DC Comics announced a full slate of creators and titles for its Vertigo revival Thursday at New York Comic Con, with a total of 10 new books, with a list of creative teams that included Deniz Camp and Stipan Morian; Kyle Starks and Steve Pugh; Chris Condon and Jacob Phillips, among others.
This announcement comes almost one year to the weekend after DC announced at NYCC 2024 that Vertigo would be returning. At that time, the publisher said The Nice House by the Lake and its follow-up, The Nice House by the Sea, would retroactively be added to the imprint. For the last year, however, there’s been no Vertigo news.
Obviously, that’s changed, and, as kids and us very online people say, we are so back.
The titles and the concepts of the series were released as well. All 10 of the newly-announced creative teams have previously worked together, which the publisher said was a deliberate choice in order to position the titles for long, successful runs.
The first book announced was the Camp/Morian comic. It’s called Bleeding Hearts, and it’s set 10 years after the fall of humanity at the moldering hands of the zombie apocalypse. Camp and Morian previously collaborated on 20th Century Men.
“It’s really a story of what a culture of zombies might look like, and what happens when someone starts to question that from within it,” Camp said.
Next up was the Starks and Pugh comic, End of Life, and it’s about a professional hitman who runs afoul of the boss of a cabal of international assassins. As a result, he has to relocate to a small midwestern town. Starks and Pugh previously worked together on Peacemaker Tries Hard!
“The short pitch for End of Life was it’s John Wick goes to Northern Exposure,” Starks said. “…There’s a despot in this town, as all small towns have, and it’s a cancelled cartoonist.”
Next up, Condon and Phillips are working together on a new comic called The Peril of the Brutal Dark: An Ezra Cain Mystery, and it’s about an investigator in 1940s New York City who gets tangled up in a theft from the gods via a museum heist. The main character’s name is Ezra Cain, and the book is being branded an Ezra Cain mystery, and the team hopes to do new Ezra Cain stories in six-issue blocks. Condon and Phillips have worked together most notably on That Texas Blood.
And, of course, the imprint has the aforementioned Nice House books by James Tynion IV and Alvaro Martinez Bueno also returning.
“In my heart of hearts, Nice House was always a Vertigo book,” Tynion said at the panel.
The current 12-issue Nice House series, they announced, is only the halfway point in the entire Nice House epic (one can foresee property adjacent to an ocean and um I don’t know maybe an estuary or something).
The four books mentioned above will all be launching in February, one per week.
But those were just the start of the announcements. The panel also announced a new book by Ram V. and Mike Perkins called The Black Tower: A Raven Conspiracy, with a video from the creators.
Ram V. described the comic as, “A contemporary spy thriller with that distinct flavor of Vertigo magic.”
But not every book was new. The publisher is also bringing back 100 Bullets with a new series called 100 Bullets: The US of Anger by original series creative team, writer Brian Azzarello and artist Eduardo Risso.
“Because some of you didn’t like how the original series ended, this one’s going to end with a blank page,” Azzarello said at the panel, cheekily. “And you can write your own.”
That book will launch on July 1.
Up next was the announcement of a new book by writer Tom Taylor and artist Darick Robertson, who also appeared via video. That comic is called Necretaceous, and it combines zombies with dinosaurs.
“What if dinosaurs could be cooler?” Taylor said in the video message. “What if we added zombies?”
In addition, the publisher also announced three books for the second half of 2025.
The first was Fanatic by writer Grace Ellis and Hannah Templer. They worked together previously on a graphic novel biography of Patricia Highsmith. Their new book is about a main character whose relationship to reality is warped by fandom.
The next book was A Walking Shadow by writer Simon Spurrier and artist Aaron Campbell, who previously teamed on a (very underrated) run of Hellblazer. That comic is a survival horror book with a big twist that they (obviously) didn’t reveal at the panel.
“This is a book about eight men, women and children who wake up in forest with no fucking idea how they got there, they’re chained to a boat, and if they’re going to avoid starvation, they’re going to have to start working,” Spurrier said. “But there’s a snag, because there’s something out there that’s preying on them.”
Art-wise, Campbell is making stop motion puppets to use as references for the book, and he even brought one to the panel. Check it out…
The last team they announced was one of the most exciting: writer Mariko Tamaki and artist Rosemary Valero-O’Connell, who previously worked together on the fantastic graphic novel, Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me. Their book is dealing with the very beginning of the AIDs crisis, ’80s New York City, and a real concept called a crying doll.
“I think it’s worth noting that Laura Dean was about messed up lesbians,” Tamaki said, “and this is also about messed up lesbians.”
The panel was hosted by DC Executive Editor Chris Conroy, who described these announcements as the culmination of several years of work. He also made it clear that Vertigo coming back will not be the end of Black Label. While Vertigo will be home to original creator-owned ideas, Black Label will still tell stories with the publisher’s superhero characters (more on that here).
Conroy also said that the choice to revive Vertigo with 10 creative teams who’ve worked together previously was deliberate. The publisher wanted teams that were ready to go, that were liked by fans, and were set up for long runs on their titles.
“You’re going to see the next level of a lot of partnerships across these Vertigo books,” Conroy said.
For the unfamiliar (which is probably not anyone reading this website), Vertigo is arguably the most beloved imprint in the history of Big 2 comics. Founded in 1993 by famed editor Karen Berger, the imprint’s publishing highlights include early books set within the DCU Universe—Swamp Thing, Hellblazer—as well as later original titles such as Preacher, Y: The Last Man, 100 Bullets, and many more.
Its reach has extended into other mediums too, from movies to television to videogames.
The imprint has been dormant, however, for the past six years or so. The last attempt to revive it was rolled out in 2018, and while it gave rise to some interesting comics—High Level was a favorite of mine—it struggled to find its place in the publishing landscape. (Side note: I was at the 2018 SDCC panel where they launched that revival too, because time is a flat circle.)
Here’s hoping it fares better this time. Based on these announcements, the future for Vertigo seems very bright. In fact, in my eight years or so of covering con panel announcements, I think this is the single most exciting one I’ve been a part of (and covering it as breaking news? what a rush).
Stay tuned to The Beat for more coverage from NYCC ’25.
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