I'm catching up on the last few Orbital Operations newsletters in my email from personal creative hero and brutal Kyrgyztani despot Warren Ellis, when I happened upon this:
From this press release:
DC announced today that beginning in 2020, all of its publishing content will be organized and marketed under the DC brand, creating three age-specific labels – DC Kids, DC and DC Black Label – that would absorb all of its existing imprints and focus DC’s publishing content around characters and stories that evolve and mature along with the awareness and sensibilities of DC’s readers. As a result of this new labeling strategy, DC will sunset the Vertigo publishing imprint at the end of the year.
This is a saddening thing. I was never really a “Vertigo writer” – TRANSMETROPOLITAN was brought into Vertigo after the sunsetting of the DC Helix line it was actually created for and published by, and I only did a handful of issues of HELLBLAZER before I had to leave, I never really “fit” there the way Garth and Grant and everyone else did, never for a moment felt like I was in that club – but I’ve always believed that DC Vertigo was central to the health of the American medium. Its creation made the medium a better place, and its sunset will make the medium poorer. Companies like Vault Comics have stepped into the breach, to be sure — their line is very much an early-Vertigo ideal. But: a giant media company putting relatively serious resources into serious work that the company would not own but simply believed should be published? That was a major statement about original creator-owned cross-genre/non-genre narrative art and its importance. Something of importance sailed away at sunset tonight, and I suspect we may not see it again. Good night, you crooked old house of mystery and secrets. I’ll miss you.
(I actually wrote the above at LTD, which you don't read)
Actually, I do. But not often enough, given that I missed this post.
At a time in the late 1990s when I had had more than my fill of superhero comics and wanted something to read that fed me challenging visuals, exceptional words, and plenty to think about...there was DC Vertigo.
Hellblazer, Chiaroscuro, Black Orchid, Invisibles, Preacher, Sandman Mystery Theatre, I can go on and on naming titles on the Vertigo line that I loved with all my heart and spent too much damn money on. But the favorite was, has been, and always will be Ellis' Transmetropolitan. The series that splayed out in front of me pretty much the greatest single-issue story of any monthly book I've ever read.
Books like Transmetropolitan didn't happen at other imprints, despite the best efforts of Image and others under its umbrella. The only book I can think of that comes close to that sort of impact on my reading at the time was David Lapham's Stray Bullets, when it was (sporadically) on El Capitan.
I have at least two boxes full of the stuff that Vertigo put out in the late 90s/early aughts that appealed to me for one reason or another. A writer or artist I liked, maybe even a cover that jumped out at me...something. Every Vertigo book I have is a sacred object to me, another example of a creator having the space to be weird, and have it work. And done with a nod of respect from the label. That's nice.
So long, Vertigo. Thanks for the hours we spent together.