moviegoers abandoning the brand.  

As I see it, WB can consolidate the DC Brands, but as long as Dan Didio and Jim Lee are in charge it doesn’t change anything regarding the quality of DC Comics. The common denominators to DC’s brand decline are Dan Didio and Jim Lee. With them in charge I doubt we’ll get much innovation and creativity from DC’s Black Label that we got from Karen Berger’s Vertigo. Berger’s Vertigo was a place that wasn’t restricted by the DC Label, a label that stigmatizes comics as being something related to children and superheroes. It was a place where creators could focus on making the characters great and crafting stories in genres that weren’t superheroes. It was a place for stories for older readers who wanted a bit more subtlety and nuance. From the early Black label titles like Batman: Damned and Superman: Year One it looks like all we’re gonna get are Batdicks and redundant re-hashes of Superman’s origin from Frank Miller.

I’ll take Vertigo’s unique titles over a DC Black label any day.

It’s a shame the Vertigo Imprint is being shuttered in such an ignominious fashion. Vertigo opened the imaginations of a generation of readers and showed them that the comic medium just wasn’t superheroes. That they could be used to tell stories in all sorts of genres. And that when creators are given a platform to show their skills they can create comics that are on the level of high literature and High art.

I’m sad to see Vertigo end this way, After giving us over 20 years of great comics the brand should’ve been treated with much more respect than it has by its corporate parent is giving it. Vertigo brought comics up to another level it saddens me to see it brought low like this.