During San Diego Comic Con 2016 (SDCC 2016) DC Comics Co-Publishers Jim Lee and Dan DiDio revealed their plans for their storied Vertigo imprint that has lost its luster in recent years. Jim Lee had the most revealing tidbits; he had the following to say:
- Talent Outreach: “We promoted Jamie Rich to Group Editor of the Vertigo line. He has tremendous experience. He was Senior Editor before. He used to work at Oni Press. He’s a critically acclaimed creator himself, so he’s got a lot of connections within the talent community. Vertigo is still a cornerstone of our imprint strategy.”
- Trial, Error and the Future: [We’re] Still publishing titles. We had some success with Lucifer, Unfollow, and Clean Room. And we’ve got other projects featuring some of the big names that have broken out in the Rebirth event: Tom King with Sheriff of Babylon, Josh Williamson has been announced to do a new book called Frostbite (he’s the writer on Flash). There’s other stuff in the works. It’s very much part of our imprint strategy.
- What Vertigo Stands For Now: It’s the home for stand-alone IP that really focus on genre or content, so non-superhero. We’re looking for things that take genre and redefine it in ways that are surprising or innovative. So if you look at a book like Survivor’s Club, it’s the idea that all these people who are survivors from horror movies get together and realize there was a method behind all the madness; that they survived for a reason and they band together and form this team. It’s a really interesting take on that genre and a way of creating a new team of characters in a way that hasn’t been done before. That’s garnered a lot of interest and media. It’s really finding the balance between creating books that find success as books themselves and find properties that have potentially life beyond the printed page in media. So that’s the mission.
With DC’s Young Animal imprint launching, the return of WildCATS / Wildstorm (in Wildstorm Reborn) in October 2016, the re-imagining of Hanna-Barbera, and the success of DC Rebirth, DC Comics seems to be firing on all cylinders nowadays.
