It’s usually not that hard to tell when you’re watching a TV show that’s based on DC Comics because they typically have famous superheroes in them. Whether it’s “Batman: The Animated Series,” any of the shows in the “Arrowverse,” or HBO’s new series “Lanterns,” the presence of costumed crime-fighters typically is a good sign that what you’re watching is from the pages of a superhero comic, and typically that’s either DC or Marvel.
However, there are also shows that don’t have superheroes in them but still are comic adaptations. Over the last 25 years, there have been several shows that were based on comics released by DC Comics that the average viewer might not know about. Mostly this is because the comics were released under Vertigo, an imprint where DC publishes more mature stories or comics that don’t fit into the normal capes and tights genre of the main line. Vertigo has been around since 1993, and though it was briefly discontinued in 2020, it’s back, and new comics are being published under the banner today.
Perhaps some of these new Vertigo comics will become TV shows, like the following five series that have an unexpected connection to the company behind Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. You won’t find any of those heroes, but you will find cool zombies, dark dreams, post-apocalyptic worlds, and more.
iZombie
The “iZombie” comic, written by Chris Roberson and illustrated by Michael Allred, published its first issue in 2010. Unlike in “The Walking Dead,” another zombie-centric comic whose TV adaptation premiered the same year “iZombie” hit shelves, the living dead weren’t all that bad. The series followed a woman who was secretly a zombie; in order to avoid becoming a mindless, rotting flesh-eater, she had to consume human brains, temporarily receiving some of the deceased’s thoughts and memories in the process. Luckily, her job as a gravedigger allowed her to eat brains without any killing, and the comic followed her and her friends, most of whom were various other supernatural creatures, as they lived in modern-day Eugene, Oregon.
The series got adapted into a show on The CW in 2015, though the premise got streamlined quite a bit, including a different protagonist. Rose McIver starred as Liv Moore, a coroner’s assistant who became a zombie following an incident at a boat party. Unlike in the comic, there were no other supernatural creatures other than zombies, and the show took on some procedural elements. Liv used the memories she gained when she ate a brain to help solve murders, all while trying to keep her zombie nature a secret. In later seasons, “iZombie” grew in scope, uncovering a zombie conspiracy theory that resulted in Seattle becoming a hot spot for the undead. “iZombie” ended in 2019 after five seasons.
Sweet Tooth
Cartoonist Jeff Lemire wrote and illustrated 40 issues of “Sweet Tooth” for Vertigo from 2009 to 2013, with the Netflix adaptation premiering a little more than a decade later, in 2021. A post-apocalyptic tale that’s grimly violent and charmingly twee at times, the story follows Gus, a young boy who is one of many human-animal hybrid children who have been born as a pandemic wipes out most of humanity. Gus, who is half-deer, was raised in the woods with his father. After his dad dies, Gus encounters a hunter named Jepperd who guides him through a dangerous world that fears and persecutes hybrids like himself.
The Netflix adaptation, which came toward the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, got good reviews despite (or perhaps because of) how relevant the premise seemed. English actor Nonso Anozie starred as Jepperd while Christian Convery played Gus. Will Forte also appeared as Gus’ father. “Sweet Tooth” ran for three seasons, with the third one finishing the story in 2023.
Y: The Last Man
One of the most acclaimed comics Vertigo ever published, writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Pia Guerra’s series “Y: The Last Man,” took place in the wake of a sudden event that killed every single male mammal in the world — except for an amateur escape artist named Yorick Brown and his pet Capuchin monkey. The comic, which ran from 2002 to 2008, followed Yorick and several female survivors as they tried to stop society from fully collapsing and search for a way for the human race to continue without any men.
Attempts to adapt “Y: The Last Man” began in 2007, but it wasn’t until 2021 that the show premiered on FX on Hulu. The cast, whose ranks included Diane Lane, Olivia Thirlby, and Amber Tamblyn, was impressive, and reviews were decent. Showrunner Eliza Clark had envisioned a five-season, 50-episode run to fully adapt the comic. Sadly, that didn’t happen. FX canceled “Y: The Last Man” before the first season had even finished airing.
Low viewership may have been a factor, but a story in The Hollywood Reporter suggests delays in the production, plus the COVID-19 pandemic bringing everything to a halt, severely impacted the show. FX would’ve had to pay $3 million to extend the options for the cast and creative team, which would’ve been necessary to prepare a second season and the network declined to do so. Unfortunately, “Y: The Last Man” was pulled from Hulu and Disney+ in 2023 along with many other shows, making it basically impossible to watch.
DMZ
Brian Wood’s 2005 comic series, which he illustrated along with Riccardo Burchielli, was set in a grim near-future where the United States has been torn apart by a second civil war. The island of Manhattan exists as a demilitarized zone (DMZ) between the two stalemated front lines, and the comic followed a reporter as he ventured into Manhattan five years after the war began.
The comic ended in 2011, and just two years later there was talk of a TV adaptation, with SYFY initially being interested. Development took a while and the network changed, but in 2020 HBO started filming on a “DMZ” pilot with Rosario Dawson in the lead role as a medic looking for her missing son in the city.
As you might remember, 2020 was a bad time to be making a TV show. Though initially intended to be an ongoing series, they just barely managed to finish shooting the pilot when COVID lockdown began. With production costs rising and the future of the entertainment industry uncertain, the network pivoted and instead greenlit a four-episode miniseries. Filming finished in 2021 and the show premiered to modest reviews on March 17, 2022. “Thank God it wasn’t shelved,” Dawson told Newsweek.
The Sandman
“The Sandman” is one of the most acclaimed and influential comics ever published — and unlike the rest of the titles on this list, it actually was published by DC Comics, only moving to the Vertigo imprint more than halfway through its run. Some superhero characters even appear in various issues, though it also works perfectly well as a standalone graphic novel. Written by the now-disgraced author Neil Gaiman, “The Sandman” told a sweeping dark fantasy story about Dream, one of a group of cosmic beings known as the Endless.
The first issue of “The Sandman” came out in 1989, and efforts to adapt it for the screen began soon after in the ’90s. Nothing came of these attempts, in part because the story doesn’t quite lend itself to easy adaptation, especially not as a film, but Netflix came through. The first season of the very expensive adaptation premiered on the streamer in 2022 with Tom Sturridge in the title role. Reviews for the series were strong, and a second and final season aired in 2025. A spin-off series, “Dead Boy Detectives,” was set in the same world as “The Sandman” and aired one season on Netflix in 2024.
