70 Years of Marvel - 1998

By 1998, Peter David had been writing the adventures of the Incredible Hulk for over a decade. In that time, the character had gradually evolved, from a character which no-one was really interested in, to one of the company's most complex books, with a main character whose motivations we could never really be sure of, and whose next move we'd rarely be able to guess. The book being a big success, Marvel editorial naturally wanted to tamper. Unfortunately, by 1998, Peter David was nearly as big a success as the Hulk, so when he was asked to alter his plans for the character, restoring the Dumb Savage Hulk who'd been so preeminent before his takeover, he walked off the book. It wouldn't be the last falling out PAD would have with Marvel Editorial, but it would be the biggest, with the Hulk wandering undirected for the next few years.

1998 also saw Marvel experiment again with outsourcing their work, this time to Event Comics, a little company run by an up-and-coming writer / artist called Joe Quesada. Rather than handing over their prime properties to Quesada and co, Marvel instead gave them free reign with some of their second-tier titles: Black Panther, Daredevil, the Inhumans, and the Punisher. The Marvel Knights books, as they were branded, were aimed at an older readership, 15 up, and, other than redefining the Punisher as a fallen angel, didn't miss a beat. In particular, Daredevil's fortunes took an upswing, transforming a character that no-one had known what to do with in years, into a grim and gritty street vigilante, under the authorship of first Kevin Smith, then Brian Michael Bendis. As with every successful idea in comics, the first idea of editorial is that more of what is successful, will automatically be more successful. Which is why pretty much every book this decade has been aimed at older readers. Comics aren't for kids, folks, not anymore.

Or maybe they are. After all, 1998 was also the year in which Spider-Girl gained her own title. Created as a one-off for an issue of What If?, May "Mayday" Parker is the daughter of Spidey and wife former bidey-in, Mary Jane (a daughter never born in the "real" Marvel Universe), and her adventures, provided by Tom DeFalco, have been ongoing ever since, despite numerous well-documented attempts to kill the title off. Let's hear it for the little book that could.

Elsewhere in 1998, Bill Clinton was denying having had relations with "that woman", whilst George Michael was admitting trying to have relations with "the man".

70 Years of Marvel - 1996

1996 was a crunch year for Marvel. While the X-Titles were doing ok, the Spider-Books were embroiled in the seemingly-everlasting Clone Saga, and the Avengers were just emerging from The Crossing, a crossover event which had seen Tony Stark go evil, the Wasp turned into a real giant-size woman-bug, and many readers jumping ship. Captain America, written at the time by Mark Waid, was well-regarded, but nothing spectacular, sales-wise. And the Fantastic Four had been lumbering along under Tom DeFalco's guidance for years. With sales crashing all over as a result of the end of the speculator boom, Marvel wanted to try something radical.

Their answer was Onslaught, an ultra-powerful mutant (with a dark secret) who tried to destroy the world. A couple of months of group-wide crossovers led to a final battle, in which the Avengers and the FF sacrificed themselves to stop Onslaught. The public, seeing their heroes killed, blamed mutantkind, and the X-Men's lives got that little bit more difficult.

But the Avengers and the Fantastic Four weren't dead. Oh no, not at all. Instead, they faced a worse fate: outsourcing! Marvel hired Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld, founders of Image Comics, to "reimagine" the two teams, in the Image style. So it was farewell to the classic Marvel style, and hello to this...



It worked, after a fashion. Sales went through the roof, and everyone was talking about Marvel again. And that the the books weren't very good didn't really matter. After a year, the books would revert to being written and drawn in-house, with yet another set of #1 issues. And because each restart was accompanied by a bump in sales, we could henceforth look forward to pretty much every Marvel title restarting every couple of years.

In other comics news, the Clone Saga did eventually finish, at the end of this year, accompanied by the return of Norman Osborn. It says something for how much people were tired of the whole clone thing, that the resurrection of Spidey's most famously dead arch-nemesis seemed like a pretty neat idea. 13 years on, and with Norman appearing in pretty much every comic pretty much every month, it doesn't seem like such a winning plan.

1996 was also the year of Amalgam Comics, in which Marvel and DC Comics collaborated on a shared universe, with characters made up of blends of both companies' heroes and villains.


A novel idea amongst a sea of detritus, Amalgam Comics managed two runs, in '96 and '97, before vanishing without trace.

70 Years of Comics - 1988

Excalibur had been devised in 1987, in the aftermath of the two X-Events: the Morlock Massacre, which had seen Kitty Pryde and Nightcrawler injured and forced to retire from the team; and The Fall Of The Mutants, in which the rest of the X-Men had been apparently killed (in fact, they hadn't died, they'd just gone to Australia, but that's another story). For no particularly good reason, Kitty and Nightcrawler, along with Cyclops' daughter from a possible future, Rachel, teamed up with Marvel UK's Captain Britain, and his girlfriend, Meggan, moved to London and embarked on a series of trans-dimensional adventures. The best of these adventures were written and drawn by Chris Claremont and Alan Davis, and no-one else really seemed to have a feel for how to write this book, which mostly turned into just another X-Book, except for a brief stint where Warren Ellis tried out some of the superhero noir stuff which would make him a name on Image's Stormwatch a few years later.

Elsewhere, in '88, Speedball the Masked Marvel was making his debut, courtesy of Tom DeFalco and Marvel legend, Steve Ditko.

In the real world, 1988 saw the Lockerbie Disaster, and George Bush Sr winning the US Presidential Election. On TV, tiresome sci-fi show, Red Dwarf, was using up money which might have been better spent elsewhere, and Roseanne Barr was making a star out of John Goodman, whilst Roger Rabbit was the talk of Hollywood.

"Expect The Unexpected!"

So, as we've previously seen, 1986 saw the introduction of Jim Shooter's New Universe line, which was, I think, the first attempt by any comics company to launch, from scratch, a whole new universe, with heroes and villains gaining their powers as a result of a mysterious "White Event". We'd later see this sort of thing, again from Jim Shooter at Valiant Comics, from the launch of Image Comics, and indeed from Marvel with the 2099 and Ultimate lines. But this was, in 1986, a relatively revolutionary idea.


One of the controversies of the New Universe was that, according to legend, Marvel wiped out a swathe of its existing titles to make way for the new books. In actual fact the only books which I can see as being canned in the months before the launch were Power Man And Iron Fist, a title which had (and I speak as a big fan of Iron Fist) seen better times; Star Wars, which had lasted several years after the release of Return of the Jedi; Doctor Who, something of a niche product (in those days); and The Thing, despatched, at least in part, so that Jim Shooter could bring Ben Grimm back into the Fantastic Four fold. Other than that, and a couple of mini-series finishing up, there wasn't much in the way of dead wood being cleared in the months up to the launch of the first New Universe books.


Famously, Shooter fell foul of Marvel's new managment team, and so his plan to hire top talent to launch his new line was thwarted: oddly, no-one who was anyone wanted to write or draw a brand new, untried-out book, especially as there was no money to pay anyone. What we ended up with was a host of books written by Marvel's editorial team, and drawn by those who really needed the work.


Star Brand
Shooter himself wrote, whilst John Romita Jr, one of the few willing volunteers for the project, drew this, a tale of an ordinary man who suddenly gains superpowers. One of the more criticized books, described as a wish fulfilment book for Shooter himself, Star Brand was nonetheless one of the more lasting concepts, being picked up in the Marvel Universe proper long after the New Universe was long gone.

Spitfire And The Troubleshooters
Gerry Conway and Herb Trimpe came up with this one, based around the adventures of a group of MIT students and their battle suit


D.P.7
Mark Gruenwald and Paul Ryan wrote the entire 32 issue run of this one, concerning a group of suddenly-superpowered folk who, rather than be cut up like lab rats, go on the run. If you're a fan of the X-Men and The Fugitive, this might be your kind of thing.

Justice
Brought to us by Archie Goodwin and Geoff Isherwood, Justice concerned the exploits of an alien who came to Earth to hunt down the evil. At least it did, until Peter David was hired to retcon Justice into a delusional government agent instead. Amazingly, this book lasted 32 issues.


Kickers, Inc.
At the same time that Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz were building a rep for themselves as the creative team on Amazing Spider-Man, they were also working together on this book, about a team good samaritans, led by a superstrong ex-footballer. As good as it sounds, this book managed 12 issues, before being put to death, by which time DeFalco and Frenz had left the book to take on the adventures of a golden-haired Asgardian.

Mark Hazzard: Merc
Written, at first, by Peter David, and drawn, at first, by Gray Morrow, this dealt with, as you may guess, the adventures of an appropriately named mercenary. Certainly different to normal superhero fare, it was barely related to any of the other New Universe books, which may explain why it lasted only the dozen issues.


Nightmask
Another book by Archie Goodwin, with a rotating cast of artists that included future workhorses, Ron Lim and Mark Bagley, among many others. Lasting just the twelve issues, this one began with Keith Remsen, comatose since an explosion, being awoken by the White Event, and gaining the power to enter people's dreams, like the Sandman, only wearing a domino mask, for some reason.

Psi-Force
A group of telepaths on the run from American and Russian secret service agents, Psi Force was the creation of Archie Goodwin (again) and Walt Simonson, though neither of them showed up to produce an issue. Notably, this did see some very early comics work from top 90s talent, Fabien Nicieza, who wrote half of its 32 issues.


After various attempts at tinkering, including the departure of Jim Shooter, the slimming down of the books, and a couple of "event" books, the New Universe line was somewhat unceremoniously killed off in the summer of '89, its titles replaced with a swathe of new books: Quasar; a second volume of What If?; and new titles for She-Hulk, Nick Fury and Moon Knight. The age of experiment was over, and it was back to stripmining Marvel's history, for the next few years, at least.