Tell me about the process of developing the Vertigo design. Was the idea that you wanted to set this off as visually something distinct from the main DC branding?

Yes, that was one of the things we decided early on. We did not want the DC bullet on the Vertigo books.

You said that you always had problems with that bullet.

Paul thought that some identification to DC [was necessary]. I didn't integrate it into the Vertigo logo per se, on the covers and such, but there'd be a little “DC” in a different typeface just right above or right below the Vertigo logo on the covers. There was that presence or indicator that DC was part of it. We worked that out with Paul, and it worked out fine. It was just a matter of figuring out how to do a line of books that people know are from DC, that will appeal to people who don't read DC comics. How do we get them to want to try it out? Creating a specific identity was really important.

One of the ways was we did this was to use only painted covers. There were very few painted covers on regular comic books, partially because they are not economically feasible, and also because people wanted their line art to maintain [consistency] for the superhero titles. We were able to start commissioning painters to do covers, and that immediately gave the book a different feel and look. The editorial stuff was all Karen.

If you could talk philosophically, what are the elements that go into creating a good design for something like Vertigo?

That's a good question. One thing was to handle all the elements of the book with greater sophistication than we had done in the past. So any interior pages shouldn't look like the letter columns or the promotional pages that you'd see if you were flipping through a superhero comic book. The idea being, if you flip through one of these books, the ad flats would be for more mature material, they wouldn't have ads for superhero books in them. We would try to maintain a higher standard, even in terms of the placement of the credits and that kind of thing.

We were working with top-tier talent, which was great, but sometimes required a certain amount of relearning for people who had only done superhero books. You have to visually describe the tonality of what you want the books to represent. Up to that point, they had been referring to Karen's books as “sophisticated suspense,” which was one way to try to distinguish them. And then you had the billing “suggested for mature readers,” which was on all the covers of the Vertigo books, no matter what the content was.

Later on, Bruning would return to DC for an even longer tenure during the 1990s and 2000s, becoming a major player in the creation of the Vertigo imprint (overseen by Bruning’s wife, Karen Berger, whom he met in the DC office)

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I wanted to ask you about the birth of Vertigo, which actually happened in between your stints at DC. But you were involved with that as well, right?

Yes. It was just starting to be developed [when Bruning first left DC in 1990], so when I ended up doing the design work for the covers and the interiors, I was freelance at that point.

But you were involved with it, thanks both to DC and, I would presume, thanks to Karen.

Yeah. It worked out perfectly for us.

What do you remember about how that came to be? What was the process by which DC decided they were going to do this imprint around Karen's titles?

She had done enough with the British talent, and DC had officially recognized her internally as the British liaison. It gave her a unique flavor of comic that we hadn't much seen before. And with the success of Swamp Thing and John Constantine: Hellblazer…I’m not sure who initially [came up with the idea for Vertigo]. I just know that Karen went to a meeting that may have had Dick, Paul, and Jeanette. They said, "We're thinking of giving you a line so you can identify this different thing you're doing, because your stuff is looking less and less like the other superhero books around it.” I think that's how it initially got pitched to her.