Posted in: Comics, DC Comics, Swipe File | Tagged: Bleeding Hearts, vertigo

Separated At Birth: DC Vertigo February 2026 and November 1997

Separated At Birth: DC Vertigo February 2026 and November 1997

This was the cover to Vertigo's Winter Edge, the first kinda-crossover from DC Comics, featuring a variety of short stories and previews of Vertigo series back in 1997 with this Brian Bolland cover.

And now, as DC Comics is relaunching Vertigo twenty-eight years later, they are doing a new version of the cover with all the new Vertigo covers by Alvaro Martinez Bueno… and each new series will launch with a section of this as a connected cover.

And, as seen in DC Comics' February 2026 solicits and solicitations, with Bleeding Hearts, End Of Life and The Peril Of The Brutal Dark: An Ezra Cain Mystery.

BLEEDING HEARTS #1 (MR)
(W) Deniz Camp (A/CA) Stipan Morian
THE RED-HOT WRITER OF ABSOLUTE MARTIAN MANHUNTER, DENIZ CAMP, RE-TEAMS WITH BREAKOUT ARTIST STIPAN MORIAN TO UNLEASH VERTIGO'S FIRST NEW #1! The zombies won–and ten years after the fall of humanity, they're the dominant form of life (or not-life) on Earth. They've developed their own cultural practices, their own language, their own society. Mouse-Pokes-Golf-Ball-Through-Hole-In-Head (Poke for short) is a beloved member of his community, and with his brother-in-arm Mush, he's happy to shamble along through the only world he can remember…until the day his heart mysteriously starts beating again. And in a blink, the first humans he sees have stopped looking like food and have started looking like…friends…? The team behind 20th Century Men, the bold mission statement that launched writer Deniz Camp and artist Stipan Morian to the next level of the comics industry, has reunited to bring you a world ruled by ruthless kill-or-be-killed logic, pitted against the demands of a single beating, bleeding, emotional heart! $3.99 2/11/2026

END OF LIFE #1 (MR)
(W) Kyle Starks (A) Steve Pugh (CA) Gerald Parel
KYLE STARKS AND STEVE PUGH TAKE ON A HITMAN IN TROUBLE! Professional hitman Eddie Stallion has messed up. He's accidentally robbed the Raven, a high-ranking boss of the international cabal of assassins the Menagerie, of which Eddie is a member…or he was. Now with a price on his head, Eddie chooses to hide in the one place everyone knows he'd never go…the small midwestern town of Pluto, home of his estranged father and known hard-ass George Stallion. Looking for safe harbor, Eddie instead finds his resentful father dying of cancer, old friends looking to collect that bounty, Menagerie assassins who have wandered into town, a cancelled newspaper comic-strip creator turned local crime lord, and oh yeah, his childhood first love, too. Kyle Starks and Steve Pugh, the team behind Peacemaker Tries Hard!, present the story of a man-child assassin with some very grown-up problems. As Eddie grows more attached to the people of Pluto, he'll have to step in to solve those problems the only way a hitman knows how! $3.99 2/18/2026

THE PERIL OF THE BRUTAL DARK AN EZRA CAIN MYSTERY #1 (OF 6) (MR)
(W) Chris Condon (A/CA) Jacob Phillips
CHRIS CONDON AND JACOB PHILLIPS INTRODUCE A NEW NOIR ICON! New York City, 1941. Ezra Cain is a private investigator with a reputation for taking it on the chin if it means solving a case. But it's his former life as an archaeology student that makes him the only man to track down an artifact that's gone missing from the Museum of Natural History…an ancient anvil said to hold the power of the Greek god Hephaestus. If someone could harness that power, they could bend nations to their will. Science fiction quickly becomes Cain's reality when a shadowy sect calling themselves the Brutal Dark appears in the city wielding resources that defy human logic. Now Ezra is the only thing that stands between them and their plot to overthrow America! Writer Chris Condon and artist Jacob Phillips, creators of the hit series That Texas Blood and The Enfield Gang Massacre, introduce us to a private eye whose business is exposing our deepest secrets…but on this job, he'll learn that some mysteries are better off buried! $3.99 2/25/2026

NICE HOUSE ON THE LAKE #7 (OF 12)
(W) James Tynion IV (A/CA) Alvaro Martinez Bueno
One of the most critically acclaimed and bestselling horror titles of 2021 returns for its shocking second act—and now is the perfect time to enter the house! The 10 hardy survivors gathered in the house by their mutual friend Walter thought they'd finally cracked the code on his plans…and now everything they thought they knew has literally changed. Can they free themselves from their patterns? Or are they all just determined to build a prison of their very own? Grab the first collected volume and get caught up on the most surprising series in comics! $3.99 3/1/2022

And the ones still to come:

• 100 BULLETS: THE U.S. OF ANGER
  Created by BRIAN AZZARELLO & EDUARDO RISSO
  EIGHT ISSUES Happy 250th, America. Lono's back. You won't survive the year.
• A WALKING SHADOW
  Created by SIMON SPURRIER & AARON CAMPBELL
  SIX ISSUES Eight strangers. Four wheels. One light. One ravenous shadow.
• FANATIC
  Created by GRACE ELLIS & HANNAH TEMPLER
  ONGOING She's the ultimate fan. And she'll kill to prove it.
• NECRETACEOUS
  Created by TOM TAYLOR & DARICK ROBERTSON
  ONGOING There are many theories about the extinction of the dinosaurs. They're all wrong.
• BLACK TOWER: THE RAVEN CONSPIRACY
  Created by RAM V & MIKE PERKINS
  RECURRING SERIES Occult warfare was only a fantasy, dead and debunked…at least that's what they'd like you to think.
• THE CRYING DOLL
  Created by MARIKO TAMAKI & ROSEMARY VALERO-O'CONNELL
  EIGHT ISSUES Anna might just be a murderer…can Polly save her from herself?

Call it Separated At Birth or call it Swipe File, we present two or more images that resemble each other to some degree. They may be homages, parodies, ironic appropriations, coincidences, or works of the lightbox. We trust you, the reader, to make that judgment yourself. If you are unable to do so, we ask that you please return your eyes to their maker before any further damage is done. Separated At Birth doesn't judge; it is more interested in the process of creation, how work influences other work, how new work comes from old, and sometimes how the same ideas emerge simultaneously, as if their time has just come. The Swipe File was named after the advertising industry habit where writers and artists collect images and lines they admire to inspire them in their work. It was swiped from The Comics Journal, which originally ran a similar column, and the now-defunct Swipe Of The Week website, but Separated At Birth was considered a less antagonistic title.

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