DC's Vertigo Comics imprint kicked off when a handful of titles like Saga of the Swamp Thing and Hellblazer were a bit too adult-oriented to fit seamlessly with the larger world of superheroes. Overseen by Karen Berger, the line quickly became a sort of testing ground for new writers working out experimental material, helping to launch the careers of writers like Grant Morrison and Peter Milligan while spotlighting unique works from longtime industry pros like Annie Nocenti.

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To say that Vertigo was wildly influential both within the comics industry and outside it as well is to say that water is wet, with headliners like Preacher, Sweet Tooth, and Y: The Last Man seeing recent TV adaptations and more on the way. With Neil Gaiman's massively successful Sandman finally premiering as a Netflix series after years of starts and stops, there are still a number of excellent Vertigo stories that would make A+ TV shows.

'Enigma' (1993)

enigma 1 cover art by duncan fegredo

Michael Smith is trying to live a boring life. He's got things mapped out with a job and a relationship he isn't particularly passionate about, but they provide him with stability. Naturally, this is all thrown into disorder when he encounters a villain that sucks people's brains out and is saved by the hero Enigma, an obscure favorite from his childhood. His quest turns to find the creator of the comic, a man named Titus Bird, and uncovering the truth of his own past.

Enigma is a bit of a hidden gem even among classic Vertigo fans, but it features one of DC's first queer story arcs with Michael discovering he is gay amid his hunt for Enigma and his mentorship with the also-gay Titus. Fleshing this surreal, offbeat coming-out story through a TV show would give it a chance to find a wider audience than mainstream comics offered gay characters of the early 90s. Written by Peter Milligan with art by Duncan Fegredo and Sherilyn Van Valkenburgh and lettering by John Costanza, DC recently rereleased this series for anyone looking to experience the story firsthand.

'Shade The Changing Man' (1993)

shade the changing man 1 cover art brenden mccarthy

Created in the late 70s by Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko, Shade never quite took off (outside of a stint on The Suicide Squad) until the character was revamped, officially becoming a Vertigo title with its thirty-third issue and often touted as one of the line's early successes. Tweaking Shade into a semi-immortal, resurrection-based space entity working to stabilize Earth, the series ran for seventy issues.

Like Enigma, this series was also written by Peter Milligan, with a number of artists, most notably an early-career Chris Bachalo. Shade has been collected in various editions and enjoyed a semi-recent reboot with the highly entertaining Shade The Changing Girl.

'Sandman Mystery Theater' (1993)

sandman mystery theater 61 cover art richard bruning

The Sandman was never afraid to pull in references from classic DC Comics, and there was no shortage of prior superheroes that took up the name of "The Sandman" before the series came along. Indeed, one of the publisher's earliest JSA members was named The Sandman and wore a fedora and gas mask to protect himself from his own sleeping gas during his crime-fighting exploits.

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Combining classic film noir elements with the pulp heroes that inspired characters like Batman, Sandman Mystery Theater remains a hidden gem that fleshed out the character Wesley Dodds as well as reviving his girlfriend Dian as very much a leading lady in her own right. Utilizing a classic format to address several progressive issues through a modern lens, this series even featured a crossover with none other than Dream of the Endless (aka Netflix's The Sandman).

'Kid Eternity' (1993)

kid eternity 6 cover art by sean phillips

Created by the underrated legend Otto Binder and artist Sheldon Moldoff in the early 40s, Kid Eternity was acquired by DC and joined up with the Shazam Family in the 80s. Rebooted in the 90s by Grant Morrison through a three-issue series, the character underwent significant changes to his continuity only to have them again shifted by the Vertigo-era creative team of Annie Nocenti and Sean Phillips.

Nocenti and Phillips vision for the character entailed embracing all the things that made him a typical teenager who just happened to have died and come back while also placing him in the position of playing a key role in the next phase of humanity's evolution. The wild art by Phillips and Nocenti's trademark creative progressiveness made for a fascinating take on the teen superhero trope that would benefit from a modernized reboot in any medium.

'Clean Room' (2015)

Clean Room 1 Cover Art Jenny Frison

Journalist Chloe Pierce loses her fiance forever when he joins a creepy cult and dies by suicide soon after. She immediately takes up an obsessive hunt to find the cult's leader Astrid and hold her accountable for the pain she has caused her. However, once she finds Astrid, she realizes that the woman is attuned to the ability to see the invisible demons that haunt humanity and is building an army to fight back.

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Perhaps best known for her work on Batgirl, Wonder Woman, and Birds of Prey, writer Gail Simone took a classic horror set-up and flipped it to create Clean Room with artist Jon Davis-Hunt. Combining ancient folklore, genre tropes, sci-fi settings, and Simone's knack for spot-on dialogue, Clean Room is an unforgettable story that could only get better if given several seasons of space to explore its captivating premise.

'Grip: The Strange World of Men' (2002)

grip the strange world of men by gilbert hernandez

Mike Chang awakens with no memory, his face smudged with lipstick. Attempting to uncover how he came to be in such a predicament, he quickly discovers a convoluted sci-fi story involving cults, shady government organizations, crime fighters, and girl gangs. There is no way to quickly summarize the twists and turns this story takes, so the best thing to do is check out the comic for yourself.

Creator Gilbert Hernandez is best known for being one part of the team that brought the groundbreaking Love & Rockets to the world, but he's done a lot of absolutely wild comics beyond that series. Perhaps none are so downright odd as Grip, which could easily outdo mind-warping series like Black Mirror and Twin Peaks: The Return in the "just plain weird" department. As with all of Hernandez's works, the thing that makes everything click is the fascinating character work, which makes it a great candidate for a TV series.

'Finals' (1999)

finals 1 cover art jill thompson

Finals is a definite sleeper hit in the Vertigo canon, but it's kind of hard to see why considering the massive appeal of a college overrun by genre tropes that force the students to put their very lives on the line to succeed. Centering on slacker Wally, the series introduces a number of top-notch characters that would be great subjects for further development in a TV series. This includes but is not limited to his girlfriend, a Comparative Religions major who starts her own cult as part of her thesis.

Created by writer Will Pfeifer and the great Jill Thompson, Finals ran for only four issues and saw no continuation, making it ripe for a reexamination. A corrupt school board and a number of misguided and morally bankrupt fellow students alongside the comically useless Wally make this a bleak comedy for the ages that would be only all the more relevant in 2022.

'Hex Wives' (2018)

hex wives 6 cover art by mirka andolfo

Isadora is a suburban housewife with no knowledge of her life as an ancient witch, her coven, her lost soulmate, or the villainous group of men known as The Architects that have waged war against her and her people for centuries. As the facade begins to fade, and she reunites with her coven, Isadora vows to stop those that would subjugate them.

Hex Wives is one of Vertigo's final entries before it switched things up and became the Black Label imprint that is still running now. Creators Ben Blacker and Mirka Andolfo made a compelling series that pulled in references from classic TV shows like Bewitched to modern feminist horror stories like The VVitch. Its reincarnating cast would make a top-notch horror series in which traveling back through the ages could build a deeper narrative than this six-issue series had the space for.

'The Twilight Children' (2015)

twilight children cover art darwyn cooke

The peace of an isolated fishing village in Latin America is disturbed when a glowing orb explodes and renders many blind while simultaneously granting them psychic powers. The CIA comes to investigate while a scientist fighting to uncover the truth falls for the mysterious and dangerous stranger, Ela.

Written by Gilbert Hernandez and featuring stellar art by the late Darwyn Cooke, The Twilight Children pulls in Hernandez's talent for surrealist tragedy and offbeat characters with a stylism that can't be beat. Creating a perfect blend of horror, romanticism, and sci-fi intrigue, this series offers the perfect set-up for a spooky limited series.

'The Unknown Soldier' (2008)

unknown soldier 5 cover art igor kordey

Another rebooted classic DC character, The Unknown Solider focuses on pacifist doctor Moses, who is stuck in the center of a war in which child soldiers are terrorizing civilians and organized violence rules over all. Merging with an unexplained voice in his head, he struggles to choose between taking action in a violent world and following his own more peaceful path.

Full of moral ambiguity and questions of who can be "good" in the face of unrelenting evil, The Unknown Solider was a complex character study that could easily be expanded upon. Introducing one of DC's great, mostly forgotten characters with Moses, the series found its ethical center while operating in an unethical world that creates monsters out of innocents, making it just as fertile a ground for storytelling today as it was fourteen years ago.

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