It’s been a calm week in terms of comics news, which is a good thing because last weekend? It was not calm, as NYCC kept things hot and heavy for all five days of the event. Let’s get straight into it, then, as my look at ten things I liked or didn’t like from the week of comics is led by the return of the king.

1. Vertigo, Making Its Return

This column cannot start anywhere else: Vertigo is back, baby!

DC’s vaunted creator-owned house, the home of a great many of my favorite DC published titles ever, was announced as making its return in 2025 at this past weekend’s New York Comic Con. What new comics will it publish? When are those comics coming? Who is making them? Folks, I do not have answers for you, but we have some details even if it’s very much in the early days of this being made public.

What we do know is the following. Its first title will be The Nice House by the Sea, as James Tynion IV and Álvaro Martínez Bueno’s once DC Black Label series will now become a DC Vertigo one, effective immediately. That means reprints of its first three issues with the Vertigo logo on there and its fourth issue will come with the same. That makes sense, as the Nice House series is more Vertigo than Black Label anyways. We also know that Black Label honcho Chris Conroy will be heading this line, adding to an already busy dance card for him between continuing to run Black Label and editing both Absolute Wonder Woman and Absolute Superman. And according to Conroy, Vertigo’s sole focus will be creator-owned, with that including both new titles and “some surprises from the archive.”

This is all wonderful news, and I am ready for all of it and everything that’s still to come. I’m hoping — hoping — to make something happen related to all this. TBD on that. But I’m excited for the return of Vertigo, even if I have some level of uncertainty about how it’s going to fare in a pretty strange direct market. We’ll have a better idea when the first titles are announced, though.

Oh, and if you’d like to read a nice piece on this subject, Susana Polo wrote a good one at Polygon about how Black Label’s success may have led to Vertigo’s resurrection. It’s an interesting take that’s typically solid work from Polo.

2. Hush is Back, Back Again

From a pure sales standpoint, this item towers over the potential impact of the first item. That’s because DC also announced at New York Comic Con that Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee will be teaming up for Batman: Hush 2, or H2SH as its official merch put it. I don’t need to tell you that the first Hush the pair did back in 2002 and 2003 was popular, but as I covered in my feature Value Over Replacement Batman, they’re the most successful creative team that has worked on the main Batman title of the past 25 years — and it isn’t particularly close. That arc was absurdly popular, and has continued to be in the two plus decades since, as it is still moving units in each format it’s embraced by, with the most recent being DC’s Compact Comics line.

After it sort of debuts in the back of Justice League Unlimited #1 for reasons unknown, Hush 2 will be published in the main Batman series, seemingly after Chip Zdarsky and Jorge Jimenez wrap up their time on the title with issue #157. At that point, it will immediately begin to print money because people love this stuff. I have to admit: I’ve never really liked Batman: Hush. I like Loeb, I love Lee, and I quite enjoy Batman. But there was something about that storyline that just did not add up for me as a reader. That puts me in an extreme minority, though, as the excitement (and orders) for this story will likely be through the roof. I just probably won’t be there with them.

That said, it’s a logical and likely profitable move by DC, a company that…continues to make smart decisions? It’s true, and I absolutely love to see it.