This is Part 2 in a series of posts looking at why Alan Moore doesn’t like Grant Morrison. You can find Part 1 here.

The Comic Book British Invasion of the 1980s forever changed the comics industry, and the common denominator of these invading creators was an American editor: Karen Berger.

Berger’s debut as editor was on House of Mystery #292, taking the reins from editor Len Wein in 1981.

She even made an appearance in that issue:

First appearance of Karen Berger, House of Mystery #292 (1981)

KAREN BERGER: When I started at DC Jenette Kahn was running the company […] Jenette has always been a mentor to me and as time went on we became very good friends in the process. In terms of the business aspect of it, the first time I met her I remember her saying to me “you can tell any kind of story you want in comics.” And here I was, 21, right out of school, and I really had no idea what she was talking about because from what I could see there was only one type so story really being told in comics which was superhero stuff with an occasional horror anthology or an occasional war book so I wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that but it always stuck with me and wound up being the code that I went by cause you can tell any kind of story in comics.[1]

The following year, in 1982, artist Brian Bolland made a big splash with his US debut on Camelot 3000, DC Comics’ first maxi-series. Soon after that, artist Dave Gibbons began turning heads with his work on Green Lantern.

LEFT: Brian Bolland’s first work for the US, Camelot 3000 #1 (1982)

RIGHT: Dave Gibbons’ first work for the US, Green Lantern #161 (1983)

KAREN BERGER: Brian and Dave were the first British guys who came over to America back in the day. The company was small, we always used to hand out together with a couple of the other editors and whenever there was someone coming from out of town it was a big deal because everyone pretty much lived in the New York area then.[1]

A year after that, in 1983, Len Wein contacted Alan Moore and offered him the opportunity to write Swamp Thing – his first work for an American audience.

LEN WEIN: I had been a fan of Alan’s work on 2000 A.D. and so he seemed an interesting choice as writer, assuming, of course, he was available and so inclined. I got his phone number somehow, made the international phone call, and Alan answered on the third ring. I introduced myself, told Alan I had an offer to make him, and he hung up on me. When I called back, assuming the connection had been broken accidentally, I introduced myself again. Alan’s reply: “No, who is this really?” And he started going through a list of his mates, trying to figure out who had put me up to this and why. It took me quite a while to convince Alan I was indeed me, and that I was interested in offering him work in the States, on my own precious baby.[2]

KAREN BERGER: Len Wein knew of Alan Moore’s work from Warrior Magazine, which was a British anthology comic, and 2000 AD. He knew of his work on V for Vendetta, which we ended up finishing at Vertigo – he never finished V for Vendetta with Warrior because Warrior went out of business – so Alan and David Lloyd were able to finish the story at “pre-Vertigo.”[3]

DAVID LLOYD: V used Germany in the 30s as its model, and its spur was the burgeoning power of the National Front at the beginning of the 80s. […] I was surprised at its success in the US market initially because V is a very bizarre and strange-looking character to fit into the superhero dominated landscape of US comic books – and they had no-idea who Guy Fawkes was. But I think a lot of things changed in the US in the 80s, including what we thought was possible in the world of comic books. […] We wanted it to be influential at whatever level we could achieve with it, if only to say something as simple as ‘this will be a bad thing and you shouldn’t let it happen’. I had no idea it would become as long-lived or as valuable to people as it eventually became.[26]

Promotional advertisement for Moore & Lloyd’s V for Vendetta, originally publish in the British anthology Warrior in 1982, to be reprinted and completed at “Pre-Vertigo,” where it was edited by Karen Berger

Swamp Thing (1983)

By Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, John Totleben, and Rick Veitch

KAREN BERGER: It was a dying title. Len Wein, who created it had brought it back because we were making these horrible movies. […] The sales of Swamp Thing were pretty low at the time.[27]

RICK VEITCH: Steve called me up and said, “Yeah, guess who we got as a new writer? That guy from Warrior. Alan Moore.” He sent me over a copy of the first script, “The Anatomy Lesson.” It was as detailed as a non-nuclear proliferation treaty, but it worked. I was absolutely floored. […] the scripts were kick-ass material and Bissette’s approach to the graphics was perfectly realized.[28]

STEVE BISSETTE: Alan could attune each thing he was doing to the artist he was collaborating with. And that was an amazing strength he had. […]

Alan’s scripts were dense. They were like long, narrative letters to the cartoonist. And they were playful in a lot of ways, too. We did a two-part zombie story that was set in the antebellum South. And Alan’s script for the first page of the first issue, it was a page where you’re underground and you’re looking at a body in a coffin. And in every panel description, Alan had a beetle family. He had a description to me of the beetle family, that these two beetles are on the body, and they’re arguing. Now this is nothing I was supposed to draw, it was just like a joke. And at the sixth panel, he said “I’ve decided to kill the beetles. They don’t have any character potential, and there’s no future for them in this comic series.” […] And it was unusual at that time to have scripts not just of that length and that detail, but scripts that carefully thought-out.[29]

LEN WEIN: The script for a typical comic was around 32 pages. Alan’s scripts, you’d get 150 pages![30]

Berger came on board as Swamp Thing’s editor starting with issue #25 (Moore’s sixth issue), and when the Comics Code Authority refused to provide their seal of approval for issue #31, Berger oversaw Swamp Thing abandon the Comics Code seal altogether, something that would ultimately usher in a new era of mature comics at DC.

KAREN BERGER: I was lucky enough very early on in my career to work on Swamp Thing with Alan Moore. So I was like 25 years old, editing this amazing writer.[3]

LEFT: Alan Moore’s first work for the US, Saga of the Swamp Thing #20 (1983)

RIGHT: Karen Berger’s first issue as editor of Swamp Thing, Saga of the Swamp Thing #25 (1984)

Swamp Thing soon became DC’s most critically acclaimed comic, winning numerous awards during their four-year reinvention of the title, including both Best Series and Best Writer Jack Kirby Awards three years in a row (1984-1986).

RICK VEITCH: It was an extremely strong book that virtually changed the direction of comics. Obviously, the reading public agreed. The book started taking off in a big way — I think at one point they were adding 5,000 readers a month. Good sales.[28]

QUESTION TO RICK VEITCH: It seemed like you guys — Totleben, Bissette, yourself — were passing the book back and forth between one another. Was there any point that DC started asserting their command over who was going to do the art?

RICK VEITCH’S RESPONSE: Not really, because Karen Berger was the editor, and she’s got a really even hand at dealing with creatives. She was able to keep a pretty good balance.[28]

QUESTION TO STEVE BISSETTE: Swamp Thing seems to tie together a lot of the extra-dimensional areas of the DC Universe—with the House of Mystery, Cain and Abel.

STEVE BISSETTE’S RESPONSE: That was all Alan. I mean, John and I had a hand in it, as the artists. But Alan was the first writer of our generation to come in and go “Oooh, I can fit this all together. I can not only fit all this together, but I can make the DC Hell fit with Milton’s Paradise Lost.” […] For Alan, it was the first volley in pulling the DC universe into this universe of Swamp Thing, and using that as a way to shape his own vision of how all these comic-book universes fit together. Because Alan loved that stuff.[29]

LEN WEIN: The changes he made on Swamp Thing helped to revolutionize the art form, his language was pure music. Under Alan, the graphic narrative suddenly grew up. And the comic book industry has never been the same since.[2]

Promotional advertisement for Moore, Bissette, Totleben, and Veitch’s Swamp Thing (1984)

“Bam! Pow! Comics Aren’t Just For Kids Anymore!” (1986)

By 1986, the media attention garnered by Art Spiegelman’s Pullitzer Prize-winning Maus, Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, and Moore & Gibbons’ Watchmen had catapulted comics into the mainstream, generating headlines like “Bam! Pow! Comics Aren’t Just For Kids Anymore!”

KAREN BERGER: It was really [Jenette Kahn’s] vision that set the tone for all the creative expansion that happened at DC Comics starting back with Frank Miller’s Ronin, Camelot 3000, Dark Knight, Watchmen, she really opened the door creatively to people in terms of making DC a home where you can really stretch the boundaries of comics and tell any kind of story that you want to and also do it in formats that are more prestigious than the regular floppy comic.[1]

DAVE GIBBONS: I think that one of the mistakes I’ve made in the past is to switch into the American mode. Certainly the Green Lantern stuff that I did was “Let’s draw an American comic book,” but what I’ve actually done with Watchmen is to switch into the Dave Gibbons mode, and that’s the most successful way to do it. I do view America as an exotic culture, an exotic, far-off country, and I think that’s the approach to take, and because of the perspective you’re probably getting more to the reality of America than if you actually live there.[4]

What Watchmen demonstrated was a possible way to do comics. The message was to broaden — not to narrow them down. […] Alan saw comics on the same continuum as novels and movies, and would apply the same critical and creative disciplines. He was unlike other writers, who were only writing comics until something better came along. Alan never felt that way.[30]

NEIL GAIMAN: I remember Alan ringing me up when he was writing Watchmen #3, and said, “Neil, you’re an educated bloke. Where does the quote ‘Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?’ come from? I think someone said it when they were dying, but I don’t know when.” I went out, and found it for him, rang him back, and said, “No. It’s Genesis. God threatening to nuke Sodom and Gomorrah.”[5]

“Bam! Pow! Comics Aren’t Just For Kids Anymore!”

Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, and Moore & Gibbons’ Watchmen

DC Comics were eager to expand their mature content, and to do so they turned their attention to the British comics scene that had given them Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons, and Alan Moore.

Karen Berger’s First Trip to England (September 1986)

KAREN BERGER: At a company editorial retreat, Jenette asked me if I wanted to become “British Liaison” and join her at the London comics convention, UKCAC, the following week. I’d already been working with Alan Moore on Swamp Thing for a few years, and was friendly Dave Gibbons and Brian Bolland.[6]

JAMIE DELANO: Either [DC] or Alan, I’m not sure which, were responding to some popularity of the Constantine character in Swamp Thing, and decided they’d risk spinning him off into a monthly series of his own. Alan didn’t want to write it, he wanted to get on with his Watchmen and various other projects, and they wanted a British writer because it was a British character.[7]

I was suggested by Alan Moore as somebody who might come up with a proposal to take that job on, which I did.[3]

KAREN BERGER: And that first trip when I went over to London with Jennette to look for new and promising British talent, I met Neil.[8]

FROM THE BOOK ‘NEIL GAIMAN,’ BY STEVEN P. OLSEN: In September of that year [1986], Gaiman attended the UK Comic Art Convention and introduced himself to Karen Berger, an editor from DC Comics in America. Berger had been working with Alan Moore for some time, and she said that Moore had mentioned Gaiman. After meeting, Gaiman mailed her a copy of his Swamp Thing script “Jack the Green.”[9]

KAREN BERGER: First I was grateful for the opportunity to go to England, I’d never been there before. But to me as soon as I got there, there was this whole untapped pool of talent. There was a great underground comics scene, a small press scene, going on in England at the time too as well as 2000 AD. So, to me it was like “hey, why aren’t we finding new talent here too?” So I spoke to Jenette and to Dick and everyone was like “okay, that’s a great idea, to try to bring in new talent.”[3]

Karen Berger’s Second Trip to England (February 1987)

NEIL GAIMAN: Alan Moore picked me to write Miracleman, and also phoned Karen Berger to ask her to meet me and Dave McKean on a DC talent scout in 1987, when Violent Cases was half done.[25]

KAREN BERGER: I reached out to Alan and I said, “Alan, who else do you see out there that’s really talented?” And he goes, “oh, you really should meet this guy Grant Morrison, he’s got something. He’s only done a few things but, you know.”[10]

And we did anther trip six months after, in February 1987. I got recommendations from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons and Brian Bolland as to who they thought were good. I sort of networked, as well, by reading a lot of British comics. I set up meetings with Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, and Dave McKean. Pete Milligan I met on my following trip, and Jamie Delano I had already known through Alan.[3]

JAMIE DELANO: And they came trawling with a big load of money, basically. They invited anybody whose name occurred to them, or they’d seen in any kind of comic book, to go along to have big expensive dinners at flash hotels in London. They spent a big load of money and bought everybody, for which we’re eternally grateful.[7]

GRANT MORRISON: It was a very experimental period. DC were riding high on the success of Watchmen and wanted to experiment a bit more.[13]

DAVE MCKEAN: Neil’s always been a real hustler, so he got us in with DC and pitched Black Orchid, which I illustrated, and then The Sandman. We knew something was happening with comics. Alan Moore had got in first and moved the goalposts. The industry was in a state of flux. There were lots of interesting sparks, Like Maus and Fantagraphics.[14]

KAREN BERGER: Dave [McKean] had been sitting silently by Neil Gaiman’s side as Neil pitched Black Orchid […] Then Dave opened his portfolio and showed me his work on Violent Cases, and I was totally blown away by his fresh approach to comics art and storytelling. […] Dave’s approach was anything but ordinary. His inventive storytelling technique aside, it was his expert mix of media – painting, photography, sculpture, assemblage of odd objects – that created such a resonant and powerful look.[31]

GRANT MORRISON: In 1987, at the height of the critical acclaim for Alan Moore’s work on Swamp Thing and Watchmen, DC Comics dispatched a band of troubleshooters on what is quaintly termed a ‘headhunting mission’ to the United Kingdom. The brief was to turn up the stones and see if there weren’t any more cranky Brit authors who might be able to work wonders with some of the dusty old characters languishing in DC’s back catalog. As one of those that received the call that year, I had no idea who I might dig up and revamp.[11]

On the nail-biting train journey south to the London metting, I worked up a four-issue miniseries pitch for Animal Man, an obscure superhero from the sixties. I’d seen him in reprint comics and I figured no one else would remember him. I even saw a way to give the character a fashionably Moore-esque spin that would hopefully make him appeal to DC editorial.[38]

They had a, a kind of, a day where they just gathered everyone. People like me and Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean all went in on the same day to pitch ideas, and I’d come up with the Batman thing, Arkham Asylum. And on the train down I thought up something to do with this old Animal Man character that they had lying about that I liked as a kid. So I went in and pitched these two projects and just sold them straight away, you know. And Karen claims she can understand my accent. Clearly that’s how you do it, just go in and go [speaks gibberish, mocking a really thick British accent] and you’ll get a job with DC![10]

KAREN BERGER: It was like five o’clock and Grant was the last person. There was Grant with his thick Glaswegian accent. Dick Giordano – bless him, may he rest in peace – Dick was very hard of hearing. At that point when Grant came in he just took off his hearing aide and said “I can’t even” [laughs].[12]

GRANT MORRISON: She was our generation, and not only that, she was offering us what we wanted. It was a perfect storm for a bunch of creative punks from Britain who were suddenly being taken very seriously.[16]

KAREN BERGER: I was lucky enough to connect with a group of incredibly talented, like-minded, fresh-faced new writers – Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, Jamie Delano, and Peter Milligan – who had a shared sensibility and wanted to shake up the status quo. None of us would have been on this path if it wasn’t for the brilliant and magnificent Alan Moore, who blazed the trail of insurrection with his groundbreaking literary work on Swamp Thing, V for Vendetta, and Watchmen.[15]

The Berger Books

(AKA “Pre-Vertigo”)

KAREN BERGER: The books that eventually became Vertigo – because the Vertigo line didn’t officially start until 1993 – all had some basis in reality. The key series all started in 1986 to 1988. Swamp Thing was the first pre-Vertigo book that I worked on, then Hellblazer, Animal Man, Sandman and then Shade. […] Most of these guys were new to comics. Jamie Delano had the most experience out of the lot. He had done some issues of Captain Britain. Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison had only done a few 2000 AD Future Shock stories but nothing for the American market.[17]

So the way for me to sort of work with new writers and artists was to say “why don’t we revamp some of the lesser-known characters?” Because I was more interested in the super natural and horror stuff, that was how some of those “proto-Vertigo” books came to be.[3]

PETER MILLIGAN: At the time it was known as the “Karen Berger books,” or the “Karen Berger line.” I thought that was actually really accurate.[10]

GRANT MORRISON: DC are pretty desperate for us Brits. Yes. Well, they had Alan Moore and he was so successful with them so I imagine they were just trying to repeat that success. In fact, in recent DC promotions apparently, I’ve been described as “the new Alan Moore.” In addition, Neil Gaiman has also been described as ‘the new Alan Moore’ as, I’m quite sure, has Jamie Delano. How many of us is it going to take to fill the great man’s winkle pickers?[18]

KAREN BERGER: The proto-Vertigo books, yes, they were all British. Yes. It wasn’t an issue of nationality as much as just looking at the world in a different way, because… I still remember Alan Moore telling me very early on when we started working together, “you know, we might speak the same language but we’re really very different, Americans and the British.” And it’s true, culturally, obviously, historically.[1]

Hellblazer (1987)

By Jamie Delano & John Ridgway

First up was Jamie Delano’s Hellblazer in 1987, starring the popular character John Constantine, who had been introduced in Swamp Thing two years earlier.

LEFT: Advertisement for the debut of Hellblazer (1987)

RIGHT: Hellblazer #1 by Dalano & Ridgway, cover by McKean, edited by Berger (1987) – Jamie Delano’s first work for the US

JAMIE DELANO: Karen found it acceptable and, personally I didn’t expect it to last more than a year, to be perfectly honest. Perhaps I’m a natural pessimist, or perhaps that was based on my previous experience writing comics for the British market. I didn’t really know what I was doing in American comics, to be perfectly honest, I just sort of dived in and did what I thought felt right to me.

I was allowed to just sit in my smoke-filled office and get on with writing comics and then discuss them every so often with Karen Berger and – presto – there was no stress. She was a very receptive and perceptive editor. We had discussions running up the start of writing on the books. She had good insight into the characters and was prepared to listen. I can only speak personally, but I imagine it was the same for the other creators as well. As long as the thing was working she was prepared to let you go with where you wanted to go, it wasn’t prescribed in any shape or form.[3]

Animal Man (1988)

By Grant Morrison & Chas Truog

LEFT: Animal Man #1 by Morrison & Truog, cover by Bolland, edited by Berger (1988) – Grant Morrison’s first work for the US

RIGHT: Animal Man #25 by Morrison & Truog, cover by Bolland, edited by Berger (1990)

GRANT MORRISON: The first four issues of Animal Man were in a style that was acceptable at the time, which was along the lines of what Alan Moore was doing. I kind of figured that’s what DC wanted, so that’s what I gave them, but by the end of the fourth issue, I was really bored with doing it that way. I just thought I had to get away from what had become the orthodox style of the time, particularly from British writers. I could probably have kept it going on sheer technical ability, but I’d have been terribly bored doing it.[19]

BRIAN BOLLAND: I always thought 2000 AD had a mixture of action, horror and comedy that worked very well and I wasn’t seeing quite that combination in American comics at the time. I’m happy with that combination and the Animal Man covers allowed me to do that. If I remember correctly I usually had a script to read for the covers. I went along and put stars on the pages of script where something was happening that I thought would make a cover. Quite often I was coming up with ideas that meant something to me that probably wouldn’t have been noticed. Cover #39 for instance is my homage to the cover of House of Mystery #1 from 1951. #45 is a spoof or a re-cycling of the cover of the Eagle Judge Dredd #1. My absolute favorite is Animal Man #25.[20]

Black Orchid (1988)

By Neil Gaiman & Dave McKean

LEFT: Black Orchid #1 by Gaiman & McKean, edited by Berger (1988) – Neil Gaiman’s first work for the US

RIGHT: Black Orchid interior art by McKean

NEIL GAIMAN: In 1988, when I wrote a dream sequence for Black Orchid, my first comic for DC, it occurred to me that it might be cool if the Sandman, who had appeared in comics by other writers, was in there. I started thinking about reworking the character and talked about it over dinner with [DC president] Jenette Kahn and Karen Berger. Later, I got a call asking me to do a monthly comic.[14]

The Sandman (1988)

By Neil Gaiman & Sam Kieth

LEFT: The Sandman #1 by Gaiman & Kieth, cover by McKean , edited by Berger (1988)

RIGHT: The Sandman #18 by Gaiman & Jones, cover by McKean, edited by Berger (1990)

QUESTION TO SAM KIETH: You first spoke to Neil on the phone, when he and Karen Berger called you up out of the blue to discuss a little project called Sandman.

SAM KIETH’S RESPONSE: Yup. I was trying to get work from Karen. I was bugging Karen, hoping that the current artist of Swamp Thing would die, because I wanted to draw Swamp Thing![21]

NEIL GAIMAN: Alan Moore told me that when you write for specific artists you should write for them, and no-one else, play to their strengths, stretch them. “It makes you look good,” he explained. My friends have made me look very good indeed.[20]

DAVE MCKEAN: Some [Sandman] covers were painted, some drawn, but many of the first few were 5ft-high collage-type works made by me that we took to a high-res photography studio to shoot – this was all pre-computers. I ended up wandering around London with Neil trying to find interesting bits and bobs to use as imagery. We liberated a fantastic-looking broken door from a skip, and found odds and ends in antique shops. People started donating things: I did a signing in London and someone gave me a lamb’s heart in a block of resin. It got used a few times.[14]

Skreemer (1989)

By Peter Milligan & Brett Ewins

LEFT: Promotional advertisement for Skreemer (1989)

RIGHT: Skreemer #1 by Milligan & Ewins, edited by Berger (1989) – Peter Milligan’s first work for the US

PETER MILLIGAN: Finnegans Wake was a way in to writing about this quasi-futuristic world of gangsters and gangs. I wanted to have a sense of the high and the low: the giants who seem to create history and the common person who lives through it.[32]

Shade: The Changing Man (1990)

By Peter Milligan & Chris Bachalo

LEFT: Shade the Changing Man #1 by Milligan & Bachalo, cover by McCarthy, edited by Berger (1990)

RIGHT: Shade the Changing Man #4 by Milligan & Bachalo, cover by McCarthy, edited by Berger (1990)

PETER MILLIGAN: Karen Berger wanted me to write something. I was intrigued by the character [Shade] and thought it was nebulous enough for me to really put my stamp on. I wanted a character who could be used as a platform for me to talk about America.

I really like a lot of [Shade creator Steve] Ditko’s work. But I didn’t want to be tied down or hamstrung but what had gone on before. I was intrigued by Shade’s powers of madness and his pretty whacky backstory. This seemed to offer me the scope and freedom to really put my stamp on it. So in short I took what I needed, I used just enough to make this just about still Shade, but I didn’t get too hung up about what Ditko had done.[22]

The Berger Books Become Vertigo (1993)

A few years later, in 1993, DC decided to rebrand and expand the unofficially-titled “Berger Books” and provided Berger with her own imprint – Vertigo.

PAUL LEVITZ: I’m sitting there as the publisher, and she’s sitting there with the mandate to push the boundaries. […] Something is working, and in particular, what’s working is these first trade paperback collections of Sandman.

It seems like we’re talking about inventing the wheel here, but the idea that we could actually have a sequential reprinting of a series of a comic book was still a really outrageous idea. Nothing like had been tried by a publisher that had mainstream distribution. […] The trade paperbacks were continuing to sell over time, and that was changing the publishing model.[27]

KAREN BERGER: When I was on my first maternity leave, I got a call from my boss, the late, great Dick Giordano, a supremely wonderful human being, and one of the kindest and sanest people I’ve ever known. Seems like the books I was editing were attracting a large and growing audience. Readers and retailers were anxious to get more of this kind of thing. So during a meeting with Dick, Paul and Jenette [Kahn, publisher], they asked me if I wanted to create a separate imprint. In a heartbeat, I said yes. So when I came back to work, I wrote up a publishing plan, it was approved, and we set sail from there.[6]

There was a general feeling that the sensibility of the writers I was working with and the look of the art and the feel of the Berger books, which is the name I was given as a sort of… not of an inside joke but an inside term, which always stuck with me and that’s why I am now using that name for my new imprint at Dark Horse – but there was just…These books were doing well.[1]

Checklist of titles for the launch of Vertigo in January 1993

GARTH ENNIS: I was in at the start of Vertigo, which was in ’92. So I got in just by accident really. I was writing Hellblazer at the time and had been for a couple of years. Hellblazer became a Vertigo book, and there I was, really.

Once she realized she had all these books like Swamp Thing, followed by Hellblazer, Sandman, Shade and the Grant Morrison stuff, Animal Man and Doom Patrol, it only made sense really to group those books together. She was editing them all, for one thing. It made sense that DC would have a place where people could do sort of, for want of a better word, ‘adult’ material. It meant that every Vertigo book would have a “Suggested For Mature Readers” label on it, you wouldn’t have that big DC logo and you wouldn’t have all that crap about people confusing Vertigo comics with regular DC books, and kids ending up with them – there’s no excuses for that.[23]

LEFT: Hellblazer #62 by Ennis & Dillon, cover by Fabry, edited by Berger (1993)

RIGHT: Hellblazer #63 by Ennis & Dillon, cover by Fabry, edited by Berger, now with the Vertigo logo (1993)

KAREN BERGER: There was a whole sort of vision for the line and the vision of the other writers and artists who were working on this as well too. DC really saw that this was an area they wanted to expand, the retailers really saw it as an area of expansion, readers wanted to see more material like this, writers and artists wanted to do more material like this.[1]

The “Berger Books” that were ongoing series (Swamp Thing, Hellblazer, Animal Man, Sandman, and Shade) became the Vertigo imprint’s core books, with plans to expand the line by starting at least one new series every month, beginning with the Sandman spinoff Death: The High Cost of Living by Gaiman and Bachalo, and then Enigma by Milligan and Fegredo.

LEFT: Death: The High Cost of Living #1 by Gaiman & Bachalo, cover by McKean, the first new series released under the Vertigo imprint, edited by Berger (1993)

RIGHT: Enigma #1 by Milligan & Duncan Fegredo, Vertigo’s second new series (1993)

Under Berger’s guidance, Vertigo flourished, passing its flagship torch from Sandman to Preacher to Y the Last Man – redefining what the idea of graphic novels meant to world at large.

LEFT: Preacher #1 by Ennis & Dillon, cover by Fabry (1995)

RIGHT: Y the Last Man #1 by Vaughan & Guerra, cover by Jones (2002)

NEIL GAIMAN: What we were selling were comics that people read. What Karen Berger and her cohorts over the years—Shelly Bond and Stuart Moore to begin with, and the editorial team has gone on from there—were publishing were comics they wanted to read themselves. People who tried to second-guess Vertigo were often puzzled—what could The Sandman have in common with Preacher, Doom Patrol with Transmetropolitan, 100 Bullets with Fables? Only this: Karen, and the people who edited with her, liked them, and wanted to read them.[24]

Swamp Thing, Death, John Constantine, Shade, and a bunch of their friends

Art by Eduardo Risso

NEXT: Part 3 – Grant Morrison Writes Spoofs About Alan Moore and Says Nice Things

SOURCES

[1] Karen Berger Interview with The Armadillo (2017)

[2] An Open Letter About Alan Moore by Len Wein (2003)

[3] The Story of Vertigo Comics (Part 1), podcast on SyFy Wire (2019)

[4] Dave Gibbons Interview with The Comics Journal (1987)

[5] How Neil Gaiman Helped Alan Moore Finish Watchmen (2014)

[6] Karen Berger Interview with Comics Alliance (2016)

[7] Jamie Delano Interview with Bloodsongs #8 (1997)

[8] Karen Berger at San Diego Comics Fest (2018)

[9] The Library of Graphic Novelists: Neil Gaiman by Steven P. Olson (2004)

[10] Future Shock! The Story of 2000AD (2014)

[11] Grant Morrison’s Introduction to Animal Man Book 1 (1992)

[12] The Story of Vertigo Comics (Part 3), podcast on SyFy Wire (2019)

[13] Grant Morrison Interview with Comiquando #4 (1996)

[14] Neil Gaiman & Dave McKean Interview with The Guardian (2013)

[15] Karen Berger’s Introduction to the Vertigo Encyclopedia (2008)

[16] Comics’ Mother of the Weird Stuff Is Moving On, New York Times (2013)

[17] Karen Berger Interview with Sequential Tart (2001)

[18] Grant Morrison Interview with FA #109 (1989)

[19] Grant Morrison Interview with Hero Illustrated #9 (1994)

[20] Brian Bolland Interview with Mais Quandrinhos (2009)

[21] Hanging Out With the Dream King: Conversations with Neil Gaiman (2005)

[22] Peter Milligan Interview with Comics Bulletin (2014)

[23] Garth Ennis Interview with Bloodsongs #8 (1997)

[24] Neil Gaiman’s Forward to the Vertigo Encyclopedia (2008)

[25] Neil Gaiman on Twitter (2017)

[26] David Lloyd Interview with The Quietus (2011)

[27] Karen Berger in Conversation with Paul Levitz (2017)

[28] Rick Veitch Interview with The Comics Journal (1995)

[29] Steve Bissette Interview with The AV Club (1996)

[30] Watchmen: An Oral History (2005)

[31] Karen Berger’s Introduction to Arkham Asylum 25th Anniversary Edition (2014)

[32] Peter Milligan Interview with Sequential Tart (2002)

[33] Alan Moore Interview with The Comics Journal (1987)

[34] The Vendetta Behind V for Vendetta (2006)

[35] Grant Morrison Interview with Comics Scene #28 (1992)

[36] Grant Morrison Interview with Fear #15 (1990)

[37] Romantic Reflections in “A Glass of Water” (2013)

[38] Supergods by Grant Morrison (2011)

[39] Grant Morrison Interview with Blackout #2 (1990)

[40] Grant Morrison Interview with X-Static #1 (1992)

The images above are the property of their respective owners and are presented here for not-for-profit, educational purposes only, under the fair use doctrine of the copyright laws of the United States of America. The lyrics at the very top are from the song “Blame It On The Tetons” by Modest Mouse.