Latest Comic Guest Announcement - KAREN BERGER

[SM Comic Zone]

Latest Comic Guest Announcement - KAREN BERGER

 

Editor of DC's Vertigo line

 

Attending: Friday, Saturday & Sunday

 

DUBBED Comics' Mother of the Weird Stuff by The New York Times, Karen Berger has played a major role in the development of comics beyond the action/adventure themes that became the US market's primary focus from the 1960s on.

 

Entering the industry in 1979 as assistant to DC editor Paul Levitz, she graduated to editing House of Mystery in 1981 taking on her first superhero title in Legion of Super-Heroes two years later. In 1983 Berger was, among other things, also responsible for launching Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld but it was the following year that events began to shape the direction of her career, taking her down the path that would lead her to play a pivotal role in comicbook history.

 

More interested in horror than in mainstream (read superhero) comics, in 1984 she took on [The Saga of] Swamp Thing, which Alan Moore had begun writing only five issues before. It was a match made in Heaven. Under Berger's stewardship, the game-changing British writer was able to forge ahead with his innovative approach, pretty much singlehandedly ushering a new generation of sophisticated comics that appealed to older readers.

Impressed by Moore's skill and wanting to further evolve the comics medium, Berger sought out other British talent, bringing such writers as Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, Peter Milligan and Jamie Delano into the DC fold before the '80s were over. Between them they would produce a variety of 'Suggested for Mature Readers' titles withAnimal Man, Doom Patrol, Shade the Changing Man, The Sandman andHellblazer migrating from DC to form the foundation of a new Berger-driven imprint alongside Swamp Thing and the freshly launched Black Orchid.

 

Aimed squarely at the embryonic mature readers market, Vertigo flourished and Berger and her team began to expand the line. From its birth in 1993 through until 2011 when the stars of the imprint's original properties were absorbed back into the DC Universe, numerous new titles premiered with Preacher, Sandman Mystery Theatre, Y the Last Man, Scalped, 100 Bullets, Loveless, The Unwritten,Transmetropolitan and Fables being just a handful of Vertigo's major successes. As Gaiman, Morrison et al drifted off to other pastures, their roles at the writer-centric label were taken up by the likes of Garth Ennis, Mike Carey, Brian Azzarello, Jason Aaron, Bill Willingham, Brian K Vaughan and Warren Ellis among many others.

 

Throughout it was Berger's hand that guided Vertigo's development, expanding the line beyond its fantasy roots to encompass such other genres as science fiction, crime, Westerns and historical. Elevated to Executive Editor and Senior Vice President of the DC Entertainment imprint in 2006, she stepped down from her role seven years later and after 33 years of steering the ship that became Vertigo through what at the outset were uncharted waters

After three years away from comics, she will be returning with Surgeon X. Funded by a Society Award from Wellcome Trust (an independent global charitable foundation dedicated to improving health) the ongoing series is written by documentary filmmaker Sara Kenney and illustrated by John Watkiss. It debuts from Image later in 2016.

 

[Harsenik]

such an incredible guest! A true legend! Thanks SM!