This successful revitalization of the Silver Age Teen Titans led DC's editors [72] 

to seek the same for

the wider DC Universe. The result, the Wolfman/Pérez 12-issue limited series Crisis on Infinite
Earths, gave the company an opportunity to realign and jettison some of the characters' complicated
backstory and continuity discrepancies. A companion publication, two volumes entitled The History
of the DC Universe, set out the revised history of the major DC characters. Crisis featured many key
deaths that shaped the DC Universe for the following decades, and it separated the timeline of DC
publications into pre- and post-"Crisis".
Meanwhile, a parallel update had started in the non-superhero and horror titles. Since early 1984,
the work of British writer Alan Moore had revitalized the horror series The Saga of the Swamp Thing,
and soon numerous British writers, including Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison, began freelancing for
the company. The resulting influx of sophisticated horror-fantasy material led to DC in 1993
establishing the Vertigo mature-readers imprint, which did not subscribe to the Comics Code
Authority.[73]
Two DC limited series, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller and Watchmen by Moore
and artist Dave Gibbons, drew attention in the mainstream press for their dark psychological
complexity and promotion of the antihero. [74] These titles helped pave the way for comics to be more
widely accepted in literary-criticism circles and to make inroads into the book industry, with collected
editions of these series as commercially successful trade paperbacks.[75]
The mid-1980s also saw the end of many long-running DC war comics, including series that had
been in print since the 1960s. These titles, all with over 100 issues, included Sgt. Rock, G.I.
Combat, The Unknown Soldier, and Weird War Tales.