DC Has Killed Its Vertigo Brand
DC is no longer in a place called Vertigo. The company announced today it was rejiggering their publishing imprints to make the “DC”-ness in them more prominent. As a result of this, the various brands they printed will be consolidated to three — and all others must go, including Vertigo.
DC Zoom and DC Ink, two separate children’s brands, will now fall under the banner of “DC Kids” and come with a recommended tag of 8 to 12. DC proper, with its well-known stable of superhero staples, will be aimed at ages 13 and up, while what was once Vertigo will now be called “DC Black Label” and come with a recommendation for ages 17 and up.
We sort of get the logic here — it’s that word Jem said when she tugged at her earring — but it falls apart when confronted with the fact that the Vertigo brand wasn’t broken and didn’t need “fixing.” The brand is stronger than ever these days, has name recognition, and has created hits.
There has been a record number of TV and film adaptions for Vertigo properties over the last five years — Lucifer, Preacher, iZombie, and maybe someday Y: The Last Man (but at the rate they’re going, don’t hold your breath). There are several others that still don’t have Hollywood deals but name recognition based on their reputation alone: Fables, Transmetropolitan, The Sandman universe (of which only Lucifer has escaped to TV).
But we don’t control DC’s decisions, logical or not. Founded in 1993, Vertigo lasted twenty-six years. The new branding will start appearing in 2020.