Vertigo Comics

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As the Dark Age moved on, DC Comics noticed they were publishing several series that weren't just dark, they were mature -- with complex, thinky, often philosophical stories and deep, complicated characters, by names like Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, and Neil Gaiman. Thus, to separate these from the "normal" DCU fare, they created the Vertigo Comics imprint.

Many of these were remakes of old DCU properties, given new life through clever writing. The Sandman, Animal Man, Doom Patrol, and Swamp Thing are probably the exemplars here. It seemed the rule was "The more obscure, the better"; series like Brother Power: The Geek, a two-issue Totally Radical attempt from the '60s to appeal to the "hippie" market, were brought back as dark, edgy romps.

This had the knock-on effect of pretty much excising certain characters from the main DCU, for fear that a John Constantine and Batman crossover would encourage little kids to pick up Hellblazer. This means that certain comics, though still technically part of the DCU, are unable to do "proper" crossovers or acknowledge that connection directly. This is relaxed occasionally for one-panel cameos (Constantine in Hitman), characters whose comics have ended (Daniel from The Sandman appeared in JLA, while Animal Man and the Doom Patrol have come back to The DCU full-time) and characters who have always straddled the divide between the two (The Phantom Stranger, Zatanna, et al). DC's 2011 partial Continuity Reboot brought several characters like Constantine and Swamp Thing back into the main DC continuity fold. The Vertigo-only Hellblazer will still continue to be published separately.

DC shut down the Vertigo imprint in January 2020. Their mature titles moved to the DC Black Label imprint, which started publishing in 2018 - except for The Sandman, which got its own imprint, "The Sandman Universe".

Some of the best-known series published by Vertigo include:

Some Vertigo series were technically part of The DCU, due to using DCU characters, and Word of God says the shared universe titles like Hellblazer and The Sandman are part of the mainstream DCU. However, not all of them are always Canon for the DCU characters, and some of them effectively take place in a world of their own. These include:

Many other Vertigo series featured re-imagined DCU characters and concepts in a context outside the DC Universe itself. These include:

  • Beware The Creeper
  • Deadman
  • House Of Secrets
  • The Human Target
  • The Losers
  • Uncle Sam
  • Vertigo Visions, a series of one-shots, each re-imagining a different character.
  • The Witching Hour

Vertigo comics which were not associated with the DC Universe at all include:

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