>>81369478
Contracts changed

Creators go to Image now and readers go to Image now too

>>81369507
What made image so appealing?

>>81370075
For writers? Creator owned, Image just publishes it with largely no editorial over sight. The onus for producing it is largely on the writer.
For readers? Personally I like it because it's got a lot of variety in it's titles, but I'm relatively certain most people discover Image because it publishes The Walking Dead.

>>81369478
American Vampire's pretty good.

And besides, it's not Vertigo's fault that this generation doesn't have a Gaiman, Morrison, Ennis, or Delano.

>>81369478
Karen Berger retired, Image comics became more appealing as a company.

>>81369478
>DC had a thing going I the 90s
They were still putting out a bunch of good comics up to the mid to late 2000s. While 100 Bullets and Scalped aren't on the same level as some of the phenomenal books they put out in the 90s they were publishing several great books up to a few years ago

>>81370319
I've heard people place the very early 2000s under the 90s vertigo umbrella

DC hasn't had a second British invasion-ish finding of good writers and bringing them over to vertigo. I think that they need that to revitalize the line, some new blood talent.

>>81370075
IIRC if you do a book at Vertigo, WB gets first crack at making a movie or TV show which means you aren't allowed to get offers from anywhere else. It happened because Preacher was going to get made by some place that wasn't owned by WB, I think.

On top of that they changed the royalty structure in the 00's, something like it needs to sell 50,000 copies as a monthly to get any royalties, and if not, they'll withhold royalties on the TPBs.

It's no coincidence that so many creators either reduced using Vertigo or ditched them for other companies.

Vertigo is fine, you are just a moronic pissbaby who doesn't read a comic if it has a character or writer you don't know

DC has pushed away alot of old talent and potential new talent due to their restructuring of royalties and creative control where as Marvel remains relatively unchanged having mostly recovered from their perception as the "bad guy" in the 90s.

All in all though Comics are a struggling medium and therefor more fluid models like indy comics hold more appeal for new talents.

>>81375706
I'm pretty sure that it's an objective issue if there are only two comics that are selling more than four digit numbers of copies, and even then it's just barely over that line.

>>81369507
>Contracts changed

Yeah, pretty much this.

The story was that some WB exec was going over the contracts creators had to sign to get their creator-owned work published by Vertigo and he had the bright idea to work in a clause in there that basically gives WB a modified right of first refusal (ROFR) for an indefinite period of time for any Vertigo comics adaptations for film, TV, and video games. Basically, WB can sit on the TV/film/video game rights of a Vertigo-published property for as long as they want, as long as WB meets certain conditions.

If you're a creator, I suppose it's nice to have a direct development line to WB. On the other hand, if WB doesn't really care about your Vertigo book but doesn't want anybody else making money off it, the studio can make it so that it's going to be really hard—if not virtually impossible—to get it developed somewhere else.

This was supposedly WB's reaction to HBO trying to get Preacher back in 2008 (HBO ultimately passed on it, which is how it ended up with AMC), even though WB execs at the time thought that Preacher was "unadaptable" for TV because of its subject matter.

>>81380735
To continue...

The story goes that then-Vertigo chief Karen Berger was strongly opposed to the change in the contracts, and at least one creator (Douglas Rushkoff) is on record in saying that Berger actually told him to bring his comics pitch somewhere else because of the changes at Vertigo.

Anyway, it was around this time that Neil Gaiman did not renew the publishing deal for his creator-owned comics with Vertigo and started getting them published at Dark Horse. This was also around the time Garth Ennis stopped doing creator-owned work at Vertigo (although for him, I imagine his relationship had soured with DC/WB because of the whole controversy with The Boys as well). Eventually, even some of the next generation of Vertigo talent (guys like Brian K. Vaughan and Brian Wood) started launching their creator-owned stuff at places like Image and Dark Horse. Heck, even current DC Comics golden boy Scott Snyder launched Wytches with Image Comics, and DC staple Grant Morrison's most recent creator-owned titles have been published by Image, BOOM! Studios, and Legendary Comics.

And of course, Berger is no longer with the imprint she helped turn into a cultural (if not exactly commercial) force in the 1990s and early 2000s. Depending on whom you believe, she was either forced out or she quit (probably a little bit of both).

This isn't to say that current Vertigo doesn't publish good books. I think Sheriff of Babylon is hands-down one of the best comics being published right now. But there's a reason why a lot of the top talents aren't lining up to get their creator-owned stuff published at Vertigo.

>>81370075
It's cheap. They take risks publishing everything possible and you're not breaking the bank getting into it. I mean their TPBs are under $10.