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SDCC: DC Characters Leaving Vertigo Confirmed

By | July 24th, 2010
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From Bleeding Cool’s Rich Johnston (who must be on his 450th cup of coffee or be near death at this point), Vertigo’s Executive Editor Karen Berger confirmed that DC characters presently based in Vertigo will start reverting back to their original home. This all went down at yesterday’s Vertigo panel at San Diego Comic Con, and is unsurprising given the buzz but was still poorly received amongst fans (especially in BC’s forums).

What does this mean exactly? Well, first to be integrated will be either Swamp Thing (who will be receiving a new ongoing set in the DCU) or Death, who will be appearing in Paul Cornell’s run on Action Comics very soon. Madame Xanadu‘s recent cancellation likely indicates that she will make a faster than expected return to DC proper, but the big question on everyone’s mind is this: what about John Constantine? Where does he end up – still very much a Vertigo character (as he should be), or as a cape wearing member of the JSA, as a particularly animated commentator in BC’s forums suggested may happen? That will be the hot button question in this transition, and to me, if DC/Vertigo was smart, they’d leave well enough alone with everyone’s favorite hard drinking/smoking occult detective.

To me, this isn’t that big of a deal. Sure some character’s will be integrated back in (might want to stick away from messing with Gaiman’s lot too much though), but the backbone of Vertigo is based on creator owned work like Fables, The Unwritten, and Scalped. Even their current top seller, Joe the Barbarian, is a creator owned work from one of their biggest superhero names in Grant Morrison. I don’t see this being the death knell of this proud name as much as a refocusing. Time will tell on that though.


David Harper

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