Vertigo says farewell to '100 Bullets,' looks ahead to new titles

Vertigo’s dark, violent “100 Bullets” ends next week with its 100th and final issue.

The series — written by Brian Azzarello and illustrated by Eduardo Risso, with cover art by Dave Johnson — will go down in history as one of the longest-running comic book series to be produced, without interruption, by the same writer, artist and cover artist.

It’s the end of an era at Vertigo, DC Comics’ mature reader imprint.

But then it’s often the end of an era at Vertigo, which has seen such landmark series as “The Sandman,” “Preacher” and “Y: The Last Man,” conclude over the years.

“It’s the nature of what we do,” said executive editor Karen Berger, who has overseen Vertigo since its inception in 1993. Vertigo’s titles are typically creator-owned and so when the creator is ready to pull the plug, that’s it. In the case of “100 Bullets,” Azzarello had always planned to end the story with issue No. 100.

“Our main objective is to publish creator-owned, visionary works,” Berger said. “Most of those series, the writers have an end in sight.”

As series come and go, the question is which of today’s titles will become tomorrow’s classics. Berger points to two relatively new series she thinks deserve more attention. One is “Unknown Soldier,” which Berger calls “a very global, very political” book that offers a new take on a classic DC character. The other is “Air,” an unusual mix of fantasy and post-911 reality about a flight attendant with a fear of heights.

“It’s a title that’s very different even for Vertigo,” Berger said.

Vertigo also has three new monthly series debuting this year:

• First up, in May, is the launch of “The Unwritten.” It’s about Tommy Taylor, whose name is known worldwide as the main character in his father’s popular series of novels about a boy wizard. His father’s disappearance sends Tommy on a global quest, on the run from a mysterious cabal and armed with questions about his identity. “We’re sort of calling it ‘The DaVinci Code’ of comics,” Berger said.

• In “Greek Street,” debuting in July, themes of Greek mythology will play out on the streets of mondern-day London. It sort of does for Greek mythology what Vertigo’s increasingly popular “Fables" — which puts characters from classic fairy tales in the real world — has done for that realm, Berger said.

• “Sweet Tooth,” written and drawn by Jeff Lemire, starts in September. It’s set in the near future in a post-apocalyptic world where Gus, a “hybrid child” with antlers on his head, lives in seclusion with his father. After his father dies, Gus goes in search of others like him.

Vertigo also is launching a new “sub-imprint,” Vertigo Crime, in August. Vertigo Crime will feature black and white graphic novels, starting with “Filthy Rich,” written by Azzarello of “100 Bullets” and illustrated by Victor Santos, and “Dark Entries,” written by crime novelist Ian Rankin.

With the graphic novel format, Berger is hoping to attract book readers, not just comic readers.

“That’s always been our mandate from day one is to do comics that people who don’t normally read comics would love to read, to expand the medium, to show that you could do anything in the comics form.”