DC Comics has had a ton of changes the last decade. Paul Levitz , Karen Berger , Shelly Bond and numerous others have been surfed out of the company as it looked to reboot itself for the 21st century. Change happens in comics. The old guard can't stay around forever and every entertainment company has to reboot things at the top after years of running. Its just in DC's case the changes pretty much impacted a viable brand they had that wasn't DC Comics main universe of titles.
Back in the early 1990's DC launched a waive of "Adult themed" titles. These were Doom Patrol , Animal Man , Sandman , Shade and Hellblazer. These books in the case of Animal Man and Doom Patrol drifted to those themes by the time their books really kicked in with creator Grant Morrison. The adult themed books had DC in a spot. They were really good ground breaking work but they didn't fit the DC mold so a solution was needed. So they decided to branch out an imprint named "Vertigo".
And Vertigo allowed DC to appeal to the long older fan who became jaded by the modern 1990's comic scene. Creators had a big role in Vertigo as well as time passed as creators launched a number of books as we saw. This was a breath of fresh air for many who discovered the adventures of con artist magician John Constantine. Or loved the bizarre Shade the Changing Man.
Time passed , more books came out like Fables and Preacher. The 2000's had more creators take shots at Vertigo as well. But there was storm clouds on the horizon as the changes at DC started. Paul Levitz the long time publisher finally left and then dominoes fell quick within a year. DC was being moved eventually to LA as we discovered (2015) and a number of editors would not make the trip as cuts happened.
The 1st change was DC started pulling its main characters from Vertigo. For years Swamp Thing , Shade , and Doom Patrol was a staple of Vertigo line. But now those characters were starting to be pushed back into the main DC Universe of books. A lot were not successful as fans have long seen these characters for the adult themed books they once were. But this hasn't stopped DC from launching numerous attempts since the 2000's to make these characters work again in mainstream DCU.
For the longest time DC held off one move that would literally change Vertigo. Their longest running title in its history was John Constantine. In fact Constantine was a title with such a history and legacy people thought it would never be cancelled or ended. But by 2011 DC was prepping for Flashpoint and after the debut of the weak DCU John Constantine ; they decided to end the classic one people actually supported for nearly 3 decades.
To say this move worked out would be a complete lie. Its been a disaster. The mainstream Constantine has failed repeatedly as a title after 2-3 relaunches and push by DC. Many have said the character worked best in Vertigo and its pretty clear that the character did .
After this and the end of Fables ...Vertigo became a literal ghost imprint. It existed but well its hard to determine what exactly was coming out from it. DC gave such little fucks as they ended up letting Berger go as well as Bond that they promoted other imprints instead. Vertigo was literally DOA. The imprint of a lot of great work from Road to Perdition to other ground breaking work was literally getting no attention as it withered and died there.
By 2018 DC seemed to sense that after years of no promotion , no real push and letting various editors go ...they had a historic imprint named Vertigo and it may need books. A various bunch of launches happened but with issues behind the scenes and more ...it fizzled quick. Instead of doing a smart move by sending established characters back like Swamp Thing , Constantine and more. To try and salvage the imprint they tried new launches.
Now its being reported that due to DC's utter stupid moves Vertigo is likely dead for good. How could a company mismanage what once was considered a great imprint . That Marvel literally tried once to copy with MAX (and it too seems dead as of 2017). So how could DC let this imprint fail ?
In all DC will likely look back at this years from now as a big face palm as they literally have the keys to make the imprint work. They have a Sandman title running . They have the characters fans want to see back there. Yet refuse and roll out shitty reboots of Swamp Thing and Constantine repeatedly . With no real care for them.