Among all the news from New York Comic Con this weekend, there was one item to make any comics fan gasp. DC Comics chief creative officer Jim Lee announced the return of DC’s storied Vertigo imprint, a home for original, creator-owned comics, from Y: The Last Man to Preacher.

The revived imprint will be overseen by DC editor Chris Conroy (who confirmed the news on X). While Lee did not yet reveal any new Vertigo books, he announced some existing DC books would be grandfathered into the imprint, just as the original Vertigo became the home for preexisting books like The Sandman. The creator-owned horror series The Nice House by the Sea, from writer James Tynion IV and artist Álvaro Martínez Bueno, will lose its Black Label trade dress in favor of a new suit of Vertigo branding on its next reprint.

As creator-owned work, TNHbtS and its predecessor series, The Nice House by the Lake, are odd ones out at DC’s Black Label imprint. Black Label is nominally DC’s silo for prestige, outside-central-continuity books about DC Comics-owned characters. It launched in 2018, about a year before Vertigo was formally shuttered.

Just a few years ago, it felt like Black Label had killed Vertigo. Now? Black Label’s success may very well be the motive behind Vertigo’s return.

The Western market for creator-owned comics has widened precipitously since Vertigo’s 1990s........

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