Karen Berger: back to the future of comics

A former DC publisher with a taste for the weird is reclaiming her place on bookshelves.

Comics publisher Karen Berger. Picture: Jeff Zelevansky / The Wall Street Journal

After publishing comic books about an emotional swamp ­monster, the last surviving man in a plague-decimated world of women and a Texas preacher on a quest to hold God to account, what do you do for an encore?

As founder and head of DC ­Entertainment’s Vertigo imprint, Karen Berger brought ambitious, outre series such as Sandman and Preacher to mass audiences, helped prove that comics weren’t limited to superhero adventures and kickstarted the careers of ­writers such as Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore.

After more than 30 years with DC, Berger left in 2013 but is returning to comics with Berger Books, a line of comics and graphic novels for the independent publisher Dark Horse Comics. She plans to keep expanding the comics audience beyond its base of superhero fans, through stories that are audacious and often strange.

“I like weird shit,” Berger, 59, says in an interview near her New Jersey home. “I guess I like the strangeness of life, the otherness of life.” Readers, she says, want “to be transported to experiencing ­stories that are not your everyday thing”.

She spent most of the past few years outside the comics industry, working on TV projects and doing freelance editing and consulting. The presidential election spurred her to return, says Berger, out of a feeling that Donald Trump’s victory needed some sort of artistic response. “I figured this is a time to create, this is a time to tell special and resonant stories.”

In the next few months, Berger Books will announce its first titles, and Berger says readers can expect the unexpected. Among the first batch of titles, she hints, are “a near-future eco-fiction love story, a psychological crime horror thriller, a personal tale of race and identity, (and) an unseen side of a notorious legendary figure”.

She hopes to bring in writers and artists with different perspectives, including more women and minorities, and creators from other countries. Her goal is to build the kind of mass audience that comics have long had in ­Europe and Japan.

Her return has been hailed in the comics world. “Karen’s probably the best comics editor of our generation,” says Paul Levitz, DC’s former president and publisher.

The future growth of comics and graphic novels lies in books, Berger predicts, not periodicals. Graphic novels’ sales growth far outstrips that of monthly comics. Bookstores sold 11.9 million graphic novels last year, up 11 per cent from the previous year, according to Publishers Weekly.

When she joined DC straight out of college, Berger wasn’t a comic-book fan but “quickly fell in love” with the medium. She had majored in English literature with a minor in art history, and she loved how comics used words and pictures to tell a story.

Her lack of knowledge of comics was an advantage, she says: “I never had the preconceived notion that comics had to be a certain way.” She made a name as the editor of literary, intelligent books such as Moore’s horror series Swamp Thing and Gaiman’s mythic fantasy Sandman. She brought that sensibility to the Vertigo line, founded in 1993, where she published series like V For Vendetta, Hellblazer and Y the Last Man.

She acknowledges that while comics have won greater respect and wider audiences, the big comic companies’ core business relies more than ever on superheroes.

That was a factor in her departure from Vertigo. She felt the line’s more adventurous properties were a lesser priority than DC’s superhero projects.

“I had a great thing for many years, and when it wasn’t so great any more, I figured this is a good time to take a break,” she says.

Today, Berger enjoys feeling like an outsider again. “I can essentially have the freedom to do what I want to do,” she said. “I kind of feel with Vertigo we changed the game so now let’s get out there and explore even further.”

The Wall Street Journal