Earlier this month it was reported that Karen Berger stepped down as Vertigo's Executive Editor. This immediately put a panic among the readers as many felt this was a sign of the end of the line of comics. Today, Vertigo has announced some promotions that show things are still going strong.

Shelly Bond has been promoted to Executive Editor of the imprint. Bond began working for Vertigo back in 1993 as Assistant Editor. She's played a role in discovering and launching series such as FABLES, FAIREST, THE INVISIBLES, LUCIFER, iZOMBIE, THE SANDMAN: ENDLESS NIGHTS and many more.

She's worked with creators such as Mark Buckingham, Mike Allred, Mike Carey, Howard Chaykin, Becky Cloonan, Phil Jimenez, Paul Pope, Steven T. Seagle, Bill Willingham, Jill Thompson and many more. She also worked with Willingham as the editor for THE ELEMENTALS before DC.

Here's a comment from Karen Berger on Bond:

I've been incredibly lucky to have worked for many years with these three smart and talented editors. Shelly has been by my side since the beginning of Vertigo, so I couldn't be happier about passing the baton to her. She brings so much creativity, passion and professionalism to everything she edits with special note to the wildly successful FABLES, which she launched and has overseen for over 10 years. Will is a highly regarded story editor of many critically acclaimed series including 100 BULLETS, DMZ and SCALPED and has procured many European and South American artists for our titles. Mark has a great eye for new writing talent, and his avid interest in up-to-the-minute fiction has been a real asset to the line. I look forward to reading many great comics and graphic novels from these three for many years to come. Vertigo is in the best of hands.

Joining Bond is Will Dennis, who has been promoted to Group Editor and Mark Doyle, who was promoted to Editor, Vertigo. Both have spent years under the guidance of Karen Berger. Dennis has edited many best-selling projects within and outside of Vertigo including THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, 100 BULLETS, SUPERMAN: FOR TOMORROW and BEFORE WATCHMEN. Doyle helped launched Scott Snyder's first ongoing, AMERICAN VAMPIRE and has worked on other titles such as SWEET TOOTH, NORTHLANDERS as well as BEFORE WATCHMEN.

Sounds like Vertigo is still in safe hands. Congrats on the promotions.

and people were saying that Vertigo is dead. Please...

Heard it about earlier.

BB

man,i felt like vertigo was not gonna be there in 2014 but this gives hope,i havent been reading vertigo for a long time but the guys seem like experienced individuals and look forward to it.

I don't really read Vertigo stuff, but when I heard about what was going down, I was immensely shocked because Vertigo was my back up if the main DCU stopped pleasing me.

Glad to know that it will still be there.

Good news for my favorite comic books :D

Cool, cool!

Awesome

Vertigo, the smart man's comics line.

@Billy Batson: Would you mind enlightening me dear sir as to how this is good news? I mean this is exactly the sort of sign that the end times are upon us that I saw coming all along.

Karen Berger edited some of the most ground-breaking comics in history, funneled that creativity into one imprint that flourished and put out countless classics over one and a half decades and then things change higher up in the company and she gets to watch her baby be ravaged and not having the heart to put the final bullet in its skull she steps down.

All the old blood has left Vertigo (or more specifically DC) and new creators can find much better opportunities and success at other publishers these days...Vertigo consistently put out about the same output throughout its lifespan up until the past couple years and has never been weaker. This announcement would be good news if it mentioned new editors were coming in from other successful publishers or something but it's just the only editors left all moving up one position to fill the void.

At this point I'd feel better if Bill Willingham, Scott Snyder, Mike Carey/Peter Gross and Paul Cornell (ehhhhh) took their properties to other publishers and continued the stories until conclusion there so Vertigo could be remembered for what it was.

P.S. I love Shelly though and it really could've been no one else who would take over Karen's job. Maybe she will push for Shade to get collected before the imprint closes its doors forever!

@Lucifer Morningstar said:

@Billy Batson: Would you mind enlightening me dear sir as to how this is good news? I mean this is exactly the sort of sign that the end times are upon us that I saw coming all along.

Well it's pretty good news for the editors and like you said, no one else deserves to job more than Shelly.

All the old blood has left Vertigo (or more specifically DC)

Pffft DC has been hiring plenty of old talent (Starlin just recently) :p

new creators can find much better opportunities and success at other publishers these days...

True but DC has been hiring indie writers for their mainstream books so there's a chance of seeing those creators work for Vertigo too.

This announcement would be good news if it mentioned new editors were coming in from other successful publishers or something

They can always hire more editors.

At this point I'd feel better if Bill Willingham, Scott Snyder, Mike Carey/Peter Gross and Paul Cornell (ehhhhh) took their properties to other publishers and continued the stories until conclusion there so Vertigo could be remembered for what it was.

Well you know that DC won't let that happen. And Snyder is DC's most precious writer right now so I don't see why would he want to go anywhere else. Same thing with Lemire.
P.S. About Shade, I've seen some talk that the last twenty issues of the series weren't that good, true or not?
BB

@Billy Batson: Good news for the editors implies they were just working in the hopes of climbing the corporate ladder. I'm sure some (if not all) of them would have preferred to have kept their jobs and have Karen around, I mean Shelly has been working for Vertigo for 20 years and Will for more than 10, both editing some pretty great comics, so it's not like either of them couldn't have found another editor job that gave them more "authority".

I meant the old blood that started the creator-owned comics craze and paved the way for today's up-and-comers.

If DC using its new writers on Vertigo books means more Paul Cornell, I'll pass, thanks.

They obviously can't hire more editors though, they fired Pornsak not too long ago and in the wake of Karen leaving, they just closed the gap. They don't want more editors because they are running out of stuff to edit, which is my point. Good news would be that say (insert big name editor here if one exists) betrayed Marvel or Image because they believe in Vertigo. The entire reason the publisher made it off the ground is because it had a good group of editors at the beginning with all the titles they were bringing about.

I'm not saying those people will leave, but right now they are just using Vertigo for licensed properties (since WildStorm was canned) and the only titles left right now are all the foolproof ones that will continue until their creators are finished (and Saucer Country), which is why I said those creators should take them elsewhere and let Vertigo become some licensing video game comic thing or something like it will eventually become.

@Billy Batson: Oh and about Shade, I'm pretty sure I've explained this in detail many times, it definitely had its dips but some people will tell you that #1-18 were bad (read the letters from the original issues) so it's all your taste. I love the series as a whole but I can definitely acknowledge it had its weak points but only because Milligan was constantly switching things up and not getting relaxed into a status quo.

#33-50 will always be my favorite portion of the series and all that stuff is the reason I loved the book so much in the first place. #26-29ish-32 is the first dip in quality for me (the Changing Woman concept is great but the story used to justify it was bad and the series just needed to be refreshed, which it was, by killing Shade). Then #51-53 were also bad, but maybe it's because Peter didn't know how to follow up the greatest story arc of the series (possibly of all time). There was some great stuff after that though but then the book started to get a little weird at parts, Nasty Infections (#59-63) again had some good concepts but some of the execution was poor...the last arc is great though (#68-70), even if it was wiped out of continuity by Peter himself in Hellblazer.

@Lucifer Morningstar:

Eh, if Vertigo does change from what it is now and before, I see it becoming DC's Icon where the DC exclusives do their creator-owned work.
BB

I Demand More Series' like Y THE LAST MAN, DMZ, AND PREACHER!!!!!

Well then this is good news I say. Hopefully Bond proves to be a worthy successor to Vertigo's top spot. So far she seems ideal to me so I'm definitely ready to say Vertigo's anything but dead yet now!