The Vertigo imprint just isn't what it used to be.

There was a time when, if you wanted intelligent and imaginative material of genuine artistic merit, Vertigo was pretty much the default place to look. When the imprint first appeared, it had a great roster - SANDMAN, ANIMAL MAN, HELLBLAZER, SWAMP THING, SHADE and DOOM PATROL were all good, strong comics that fitted naturally together. "Vertigo" was, at one point, a brand name so reliable that they could publish pretty much anything and people would be prepared to give it a go.

This month, they published S.C.I.-SPY #1. How the mighty have fallen.

Now, there are two good reasons why Vertigo should not be publishing comics like S.C.I.-SPY. One is that S.C.I.-SPY #1 was really quite bad. But the other, more strategic, problem is that books like this weaken the Vertigo brand. Even if you happen to think it's a good comic - even if it had been a good comic - S.C.I.-SPY would still be a generic space opera with James Bond overtones, because even according to its own creators, that's what it was meant to be. It doesn't belong in the Vertigo imprint.

Vertigo started off with a clear idea of what it stood for. Specifically, it stood for the flagship books I mentioned earlier. Those titles naturally fell together even before there was a Vertigo imprint - for example, 1992's WHO'S WHO IN THE DC UNIVERSE #15 was devoted to them. It described them as "DC's realm of dark fantasy", which is as good a summary as any of what early Vertigo involved.

But from those fairly clear beginnings, the Vertigo imprint has become hazier over the years. The original Vertigo titles came along more or less organically. Since then, Vertigo has had a nasty habit of trying to reproduce the same effect by following a formula. The formula generally involves either (a) getting a creative team to do a sarcastic and violent revival of an obscure DC Universe character, or (b) writing yet another sequel to SANDMAN. And some of these books are quite good - although for every HUMAN TARGET or LUCIFER, there's at least one ANGEL AND THE APE.

'Generic space opera doesn't belong in the Vertigo imprint.' But they're inescapably formulaic - either reviving/trashing old characters because that's what Vertigo's always done, or watering down Neil Gaiman's original ideas ever further in the hope of clinging on to all those goths and Tori Amos fans he brought in. And for an imprint that was meant to be new and different, trading off an old formula doesn't project the right image.

So naturally enough, Vertigo wants to expand. It's chosen to expand beyond the fantasy genre, and that's fair enough - despite starting off as a fantasy and horror imprint, Vertigo was defined more by its attitude and style than by its choice of genre. Judging from its groan-inducing current house ad ("A Good Hard Kick in the Assumptions"), it would still like to see itself that way. Yet when Vertigo chooses to venture beyond its ultra-safe formulas of revivals and SANDMAN, it has been making some very curious choices.

There isn't much point in having a Vertigo imprint unless the Vertigo name stands for something. Based on some of Vertigo's recent commissions, god alone knows what they think they stand for. The house ads simply describe their output as "Comics and Books for Mature Readers", but what does that really tell you? There are certain segments of fandom that have got it into their heads that "Mature Readers" is a synonym for arthouse - it isn't. All it means, when you get down to it, is that it's a comic aimed at readers over 16 or so. And since that accounts for the overwhelming majority of the population, it's not much of a target demographic. "Mature Readers" isn't a target market, it's a negative statement. It doesn't tell you whom Vertigo is aiming for, merely that it isn't aimed at children. Which is about as informative as saying that it isn't aiming for the blind demographic.

Recent commissions from Vertigo have included some strange books. Some seem to have been shoved in there simply on the basis that they're a bit arthouse, irrespective of whether they have all that much to do with Vertigo's output, like AMERICAN CENTURY and GRIP. And some are completely straight genre books that seem completely out of place - CODENAME: KNOCKOUT and S.C.I.-SPY being the most glaring examples.

'There's little point to the imprint unless the name stands for something.' Vertigo seems to fancy itself as an imprint for intelligent readers, in which case the arthouse books are a relatively understandable move - although "intelligent" and "arthouse" are not synonymous. But the genre books are neither a natural outgrowth of Vertigo's core output, nor particularly intelligent. (Nor particularly good, for that matter, but the same branding problem would arise even if they had succeeded in what they set out to do.)

It seems as if those books ended up in Vertigo on the basis of what I'll call the Activists' Syllogism. The Activists' Syllogism goes like this:-

1. Superhero books are bad and stupid and I am all grown up now and I don't like them.
2. This is not a superhero book.
3. Therefore it is Art.

Vertigo still has a valuable brand name to protect, and shouldn't go wasting it on stuff like this. S.C.I.-SPY is, according to the "On the Ledge" article by its own creators, intended as a cross between space opera and James Bond. And that's exactly what it is - a straight cross between two other genres with no real pretensions to being anything other than that. It appears to be in Vertigo largely on the basis that it isn't a superhero book, and a woman gets her tits out near the end.

This is the sort of thing that really damages the meaning of the Vertigo brand name - an imprint that ranges from intelligent fantasy to arthouse makes some kind of sense, but an imprint that ranges from GRIP to S.C.I.-SPY stands for... well, nothing coherent, at any rate.

You could argue, of course, that the Vertigo name is still valuable to DC simply because Vertigo doesn't carry the same negative connotations to bookstore customers as the DC name does. That may be true, but Vertigo isn't meant to be just a fake name for DC. It's always been pushed as a positive brand in its own right, and that means it needs some kind of coherent identity.

'If the imprint isn't going to stagnate, it has to try new things.' Over the last couple of years, Vertigo's problem seems to be that if it sticks to what's worked in the past it seems pale and formulaic (and it is, because when it was done the first time round it was innovative). But when it tries to expand beyond that, it seems uncertain about what it is it wants to do, and most of its attempts are not really catching the imagination.

TRANSMETROPOLITAN, one of the more obviously successful Vertigo titles, didn't even originate with Vertigo - it was a survivor of the failed Helix sci-fi imprint. Books with no connection to the Vertigo imprint besides a common unsuitability for kiddies don't do the brand any favours. And the books that have seemed like a more natural outgrowth for Vertigo - CRUSADES, OUTLAW NATION - just haven't caught on.

LUCIFER, a SANDMAN spin-off that has largely escaped the parent book's shadow, is probably the most successful of the recent Vertigo books - perhaps because it's good, it's what the core Vertigo audience likes, and it's linked to the indestructible SANDMAN name without reading like fan-fiction.

Vertigo can't be criticised for commissioning books that haven't worked - if the imprint isn't going to stagnate, it has to move out and try new things. Vertigo always had the occasional commercial disaster dotted along the way - KID ETERNITY and MINX spring to mind. Nobody expects it to be infallible. But the strike rate has not been all that impressive lately. With TRANSMETROPOLITAN drawing to a conclusion in the relatively near future, Vertigo could really do with some actual hits that catch the imagination.

Vertigo has a long way to go before it has to worry about any serious challenge to its market position - certainly not from the Max imprint, which isn't even aiming for the same audience. But the momentum it had a few years back is fading. It looks very much as though Vertigo has passed its peak.

Having been formed as a vehicle for a particular style of comic that DC happened to be publishing in the early nineties, the question Vertigo is struggling with is quite what it wants to be now that the moment has passed. The current strategy to answer that question seems to be to throw anything at the wall and see if it sticks (as long as there's something about it that can justify the "mature readers" tag, however tenuously). Right now, that's generating an unimpressive success rate and associating the Vertigo name with comics that have nothing whatsoever to do with the imprint's roots.

Paul O'Brien is the author of the weekly X-AXIS comics review.

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