Wow !

I would feel for anyone who took the position after Berger left.

She did an ok job, but nothing great IMO, but more what worked against her than anything else was the fact that DC's higher-ups modified the terms of Vertigo to not be as creator-friendly, and the indie market, most notably lead by Image, embraced what Vertigo previously, and Epic before them, encourages and nurtured.

Marvel has never really had anything like that again, outside of the occasional Icon vanity project, which is really sad.

I'll be very interested to see what happens with Vertigo. I doubt it would get axed. Even a lot of non-superhero casual readers know that imprint and the quality associated with it.

Sure, there's Vertigo editors, but don't you need someone to lead ? I guess maybe not.

DC has a road of abandoned imprints, to be sure, but the buzz around Young Animal is solid, so I hope we can keep this middle ground imprint from the ashes of DCYou.

I don't think the higher-ups at DC ever understood how much of Vertigo's succes was due to Karen Berger. We're talking about people here who think that it doesn't matter who writers and draws their characters, because the characters themselves will be the draw (see the constant shuffling of creative teams around and in at least occassion even not listing creative teams on solicits). And sadly, for a lot of fans this is true, but I have the feeling that more and more readers are paying attention to the creative teams.

But 23 years as the chief isn't a bad run.

I'd love to see Grant Morrison helm Vertigo but he's at Heavy Metal now, which will have me buying HM for the first time in 30 years or so.

I saw a preview of what he's putting in it and liked it.

It's what I would expect from Grant, in a good way, with a lot of talent and characters I've never heard of before, but that's ok.

On the Shelly Bond issue, I would sincerely hope that someone like Boom! or Oni picks her up. 

She was with Karen Berger from the ground floor of Vertigo and has worked with, and been praised, by the likes of Neil Gaiman, Bill Willingham, Becky Cloonan, Paul Dini, and more.

With her departure, that leaves 3 remaining Vertigo editors of Jamie Rich, Ellie Pyle, and Molly Mahan. 

Of the last 12 titles that were launched late last year, only Twilight Children (Gilbert Hernandez & Darwyn Cooke) and Lucifer breaking the 10K mark in monthlies.  Take that with a grain of salt since most of their sales are in trade paperbacks.

Clean Room sold 6,832 issues in March.  All the rest sold 5,200 or less with some selling less than 4,200 and not appearing in Diamond's Top 300 for the month.

Maybe the higher-ups will realize they have to re-calibrate to better compete and regain some of the luster they've lost to Image and some others.

It's not too late, with a better deal, and a strong hand at the helm.

I remember when Vertigo easily topped my pull list. I remember when marvel zombies hated it so much because Vertigo writers were becoming the posterboys of the industry. That was a long time ago. Shelly Bond is mostly responsible for that decrease. People talk about the contract change, but she instigated a trend that was very detrimental IMHO : the emo/goth cute-ization of the line with many winks to the Harry Potter fans. Image is now all about SF and some fantasy when Fantazy andhorror always were the pillars of Vertigo. They can't compete with Image when it come to SF and maybe not even horror, so they come up wth this new "Lucifer" as their flagship... Vertigo thrived at a time when its readership did'nt mind artist with humble potential (Peter Gross, Guy Davis, Richard Case...), but I don't think the market can allow that when US comics currently are sourcing talent throughout the world and most third league Marvel book s have better arwork and production values then a mid 90ies top seller. The art on that new Lucifer comics is borderline subpar, and most of the other recent new series had arists still learning their craft with various levels of talent. That doesn't cut it right now. I have around 25 books from Image on my pull list, all of which could easily be solely purchased because of the artwork.
Hernandez and Cooke's Vertigo series could easily have come out just about anywhere. It was a great book, but en especially vertigo one. I think Vertigo needs to bring much better artists to their line, have 2-3 new ones that show enough growth potential to become superstars like Chris Bachalo or Duncan Fegredo, and reasses their market : Vertigo opened comics to new audiences, but it started out with regular comic book readers, which I'm afraid to say still are kind of the same demographics, at least for single issues. If yo uaim your books at emo harry potter fagirls, don't be surprised if your books have to wait the trade editions before those find their audience. One thing I hope DC would do is kill all those sub Hellblazer books, wait a couple of years, hire adequate comic stardom and relaunch it as Vertigo's flagship title and try to develop the brand as Batman, build a focussed ground. And just give Jamie Delano some friggin books!!!

If they listened to me and fired him when I asked them to FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, then they wouldn't have this problem.