Mother of weird stuff

For Karen Berger, a day at the office meant happily invading other people's dreams and bringing them to life. As the executive editor of the Vertigo imprint at DC Comics, she oversaw illustrated tales of fantasy, speculative fiction and outcast characters who did not fit into the publisher's mainstream line-up of costumed adventurers. "It's the weird stuff," Berger says. "The stuff that makes you different."

But these days, simply visiting DC's Midtown Manhattan offices is a weird experience for Berger, who helped start hit series like Fables and Y: The Last Man, and the careers of writers like Neil Gaiman, the author of Sandman and Grant Morrison (author of The Invisibles). In December, Berger announced plans to leave the company where she worked for over 30 years. Shelly Bond, the DC and Vertigo veteran, succeeded her as the imprint's executive editor.

For the roster of artists she leaves behind, Berger's exit raises questions about the future of Vertigo and where its renegade spirit fits into an industry and a company that seem increasingly focused on superhero characters who can be spun off into movies and TV shows. "That was DC Comics, now we have DC Entertainment. It is a different beast, being run by different people," says Gaiman, a best-selling novelist scouted by Berger in the 1980s. Sitting in a DC conference room, surrounded by titles that she published, Berger, 55, says she quit to pursue new challenges. "It's time to ply my storytelling skills elsewhere."

When Berger joined DC in 1979, she was admittedly no fan of superheroes. "I fell into the company, fell into the business and fell in love with comics," she says. Inspired by the publisher's more offbeat anthology series, like House of Mystery, Berger cultivated stories that were sometimes more human and sometimes decidedly not of this earth. After becoming the editor of the Watchmen author Alan Moore, she gathered a line-up of young British writers who were eager to break into American comics.

When the Vertigo imprint was introduced in 1993, it was a way for writers and illustrators to retain ownership of their work and be free of the restraints that governed superhero stories. Under Berger, Vertigo flourished with hardcover and paperback collections of its monthly comics series, at a time when DC was only infrequently anthologising its mainstream superhero titles. She became a magnet for younger talent. "As a young female writer in a male-dominated industry," says G Willow Wilson, the author of the graphic novel Cairo, "Karen is a wonderful role model, because she'd done it all." But as DC has moved more aggressively to establish its characters as exploitable properties for its parent company, Time Warner, it has shifted some of its Vertigo characters back to its central DC universe. Berger says she noted changes in DC's priorities in recent years. "They're more focused on the company-owned characters," she says.

Dan DiDio, co-publisher of DC Comics, says, "There's not a challenge to be more profitable out of the gate. But there is a challenge to be more accepted out of the gate."

Even in her own household, Berger says, would-be target readers like her sons, Zack, 22, and Alex, 17, are still figuring out whether comic books are cool. "They happen to like Vertigo books. He's got good taste, what can I tell you?"

©2013 The New York Times