After publishing comic books about an emotional swamp monster, the last surviving man in a plague-decimated world of women and a Texas preacher on a quest to hold God to account, what do you do for an encore?

As founder and head of DC Entertainment’s Vertigo imprint, Karen Berger brought ambitious, outré series like “Sandman” and “Preacher” to mass audiences, helped prove that comics weren’t limited to superhero adventures and kickstarted the careers of writers like Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore.

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