Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Usually when we
talk about a huge company, we focus on, you know,
their biggest hits. If this were about McDonald's,
we'd be talking about the Big Mac. Right, the
Quarter Pounder. But today we're doing something
a little different. We're looking at the experimental
menu, the McPizza, the McSpaghetti, all the weird
niche and sometimes totally disastrous ideas.
That is a surprisingly good analogy for what
we're getting into today. We are looking at DC
Comics. But not the Superman and Batman you know.
We are diving into the history of their imprints.
These sublabels and side brands they've used
for 40 years to try and sell comics to everyone
who wasn't already buying superhero comics. It's
a really fascinating way to look at the company
because on the surface, DC is this monolith.
You've got the Trinity, Superman, Wonder Woman,
Batman. They are the establishment. But for decades,
they've been running these little internal labs,
these imprints, to see if they could sell romance
or horror. or high concept sci -fi. So for this,
we're drawing from the list of DC Comics imprints
and the history behind them. Our mission is to
kind of figure out the strategy. Why does a company
that owns the most famous characters on Earth
need to invent other company names just to sell
a book? It all comes down to audience segmentation.
Think of it like a brand wrapper. A parent trusts
the Disney logo, right? You know it's safe. For
sure. But Disney also... puts out R -rated movies,
they just do it under a different name, like
Searchlight. If you put that Disney castle in
front of a really gritty war movie, you'd confuse
everyone and damage the brand. Yeah, you don't
want a six -year -old accidentally watching a
crime drama. Exactly. So an imprint lets a publisher
like DC say, okay, this stuff is for kids, this
shelf is for goth teenagers, and this shelf is
for people who like abstract art. It protects
the main brand. So let's go back to when this
really started. I know DC published under other
names way back. when. But this modern idea of
the imprint as a like a strategic tool that seems
to start in the late 80s. That's the pivot point.
The late 80s were a wild time for comics. The
whole medium was growing up. You had Watchmen.
You had the Dark Knight Returns. Right. Proving
comics could be serious. But DC didn't really
have a place to put the stuff that was, let's
say, a little risky or just plain weird. And
that brings us to 1989, the launch. Of Piranha
Press. Even the name sounds aggressive. It does,
doesn't it? It's not a place for Superman rescuing
a cat from a tree. Definitely not. Piranha Press
was DC's first real shot at the alternative market.
You have to remember at this time, underground
comics with an X were starting to bubble up.
They were raw, black and white counterculture.
DC wanted in. So what did a Piranha book actually,
you know, look like? The flagship title was this
book called Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children.
That is an amazing title. It's evocative. Right.
Piranha was experimental. It was weird. But the
key thing here, the thing that really mattered
for the industry, is that Piranha was the first
place DC allowed for creator -owned titles. Okay,
let's pause there. Why is creator -owned such
a big deal? Well, in the main DC universe, if
you write a Batman story, DC owns it. If you
invent a new villain for Batman, guess what?
DC owns that villain forever. You're just work
for hire. Right. But the underground scene was
all about ownership. So with Piranha, DC could
say, come here, make something weird for us,
and you get to keep the rights. It was a way
to get talent that would never touch a corporate
machine otherwise. That seems pretty ahead of
its time for 1989. Did it work? Creatively, yeah.
It produced some really unique stuff. Commercially,
not so much. It shut down in 1994. It was maybe
a bit too weird for comic shops back then. But
they didn't give up on the idea. Piranha dies,
and in 1994, Paradox Press shows up. Paradox
was an interesting pivot. If Piranha was the
punk rock club, Paradox was more like a smoky
jazz bar. It was all about nonfiction and gritty
crime stories. I was looking at the list of Paradox
books, and I saw something I did not expect.
They published Road to Perdition. They did. The
Tom Hanks movie. I had no idea that was a comic
book, let alone from DC. And that's the Paradox
legacy in a nutshell. It was a graphic novel
first. It's a perfect example of what an imprint
can do. If that book had a standard DC Comics
logo on it, people would expect superheroes.
Sure, or magic or something. Exactly. But putting
it under paradox told bookstores, this is a serious
period crime noir. They also had those big book
of series. I definitely remember seeing those.
The big book of urban legends, the big book of
conspiracies. Yeah, they were these thick. digest
-sized books full of weird folklore, huge cult
hits. But again, despite that, Paradox folded
in 2001. It seems like these things have a shelf
life of, what, five to seven years? Usually.
But then you have the exception, the juggernaut,
the imprint that basically defined a generation.
We have to talk about Vertigo. Vertigo, yeah.
Even if you don't read comics, you've probably
seen that logo. It feels like it was more than
just a publisher, it was. A whole vibe. Vertigo
changed everything. It launched in 93. But here's
the smart part of the strategy. Unlike Piranha,
which started from scratch, Vertigo took books
that were already successful but pushing boundaries
like Swamp Thing, Doom Patrol. And just moved
them over. And moved them into this new neighborhood
so they didn't have to build an audience from
zero. They brought the audience with them. Darn
it. And then they added the killer app. Neil
Gaiman's Sandman. Which is basically literature
at this point. It's on college reading lists.
It is. Vertigo became the home for that British
invasion of writers. Dark fantasy, horror, sophisticated
drama. It wasn't about punching bad guys. It
was about philosophy and magic. And it lasted
way longer than seven years. Decades. In the
2000s, they revitalized the line with Fables,
the fairy tale characters in New York, and Y,
the last man. It became a seal of quality. You
saw Vertigo on the Stein. You just bought it.
There's a funny story in our notes about a failed
sci -fi imprint that sort of fed into Vertigo.
Something called Helix. Yes, Helix. In 1996,
DC thought, sci -fi is big, let's do a sci -fi
line. It failed. Miserably. Lasted two years.
But they had one book that everyone loved called
Transmetropolitan. Which is a cyberpunk classic.
Totally. So when Helix died, they just moved
Transmetropolitan over to Vertigo and it fit
perfectly. But the funnier part about Helix is
the name. It wasn't always going to be Helix.
They wanted to call the imprint Matrix. Yeah.
They had the logo and everything. Then someone
realized there was a movie coming out called
The Matrix and they thought it might confuse
people. Wow. Imagine if DC owned the trademark
for The Matrix right before that movie changed
everything. A bullet dog. Or a massive fortune
lost. Who knows? So we've covered the mature
angle. But DC was also going out and buying other
people's companies. This brings us to the late
90s and the acquisition of Wildstorm. This was
a huge deal. In 1998, DC bought Jim Lee's studio.
Jim Lee was a rock star artist, and this brought
in a whole new universe of heroes. The Authority,
Wildcats, Slicker, more modern, a little more
violent. But inside that purchase was something
really interesting. A sub -imprint called America's
Best Comics. ABC. Yeah, that was Alan Moore's
playground, the writer of Watchmen. DC basically
gave him his own sandbox inside the Wildstorm
deal. And that's where we get the League of Extraordinary
Gentlemen. Exactly. And Tom Strong and Prometheus,
see what they're doing? They're using imprints
to offer different flavors of superhero. Main
DC is your classic. Wildstorm is extreme sports.
America's Best Comics was, like, vintage literature.
But Alan Moore in D .C., that always implies
some drama. Oh, it does. And eventually the relationship
soured. The line folded, the characters got absorbed.
But for a while, it was the most acclaimed corner
of the industry. Speaking of different flavors,
I want to talk about the alternate reality imprints,
because this is where things just get weird.
Specifically, Tangent Comics. Tangent is a wild
one. 1997. The idea was, what if we take the
names of the DC heroes but change literally everything
else? I'm looking at the descriptions here and
my brain is breaking. In Tangent, Superman is
not Clark Kent. No. In the Tangent universe,
Superman is an African -American police officer
named Harvey Dent. Harvey Dent, who's usually
Two -Face. The very same name. But he has psychic
powers, not super strength. And The Flash. The
Flash is a teenage girl who is literally made
of light. She's a celebrity. This sounds both
terrible and amazing at the same time. What was
the point? It was creative chaos. It proved the
IP was flexible. You could stretch these names
until they almost broke and people would still
check it out. And this sort of leads into Elseworlds.
That's the one I think most people recognize.
The logo that just means this story doesn't count.
Exactly. Elseworlds started in 89 with Gotham
by Gaslight Batman versus Jack the Ripper. The
whole mandate was just take the characters out
of continuity and go nuts. And that kind of evolved
into the All -Star line in 2005, which was less
about alternate history and more about celebrity
creators. That's a good way to put it. All -Star
was DC's answer to Marvel's ultimate line. The
idea was to create books you could hand to anyone.
No 50 years of backstory, just the iconic version
of the character by the best people in the business.
And we got All -Star Superman from that. Which
many consider one of the best Superman stories
ever written. It is perfect, distilled Superman.
We did. We also got All -Star Batman and Robin.
We did. Which is... Infamous. Written by Frank
Miller, drawn by Jim Lee. It was always late.
It was controversial. Batman calls himself the
goddamn Batman. And it never actually finished.
Wait, really? They never finished it? The last
two issues are still unpublished to this day.
So the all -star imprint gave us the absolute
highest high and a very, very confusing low.
Okay, I want to pivot here. We've talked about
genre. We've talked about alternate realities.
But what about when DC tried to change the format
of the book itself? This is where I think the
business side gets really interesting. Let's
talk about Minx. Minx is such a classic case
study of right product, wrong time. Launched
in 2007. The target audience. teenage girls.
The format was digest -sized graphic novels,
like a manga book. Which makes sense. Manga was
exploding with that audience. Totally. They saw
girls buying Fruits Basket and thought, we need
something for them, but not superheroes. They
launched books like The Plain Janes, a drama
about art and high school. So why did it fail?
The notes say it was gone in a year. The books
were well -reviewed. It wasn't the content. It
was the bookstores. This is the big lesson. Distribution
can kill a great idea. Random House was distributing
them and they had no idea where to put them.
What do you mean? Well, back in 2007, a bookstore
had a comic section with Superman and a young
adult section with novels. Minx books were comics,
so they got shoved next to Watchmen. So the teenage
girls looking for a high school story in the
YA section never even saw them. Never saw them.
They couldn't bridge that physical gap in the
store. Minx died in 2008. But look at the market
today. The biggest growing sector is YA graphic
novels for girls. Heartstopper, Raina Telgemeier.
Minx predicted the future. They just couldn't
solve the shelving problem. That is just heartbreaking.
Being too early is the same as being wrong. In
business, it absolutely is. They also tried to
predict the digital future with Zuda. Zuda Comics.
2007 again. This was a webcomic site, but it
was also a competition. Creators would upload
their comics, users voted, and the winners got
contracts. So like American Idol for webcomics.
It really was. And it produced a fantastic winner
called Bayou. But DC shut it all down in 2010.
And the reason is simple. The iPad came out.
The iPad killed it. The strategy shifted overnight.
DC realized they didn't need a special website
for scrolling comics. They could just sell digital
versions of their regular comics through an app.
Zuta became redundant. I want to touch on the
license stuff really quick because DC also spent
time, it seems, just renting other people's toys.
They did. In the late 80s, under the TSR imprint,
they did Dungeons and Dragons comics. And then
there's the whole Archie situation. Like Archie
and Jughead. No, no. Archie Comics, the company,
also owns a bunch of superheroes. The Shield,
The Fly. DC licensed them in the 90s under Impact
Comics to sell at newsstands to beginners. Didn't
work. They tried again in 2008 as Red Circle.
Didn't work then either. Why does DC, the company
that owns Superman... need to rent the fly. It's
about filling market gaps. They thought these
simple classic heroes might appeal to younger
kids where Batman's convoluted history couldn't.
Turns out kids just wanted Batman. So bringing
us closer to today. The strategy seems to shift
again around 2016. We get the era of the pop
-up imprint. This is the boutique phase. Instead
of launching a huge corporate line like Vertigo
that's supposed to run for 20 years, they started
giving the keys to a celebrity curator for a
limited time. And the big example is Young Animal.
Curated by Gerard Way. The lead singer of My
Chemical Romance. And a very accomplished comic
writer, he did the Umbrella Academy. DC gave
him a corner of their universe and just said,
make it weird. He called it Comics for Dangerous
Humans. They revived Doom Patrol and a book called
Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye. I would buy
that based on the title alone. It was fantastic.
It was psychedelic and strange. It captured that
early vertigo energy for a modern audience. And
they did the same thing with Brian Michael Bendis
when he came over from Marvel. Right. They gave
him Wonder Comics, which focused on teen heroes
like Young Justice and the Wonder Twins. And
the absolute weirdest one, Anna Barbera Beyond.
Oh, this was a trip. They took Saturday morning
cartoons, Scooby -Doo, The Flintstones, and did
these dark adult reimagining. Reimagined is putting
it lightly. I saw the cover for Scooby Apocalypse.
Shaggy is a muscular hipster. And the monsters
are real. It was insane. And the Flintstones
comic was this biting social satire about consumerism
and war. It was critically beloved. But again,
these were pop -ups. They weren't meant to last
forever. Which brings us to the end of the line,
the death of the imprint. The great restructure
of January 2020. What happened? DC decided to
streamline everything. They looked at all these
brands, Vertigo, Minx, Zoom, Black Label, and
just said, this is too confusing. So they killed
almost all of them. Even Vertigo. Even Vertigo.
It was really the end of an era. So how do you
know what you're buying now? They replaced imprints
with age ratings. Now books are just labeled
DC Kids for 8 to 12, DC for 13 plus, or DC Black
Label for 17 plus. Black Label sounds like a
brand of whiskey. It's pretty much the only true
imprint left. It's the home for the mature, out
-of -continuity stuff. The first book was Batman.
Damned. It's basically the new Vertigo, but it
uses the main superhero. It feels a little, I
don't know, clinical. Vertigo felt like a club
you were in. Yeah. DC -17 plugs, it feels like
a warning label. You're hitting on the core tension
there. From a business side, it makes sense.
You want the DC brand to be the star. But from
a fan perspective, you lose that identity. Being
a Vertigo reader meant something in the 90s.
So looking back at all this history, Prana, Minx,
Young Animal, what's the big lesson? Was it all
just a waste of time? Not at all. I see these
imprints as R &D, research and development. Piranha
proved that creator -owned deals attract talent.
Vertigo proved comics could be literature. Minx
proved a YA graphic novel market existed even
if they couldn't reach it yet. So even the failures
taught them something that helped them later
on. Exactly. The DNA of these failed imprints
gets absorbed back into the main company. DC
evolves because of them. If they just kept publishing
Superman comics the same way they did in 1950,
they'd be out of business. It's an ecosystem.
The weird little mutations help the whole thing
survive. That's a very poetic way to put it.
Well, that brings us to the end of our deep dive.
But before we go, I have a question for you and
for you listening. We talked about these pop
-up imprints curated by a celebrity. Gerard Way
got one. Brian Michael Bendis got one. It's a
powerful idea. If you could hand the keys of
the DC universe to anyone today, a director,
a novelist, a musician, who would you pick and
what kind of books would they make? Ooh, that's
a dangerous question. I'm thinking. A horror
imprint curated by Jordan Peele. That would sell
a million copies. Or maybe a high fantasy line
curated by George R .R. Martin. Although the
books might never come out. Too soon. But seriously,
think about it. It shows that the potential for
these characters is just limitless depending
on who's skewering the ship. Let us know what
your dream imprint would be. Thanks for listening
to The Deep Dive. Keep reading. We'll catch you
next time.