A
M
E
R
I
C
N
I
C
A
N
COMIC BOOK H
R
THE
C
O
L
1990S 1990-1999
E
S
By JASON SACKS and KEITH DALLAS
Dedication To all comic shop retailers. Without them, there is no comic book industry.
Writer: Editor: Logo Design: Layout: Cover Design: Proofreader: Publisher:
Jason Sacks Keith Dallas Bill Walko David Paul Greenawalt Jon B. Cooke Scott Peters John Morrow
TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, North Carolina 27614 www.twomorrows.com • 919-449-0344 email: twomorrow@aol.com Second Printing • December 2020 • Printed in China ISBN 978-1-60549-084-7 American Comic Book Chronicles: 1990s is published by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, North Carolina, 27614, USA. 919-449-0344. Jason Sacks, Writer. Keith Dallas, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. All characters depicted herein are TM and © their respective owners, as noted where they appear. All textual material in this book is © 2020 TwoMorrows Publishing. 1963 and associated characters TM and © Alan Moore, Steve Bissette and Rick Veitch. Femforce TM and © AC Comics. WildStar TM and © Al Gordon and Jerry Ordway. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen TM and © Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill. Promethea, Tom Strong, Top 10 and characters from Tomorrow Stories TM and © America’s Best Comics, LLC. The Comet, The Crusaders, The Fly, The Jaguar, The Shield and The Web TM and © Archie Comic Publications, Inc. Maus TM and © Art Spiegelman. Fathom TM and © Aspen MLT, Inc. Characters from Barry Windsor-Smith: Storyteller TM and © Barry Windsor-Smith. Tick and related characters TM and © Ben Edlund. Mike Danger TM and © BIG Entertainment. Images from City of Glass TM and © Bob Callahan Studios. 100 Bullets TM and © Brian Azzarello and DC Comics. Star Trek and associated characters TM and © CBS Studios Inc. Sovereign Seven TM and © Chris Claremont. Acme Novelty Library TM and © Chris Ware. Law Dog TM and © Chuck Dixon and Flint Henry. Razorline and associated characters TM and © Clive Barker. Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Men in Black TM and © Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. Pitt TM and © Dale Keown. Eightball TM and © Daniel Clowes. Barb Wire, Ghost, the Machine, the Mask, Monster, Motorhead, Pit Bulls, Wolf Gang, X TM and © Dark Horse Comics, Inc. Cages TM and © Dave McKean. Rubber Blanket TM and © David Mazzucchelli. Aquaman, Azrael, Bane, Batman, Black Canary, Captain Marvel, Catwoman, Characters from Kingdom Come, Characters from Tangent Comics, Clark Kent, Darkseid, Death, Demon, Doomsday, Eclipso, Enemy Ace, Flash, Green Lantern, Hitman, Impulse, Joker, Justice League and associated characters, Kid Eternity, Lobo, Lois Lane, Martian Manhunter, Monarch, Neron, OMAC, Oracle, Penguin, Reverse-Flash, Robin, Sandman, Shade the Changing Man, Spectre, Starman, Stars and STRIPE, Supergirl, Superman and associated characters, Swamp Thing, Tim Hunter, Wonder Woman and associated characters TM and © DC Comics. Evil Ernie, Lady Death, Vampirella TM and © Dynamite Characters, LLC. Charlemagne, Dark Dominion, Dogs of War, the ood Guys, Warriors of Plasm TM and © EEP, L.P. Savage Dragon TM and © Erik Larsen. Hard Boiled TM and © Frank Miller and Geof Darrow. 300, Sin City TM and © Frank Miller Inc. Martha Washington TM and © Frank Miller, Inc. and Dave Gibbons. Preacher TM and © Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. Birdland TM and © Gilbert Hernandez. American Splendor TM and © Harvey Pekar Estate. Stuck Rubber Baby TM and © Howard Cruse. Danger Girl TM and © J. Scott Campbell Ltd. Hobbit TM and © J.R.R. Tolkien. Secret City Saga and associated characters TM and © Jack Kirby Estate. Bone and associated characters TM and © Jeff Smith. Breed TM and © Jim Starlin. Shadowhawk TM and © Jim Valentino. Battle Chasers TM and © Joe Madueiera. Ash TM and © Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti. Next Men TM and © John Byrne. Fighting American TM and © Joseph H. Simon and the Estate of Jack Kirby. Astro City TM and © Juke Box Productions. Trencher TM and © Keith Giffen. Stray Bullets TM and © Lapham, Inc. Star Wars and associated characters TM and © Lucasfilm Ltd. Night Man, Prime, Prototype, the Strangers TM and © Malibu Comics Entertainment, Inc. Breathtaker TM and © Mark Wheatley and Marc Hempel. Alpha Flight, Angela, Avengers and associated characters, Big Hero 6, Black Knight, Black Widow, Blade, Cable, Captain America, Carnage, Daredevil, Deadpool, Dr. Strange, Elektra, Fantastic Four, Foolkiller, Force Works and associated characters, Galactus, Gambit, Generation X and associated characters, Ghost Rider, Green Goblin, Guardians of the Galaxy, Howard the Duck, Hulk, Iron Man, J2, Juggernaut, Magneto, Marvel cosmic characters, Miracleman, Namor the Sub-Mariner, New Mutants and associated characters, New Warriors and associated characters, Northstar, Onslaught, Punisher, Red Skull, Scarlet Spider, Spider-Girl, Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2099, Thanos, Thor, Thunderbolts and related characters, Venom, Vision, Wild Thing, Wolverine, Wonder Man, X-Force and associated characters, X-Men and associated characters TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. Amalgam characters TM and © Marvel Characters Inc. and DC Comics. Grendel TM and © Matt Wagner. Madman, Red Rocket 7 TM and © Michael Allred. Hellboy TM and © Mike Mignola. Blood Syndicate, Hardware, Icon, Static TM and © Milestone Media Inc. Valeria the She-Bat TM and © Neal Adams. Stardust TM and © Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess. Alice Cooper TM and © Nightmare, Inc. Super Mario Bros, Zelda TM and © Nintendo of America Inc. THB TM and © Paul Pope. Hate TM and © Peter Bagge. Dragon Lines TM and © Peter Quinones and Ron Lim. Magnus Robot Fighter, Solar, Man of the Atom, Turok TM and © Random House. Inc. Judge Dredd TM and © Rebellion ® A/S. Bloodstrike, Glory, Prophet, Supreme, Youngblood and associated characters TM and © Rob Liefeld Inc. Scud, the Disposable Assassin TM and © Rob Schrab. Maxx TM and © Sam Kieth. Invisibles TM and © Grant Morrison. Dc Understanding Comics TM and © Scott McCloud. Too Much Coffee Man TM and © Shannon Wheeler. Art from Dinosaurs: A Celebration TM and © Steve White. Rocketeer TM and © The Rocketeer Trust. Spawn TM and © Todd McFarlane Productions, Inc. Hutch Owen TM and © Tom Hart. Codename: Stryke Force, Cyberforce, The Darkness, Witchblade TM and © Top Cow Publications, Inc. Aliens, The X- Files TM and © Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. Battlestar Galactica TM and © Universal Studios. Archer & Armstrong, Bloodshot, Eternal Warrior, H.A.R.D. Corps, Harbinger, Rai, Shadowman, X-O Manowar TM and © Valiant Entertainment LLC. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles TM and © Viacom International Inc. Characters from Transmetropolitan TM and © Warren Ellis and Darrick Robertson. The Authority, Deathblow, Gen13, Planetary, Wetworks, Wildcats TM and © WildStorm Publications, an imprint of DC Comics. The Spirit TM and © Will Eisner Studios Inc. Shi TM and © William Elliott Tucci. Zorro and Lady Rawhide TM and © Zorro Productions, Inc. Destroyer Duck TM and © Steve Gerber. Bad Boy TM and © Frank Miller Inc. and Simon Bisley. Blood S.C.R.E.A.M., Fatale, Knights of Broadway and Shadow State, Big Numbers and associated characters TM and © respective copyright holders.
Table of Contents Introductory Note about the Chronological Structure of American Comic Book Chronicles.................. 4
Note on Comic Book Sales and Circulation Data.......................................... 5
Introduction & Acknowledgements . ........... 6
Chapter One: 1990 Swing Time..............................................................8
Chapter Two: 1991 X-Year.................................................................... 34
Chapter Three: 1992 Nirvana................................................................. 56
Chapter Four: 1993 Feeling Vertigo.................................................... 90
Chapter Five: 1994 Counting Down to Zero.................................. 128
Chapter Six: 1995 The Exclusivity Wars....................................... 164
Chapter Seven: 1996 Crossing Over..................................................... 194
Chapter Eight: 1997 Change or Die.................................................... 222
Chapter Nine: 1998 The Heroes Return........................................... 242
Chapter Ten: 1999 No Man’s Land.................................................. 262
Works Cited....................................................... 280 Index................................................................... 286
1990
Swing Time
For many comic book publishers, creators and retailers, the dawn of the 1990s was the best of times. Fully recovered from the black-and-white boom and bust of the late 1980s, the comic book industry was experiencing a renaissance: of sales, of critical attention and of diverse, quality material. Fueling it all was the ever-expanding Direct Market of comic book shops which definitively proved itself a profitable alternative to the antiquated—and corrupt—newsstand system. Meanwhile, the runaway success of Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman film, starring Jack Nicholson and Michael Keaton, promised a new link between Hollywood and the comics industry, just as a new generation of comic book celebrities became affixed to some of the most popular series of the time. As the decade began, most newsstand-distributed comic books—from publishers like Archie, DC, Harvey and Marvel—cost $1, but overall, the price points ran the gamut. DC’s Superman titles (Action Comics, Adventures of Superman and Superman) were cover-priced at 75¢. Deluxe-format comics cost twice as much or more. The Batman-featured Legends of the Dark Knight and Marvel’s Marc Spector: Moon Knight cost $1.50 while Legion of SuperHeroes cost $1.75. Above that, DC and Marvel charged $3.95 (and sometimes $4.95) for their squarebound books. Direct Market-exclusive publishers strove to keep their price points competitive: Eclipse sold Miracleman for $1.50 while Mike Grell’s Sable (published by First) cost $1.75. Innovation Publishing’s Justice Machine had a $1.95 price point.
For kid-friendly publishers who were out of favor in the Direct Market, the newsstand was still a vital source of revenue. While Archie Comics refreshed its line with titles like Explorers of the Unknown and Riverdale High as well as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Archie crossover, Harvey Comics struck a deal with the pop music group New Kids On the Block and published 44 issues starring the teen idols between 1990 and 1991. Unseen in comic books since the Whitman line ended in 1984, the Warner Bros. line of cartoon characters made a tentative return in 1990, as well. In the same time frame as the year’s merger of Warner Communications and Time, Inc., DC published Bugs Bunny for the first time in a three-issue mini-series and the short-lived Looney Tunes Magazine and Tiny Toons Adventures Magazine.
CHAPTER ONE
A growing number of comic book publishers aggressively courted the bookstore market with new graphic novels and reprint collections. Matching the Marvel Masterworks line of hardcovers, which premiered in 1987, DC began producing DC Archives in 1989 with inaugural volumes 8
that reprinted the very earliest Batman and Superman stories from the late 1930s and early 1940s. More recent material, like Frank Miller’s Daredevil and Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s V For Vendetta received the trade paperback treatment. Eclipse released an adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit by David Wenzel, and First Comics revived Classics Illustrated, last seen in 1969, with new adaptations of such literary works as Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (by Bill Sienkiewicz), Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (by Michael Ploog), and Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (by Joe Staton), among others, for $3.75 each. Each of these projects was an attempt to gain a foothold in the bookstore marketplace to varying degrees of success.
panies. The reality, however, was that very few publishers could offer creators gainful employ ment. As one commentator noted at the time, Comico was facing bankruptcy and First and Eclipse were “abandoning monthly titles for the sake of albums, anthol ogies, reprints, and sundries. Despite the industry’s overall bullish literary adaptations published in 1990 The resulting Among the were The Hobbit and Moby Dick. disposition, some creators lamented vacuum leaves the limited opportunities offered to the Big Two [i.e. them. The black-and-white bust of DC and Marvel] looking more and its history. Shipping over 115 million two years left lingering scars but did more like the lone reliable places for a copies of comics and magazines, little to diminish the number of comic big paycheck” (Kreiner 3). Marvel also moved strongly into book publishers operating in 1990: publishing squarebound comics Amazing Heroes #179 (May 1990) But at least the decade began with and softcover and hardcover graphic listed comics from 73 different commore than a dozen distributors novels (Humphrey 15). servicing the comics business, including not only the farMarvel boasted one of the most reaching Diamond, Heroes diverse lines in comics, publishing not World and Capital City but just super-hero comics but also war also smaller operators like titles (The ‘Nam), humor (Groo) and Comics Hawaii, New Jersey’s science fiction (Marvel’s Epic line was Superhero Enterprises and filled with science fiction adventure Portland, Oregon’s Second titles such as Alien Legion, Interface, Genesis. Retailers in most Open Space and Stalkers). What’s parts of the country tended to more, Marvel offered several comics order the latest comic books directed at kids. As much as 10% of from the distributor nearest Marvel’s output in a given month them since most distributors were “entry-level comics” including relatively carried the same Camp Candy, ALF (adapting the material as their competitors. popular TV sitcom character), Brute Force, Heathcliff, and Police Academy, As sales surged at the among others. In 1991 Marvel would beginning of the decade expand that line, including a comic and money was made, new version of the rappers Kid ’n Play publishers joined the field and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Comic and new creators became Book, following on the heels of an stars. Much of the industry adaptation of Bill and Ted’s Bogus was euphoric, a mood that Journey, written and illustrated by would last several years… indie comics darling Evan Dorkin. until hubris and inattention brought an end to the party. Marvel’s owner was Revlon chairman Ronald O. Perelman, who purchased the company in early 1989 for $82.5 The Big Business of million, outbidding a group that in Marvel Comics cluded former Marvel editor-in-chief Self-mocking cover by Todd McFarlane from the fanzine In 1990, Marvel Comics had Amazing Heroes. Spider-Man TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. Jim Shooter. In an autumn 1990 one of the biggest years in 9
TIMELINE: 1990 A compilation of the year’s notable comic book history events alongside some of the year’s most significant popular culture and historical events. (On sale dates are approximations.) January 9: Written by Louise Simonson and drawn by Rob Liefeld, New Mutants #87 introduces Cable, a gun-toting mutant soon to become one of Marvel’s most popular characters of the decade.
March 18: Disguised as policemen, two men steal art from a museum in Boston, including masterpieces by Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Degas and an ancient Chinese bronze beaker valued at $300 million.
FEBRUARY
January 18: The mayor of Washington D.C., Marion Barry, is arrested for possession of crack cocaine during an FBI sting operation. He is subsequently sentenced to six months in prison.
May 19: Madonna’s dance-pop single “Vogue” becomes the #1 song on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart.
April 24: A symbol of the 1980s era of Wall Street greed, “junk bond” financier Michael Milken pleads guilty to six felonies in connection with the largest securities fraud case in history.
February 11: After 27 years of captivity as a political prisoner opposing Apartheid, Nelson Mandela is released from a South African prison.
JANUARY
June 15: A feature film version of Dick Tracy—based on Chester Gould’s comic strip detective— arrives in movie theaters. Despite tremendous publicity and fanfare, along with the star power of such actors as Warren Beatty, Al Pacino and Madonna, the film proves to be a disappointment at the box office.
April 8: Twin Peaks—a murder mystery co-created by David Lynch—premieres on the ABC television network. Soon the entire country will be asking, “Who Killed Laura Palmer?”
MARCH
APRIL
March 30: A bigscreen version of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arrives in movie theaters. The film would gross more than $201 million worldwide.
M AY
April 24: The space shuttle Discovery blasts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying the $1.5 billion Hubble Space Telescope. Once in orbit, Hubble broadcasts images of deep space that revolutionize man’s understanding of the universe. April 8: Ryan White—who gained national attention when he was expelled from school after contracting the AIDS virus—dies at the age of 18 from complications of the disease. After his death, Congress passes the “Ryan White CARE Act” which funds health care for uninsured AIDS patients.
JUNE June 19: Over two million copies of the debut issue of Spider-Man—written and drawn by Todd McFarlane—are distributed to comic book stores and newsstands. In a sign of things to come, Marvel offers multiple variations of the issue including polybagged copies and gold-tinted and silver-tinted covers.
June 26: President George Bush—who ran for office in 1988 on a pledge of “no new taxes”—publicly concedes that increased taxes need to be combined with spending cuts in order to reduce the national deficit.
New Mutants and Spider-Man TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles TM and © Viacom International Inc. Swamp Thing and Flash TM and © DC Comics.
article, Forbes magazine ranked 47- year-old Perelman as the third-richest American through his investments in cosmetics, camping gear, an artificial sweetener company and a drug company. Marvel staffers, though, privately referred to their new Revlon Cosmetics boss by a different name: “the lipstick guy” (Howe 313). Many doubted Perelman had any genuine interest in—or affection for—comic books. The new owner, though, clearly grasped the profitable potential of his new possession. He referred to Marvel Comics as “a miniDisney” whose fictional characters could be lucratively branded and marketed (Raviv 12). To that end, Perelman pushed for the production of more crossover “event comics,” beginning with 1989’s “Inferno,” a multi-part story that ran through Uncanny X-Men, New Mutants and X-Factor, with circulationboosting tie-ins with other comics including Daredevil and Fantastic
Four. Perelman also encouraged the promotion of Marvel’s most popular creators. The immediate result was that Marvel’s sales surged dramatically and net income doubled. Marvel’s editor-in-chief Tom DeFalco supervised a large crew of editors that included Craig Anderson, Bobbie Chase, Dan Chichester, Don Daley, Bob Harras, Terry Kavanagh, Ralph Macchio, Howard Mackie, Carl Potts and Jim Salicrup. Together, that team was responsible for releasing ap proximately 70 comics a month. DeFalco drew less attention to himself than his outspoken editor-in-chief predecessor. Unlike Jim Shooter, who always seemed to have his tall frame in front of the comics media, DeFalco was more of a behind-the-scenes presence, making sure his editors received his full support. The last thing DeFalco wanted was a continuation of the poor office morale that plagued the end of Shooter’s tenure. At the same time, DeFalco held his editors 10
responsible for maintaining the integrity of Marvel’s characters, and now his subordinates were monetarily incentivized: like writers and artists, editors received bonus payments for best-selling books (Howe 314). Marvel’s core super-hero line had seldom been stronger than it was in 1990. The company dominated the Direct Market with a juggernaut group of titles that was steadily accumulating new series, and Marvel’s most talked-about comic book of the year starred its most iconic super-hero and its most popular artist.
The Adjectiveless Spider-Man By 1990, Amazing Spider-Man had turned into one of Marvel’s bestselling comics, with an average monthly circulation of 334,893 – the highest the title had achieved since 1969. Much of the success could be attributed to artist Todd McFarlane, a 28-year-old Canadian who entered the comics field through a back-up
October 4: Beverly Hills, 90210—a drama starring Jason Priestley and Shannon Doherty as two teenagers from Minneapolis who move with their family to Beverly Hills, California— debuts on the FOX television network. The show eventually becomes the most watched program on television, spawning various spin-offs and imitations.
September 5: Jerry Iger—a cartoonist who partnered with Will Eisner to become one of the earliest comic book “packagers” in the 1930s—dies at the age of 87.
July 25: Sam Grainger— an inker best known for his Marvel Comics work during the 1960s and 1970s on titles like Avengers, Incredible Hulk and X-Men—dies at the age of 60 due to diabetes-related complications.
August 2: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein invades the neighboring nation of Kuwait on the pretense that Kuwait is stealing oil that rightfully belongs to Iraq. Within two days, Kuwait is completely conquered. The invasion—and subsequent annexation—of Kuwait is condemned internationally, setting up a historic military operation the following year.
September 13: Law & Order—a police procedural and courtroom drama created by Dick Wolf— premieres on the NBC television network. The show would last 20 seasons, winning numerous awards along the way.
October 9: David Souter is sworn in as a U.S. Supreme Court judge, filling the seat vacated by William Brennan.
J U LY
AUGUST
SEPTEMBER
OCTOBER
September 20: The first episode of The Flash—starring John Wesley Shipp as DC Comics’ Fastest Man Alive—debuts on the CBS television network. Airing in the same Thursday night time slot as NBC’s The Cosby Show and FOX’s The Simpsons, The Flash is canceled after one season.
When McFarlane took over Amazing Spider-Man with issue #298 (March 1988), his depictions of the webslinger and his cast deviated radically from everything that had come before. Spider-Man’s costume had enormous white eyes, and the hero contorted in anatomically impossible poses. Some readers—and Marvel staffers—were aghast, but many more were captivated by the dynamic vividness of McFarlane’s depictions. McFarlane became a bona fide star... but one with a stick in his craw. The problem was that while McFarlane’s
December 26: According to the 1990 census, over 249 million people are living in the United States, an increase of 23 million people since 1980.
DECEMBER
November 15: The producer of the pop music band Milli Vanilli publicly confirms rumors that the lead duo had not performed the actual singing on any part of their debut album, Girl You Know It’s True. Milli Vanilli are subsequently stripped of the Grammy Award they received in 1989 for “Best New Artist.”
July 27: The first episode of Swamp Thing— starring Dick Durock as DC Comics’ heroic muck monster—debuts on the USA cable television network. The show would last three seasons and a total of 72 episodes.
feature in Epic Comics’ Coyote #11 (March 1985) before moving on to draw 24 issues of DC’s Infinity Inc. and three parts of the “Batman: Year Two” story arc in Detective Comics. He then began a memorable long run on Incredible Hulk with writer Peter David that garnered both men some major accolades, including a “Best Artist” Eisner Award nomination for McFarlane in 1988.
NOVEMBER
November 27: British Conservative John Major succeeds Margaret Thatcher as Great Britain’s Prime Minister.
vivid work was driving Amazing Spider-Man’s success, the artist didn’t have total creative control. David Michelinie remained the title’s writer. As McFarlane explained later in the year, “I guess I was getting a little restless on the Amazing Spider-Man book. I figured the only way I could have control over what I wanted to draw was to write the book. It was not so much that I wanted to be a writer, but I wanted to have more freedom on the writing side of it” (Sanderson 18). So with issue #328 (Jan. 1990)— featuring a knock-down, drag-out battle between Spider-Man and the Hulk (and a cover in which a punch from Spider-Man causes the Hulk to smash through the comic logo)— McFarlane quit Amazing Spider-Man and told his editor, Jim Salicrup, to attach him to a title he could both write and draw. (Erik Larsen, fresh off a five-issue stint on The Punisher and soon to be an important figure in McFarlane’s life, became the new 11
December 22: Trade-union activist Lech Walesa becomes Poland’s first popularly elected president.
artist on Amazing Spider-Man.) Considering his inexperience as a writer, McFarlane expected Salicrup to assign him to an under-performing series where he could prove himself (Howe 319). Little did McFarlane know that the Marvel editors had been talking for some time about starting a fourth new Spider-Man series (to join Amazing Spider-Man, Spectacular Spider-Man and Web of Spider-Man) and that became the book McFarlane was offered to write and draw. McFarlane admitted at the time, “It wouldn’t have been my choice to bring in a fourth SpiderMan book, but I wasn’t fool enough to say no to it” (Wong 25). With this new Spider-Man series, McFarlane wanted to pay homage to the history of the character while at the same time update him for a modern audience. He figured the best way to do that was renovate one of the villains originally created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Unfortunately,
1991
X-Year
Impressed by the sales revenue generated in 1990, the executives at Marvel Comics delivered a mandate to their editor-in-chief for 1991: don’t just match the previous year’s performance; do better. With Marvel about to become a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange, potential investors needed assurances of sales growth. Nonetheless, Tom DeFalco felt he was in a bind as he cried to his editors, “How the hell are we gonna do better than that?” (Howe 325). The problem wasn’t going to be whether Marvel would continue to dominate comic book market share. Indeed, Marvel’s share grew dramatically in 1991, peaking at 68.38% of all comics sold in July 1991. The same month, DC’s sales comprised 19.8% of the market, which meant that all other publishers combined accounted for less than 12% of the market (Humphrey 11). The company with the third largest share for the month was Dark Horse Comics with a mere 2.3% of the market. For the entire year Marvel published 91 of the top 100 best-selling comics. The only non-Marvel books to crack the top 50 bestsellers were all four issues of DC’s Robin II mini-series. For Marvel, dominating market share was fait accompli… but also something that was no longer good enough for Marvel’s executives. They wanted more, and they looked at 1990’s Spider-Man #1 as the standard: every year going forward, Marvel needed comic books that sold millions of copies. Nothing less than annual record-breaking sales events would suffice. With that expectation hanging over him, DeFalco turned to the one Marvel property he knew could deliver the results his superiors wanted: the X-Men.
X Marks the Top DeFalco ordered the creation of a new X-Men comic book. While editor Bob Harras initially had concerns that the marketplace wouldn’t support yet another Marvel mutant title (to go along with Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine, X-Factor, Excalibur and New Mutants), he eventually realized a new X-Men book gave him the opportunity to make some big changes that he felt were long overdue. Harras started with New Mutants, which had been suffering a creative schism for nearly a year. Writer Louise Simonson and artist Rob Liefeld had incompatible approaches to the series. Liefeld’s layouts emphasized action-packed violence, foiling Simonson’s attempts to keep New Mutants focused on young characters struggling with both their powers and immaturity. Increasingly frustrated with the fact that her dialogue and plots would be frequently changed without her approval (or even her consultation), Simonson finally faced facts: Harras had cast his lot with Liefeld, and it was time for her to move on. After ten years working at Marvel, first as an editor and then as a writer, Louise Simonson abandoned New Mutants (and her other longtime assignment, X-Factor) and figuratively walked across the street to DC Comics where she helmed a new
CHAPTER TWO 34
turn New Mutants into one of Marvel’s tentpole titles. Backed by Nicieza and Marvel’s Director of Marketing Sven Larsen, Liefeld approached DeFalco about cancelling New Mutants and relaunching it as a new series. Liefeld even promised his editor-in-chief that the rebrand would be a huge hit. That confidence was music to DeFalco’s ears, and he and Harras approved the plan (Howe 326).
New Mutants #98 introduced a trio of new characters, including Deadpool. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.
Superman title, Superman: the Man of Steel, starting in May. Liefeld’s handpicked replacement for Simonson, Fabian Nicieza, took over New Mutants with #98 (Feb. 1991), an issue which introduced three more action-oriented characters: Domino, Gideon and the motor-mouthed, psychotic mercenary Deadpool. With Simonson gone, New Mutants finally became the book that Liefeld always wanted it to be. The young artist, though, had ambitions beyond creative control; Liefeld wanted to
With issue #100 (April 1991) the New Mutants series ended with a jawdropping cliffhanger: on the final page, Stryfe removes his helmet to reveal he looks exactly like his arch-nemesis Cable. (Readers would have to wait a few years to learn that Stryfe is Cable’s clone.) The story continued four months later in the debut issue of a new series titled X-Force, the new name for the Cable-led team whose membership consisted of Boom Boom, Domino, Feral, Shatterstar, Warpath and the final holdout from 1982’s original New Mutants cast, Cannonball. X-Force moves into a new base of operations to continue its battle against Stryfe’s Mutant Liberation Front. With that, Marvel had a mutant group for the 1990s, one completely divorced from
the X-Men’s decades-old purpose of mutants seeking peaceful co-existence with the humans who fear and hate them. Liefeld and Nicieza turned that premise on its head; Cable’s pro-active militancy had X-Force fighting a war where they attacked—and sometimes killed—the enemies who sought to destroy them. Liefeld’s forceful artistry perfectly suited X-Force’s displays of violence, and the new series cemented his status as one of Marvel’s most popular artists. At the same time, however, Liefeld acquired more detractors than seemingly any other creator in the comic book industry. In nearly every comic book fanzine, a debate about Liefeld raged on. Many commentators complained that his work was too undisciplined and too reliant on splash pages. One writer encapsulated the debate well by saying “[Liefeld’s] style remains controversial in its flaunting of traditional pacing, proportion and perspective” (McCallum 57). The worst accusation directed at Liefeld was that he often copied other artists’ work. For instance, a two-page spread in New Mutants #100 shows Shatterstar thrusting his sword behind him Spinning out of The New Mutants, the first issue of Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza’s X-Force sold over four million copies. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.
35
1992
Nirvana
The tremendous fan appeal of artists like Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld and Todd McFarlane led comic books into an unprecedented era, a time when creators were treated like rock stars and their comics sold as many copies each month as popular rock albums sold in a year. Just as grunge rockers Nirvana’s album Nevermind and its feature single “Smells Like Teen Spirit” dominated radio play and record sales with a fresh sound for the 1990s, the new comic book artists presented a furiously energetic spirit that many fans considered revolutionary. According to John Davis, co-owner of Capital City Distribution, total industry sales for 1992 were up at least 25% from 1991, a continuation of several years of rapid growth. In fact, the comics industry cumulatively generated more than $500 million in total sales, the first time that milestone was achieved. Marvel continued to lead the market with a share of around 45%, but that percentage was down significantly from its high of 68.38% for comics sold in July 1991. DC’s overall sales in 1992 dropped 6.5% from the previous year, but DC had perhaps the greatest impact on the market. This led to a feeling of diversity in the medium – at least among publishers who produced mainstream material. The fastest growing publishers were the “middle three” companies Malibu, Valiant and Dark Horse (which Capital jointly named Publisher of the Year). A new imprint boosted the sales of the formerly small Malibu Comics to over 19% of the market in September 1992. Speculator and fan interest raised Valiant’s market share from 0.64% to 4.11% while Dark Horse’s sales, fueled by its growing line of licensed comics, increased a proportionally smaller amount, from 3.71% in 1991 to 5.55% in 1992. A few naysayers, though, warned that the industry’s growth resembled an inflated balloon that was about to pop. These detractors foretold the comic book industry would suffer the same fate as the oversaturated collectible sports card business which, as 1992 dawned, was beginning to crash. For several years, both Marvel and DC Comics tapped into the lucrative card business by releasing their own popular collectible card sets (like a 1991 X-Men set that included cards autographed by Jim Lee). Now the shoe was on the other foot: sports card shop owners began selling comic books to turn their foundering finances around. The foreboding reality, however, was that both the comic book and sports card businesses utilized similar sales strategies. Like sports card companies, comic book publishers grew their readership by promoting the “collectability” of their releases (i.e. polybagged issues, exclusive covers). For their part, an increasing number of consumers bought into the speculation frenzy, allowing an emphasis on the resale value of a comic book to outweigh considerations of its quality. Collectors routinely bought stacks of copies of the latest mega-hyped comic with dreams of flipping it a few months later for big money without ever even opening the book. “One to read, one to bag” was the mantra of the day.
CHAPTER THREE 56
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the independent publishers that didn’t cater to the collectors’ mentality had a rough year. In the second half of 1992, publishers outside the top five split about 12% of the total comics market, which meant miserably low sales for many (Groth, “The Two Daves”, 6). Fantagraphics Books canceled eight ongoing series to concentrate mainly on graphic novels and the thriving Eros Comix line. Four Fantagraphics employees were laid off in October 1992. Tundra Press’s revenue actually increased 50% between 1991 and 1992, as its comics sold anywhere between 10,000 and 40,000 copies an issue. However, Tundra was still unable to turn a profit due to fixed high production costs. Other publishers tried unique ways to expand their reach. For example, Ron Turner of distributor/ publisher Last Gasp traveled on the 1992 alternative music Lollapalooza tour promoting his comics. Kitchen Sink Publishing sold items like candy bars, neckties and collectible cards to help diversify its product line. Several other publishers had trouble paying their creators on schedule. While NOW Comics emerged from bankruptcy with back debts to sort out, Comico went into bankruptcy in February 1992, leaving some creators waiting many months for payment. It took over two years for artist Ho Che Anderson to be paid for a story he drew. And prominent 1980s publisher Eclipse Comics had major cash flow problems that caused the late release of many comics, including the popular Neil Gaiman-scripted Miracleman, thereby crippling Eclipse’s cash flow even more.
Angered by his editor’s refusal to allow a sword pierce Juggernaut’s eye, Todd McFarlane quit his assignment on Spider-Man. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.
regular occurrence. Finally, an editorial mandate to alter a scene in Spider-Man #16 (Nov. 1991) caused McFarlane to quit. In the midst of a pitched battle between SpiderMan, X-Force and Juggernaut, a sword is thrust through Juggernaut’s eye. McFarlane’s editor, Danny Fingeroth, along with Marvel’s editor-in-chief Tom DeFalco, demanded that the panel not show the sword piercing the villain’s eye as the depiction wouldn’t be approved by the Comics Code Authority. After all, kids read Spider-Man comics. McFarlane complied but that was the last straw for him. The change was no more or less important to him than any other change that was requested of him, but he felt that with his first child soon to be born, and money in the bank, it was a good time for him to take a break from comics.
Though all comic publishers had their fair share of significant releases in 1992, a new publisher dominated the attention of the comic book industry.
Image Is Everything Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane and a few of their artistic colleagues practically owned the comics world. Their Marvel series were perennial bestsellers, and under Marvel’s incentive plan, they were earning an income that might have been the envy of some movie stars. Despite their success, the young turk creators felt increasingly frustrated with what they saw as a deep disrespect from Marvel’s editors and executives. The stars were furious that merchandise that featured their artwork, such as T-shirts and posters, was released without credit or compensation, and that they earned no royalties from international reprints. For McFarlane, matters came to a head over an editorial decision. As McFarlane’s Spider-Man series was born, the writer/artist was given freedom proportional to the sales he received. However, as the series went on, the company began pulling back some of McFarlane’s creative control, to the point that editorial interference became a
Meanwhile, several other Marvel artists had a fateful meeting at the 1991 San Diego Comic Con, held over the July 4th weekend. One night Rob Liefeld, writer/artist on X-Force, Jim Valentino, writer/artist on Guardians of the Galaxy, and Erik Larsen, artist on Amazing Spider-Man, dined with longtime friend Dave Olbrich, publisher of Malibu Comics. A survivor of the black-and-white boom and bust of the 1980s, Malibu was releasing comics under several imprints including series based on popular older films such as Planet of the Apes, Re-Animator, Robotech and 57
1993
Feeling Vertigo
Thanks in large part to the death of Superman, new consumers—many of whom had no prior interest in comic books—were frequenting comic shops, where they found a dazzling array of product from new publishers like Image and Valiant Comics. Offering new fictional universes and characters different from those that had come before, these new publishers held the promise of becoming the next Marvel or DC. Excitement about that potential caused many collectors to buy extra copies of their titles as investments, which subsequently drove sales on those comics to unprecedented levels for new publishers. Many in the comic book industry were earning exceptional amounts of money as the sales euphoria of 1992 continued into 1993. Retailers ordered approximately 190 million total comics in February 1993. Only two months later, orders more than doubled to over 400 million units. The most popular comic books sold a million copies per issue, and many mid-range titles sold over 100,000 copies. As Chicago-area retailer Gary Colabuono reported, “In the spring weeks of ’93 we were doing $1,300 more [per week] than our summer weekly average” (Reynolds 28). Overall, industry sales jumped from an amazing $500 million in 1992 to an astonishing $800 million in 1993, with much of that growth coming from Valiant and Image. The success of those industry upstarts spurred the formation of even more new comic book companies as well as new imprints from established publishers. Even Marvel and DC got into the new imprint act, just as their dominance of the marketplace became seriously threatened. According to Diamond Comics Distributors, the country’s largest wholesaler of comics, history was made in February 1993 as for the first time since the formation of the Direct Market, none of the top five comics that retailers ordered for the month was published by either Marvel or DC. Four of the five comics came from Image while the other was released by Valiant. Marvel had the sixth, seventh and eighth highest-ordered books, while DC’s bestseller finished in the 24th position. Evidently, a revolution was at hand. At the same time the comics market grew, the trading card market had collapsed. Much to their chagrin, card collectors discovered that their once valuable premium sports cards were now relatively worthless. As a result, both card store owners and card collectors shifted their attention to comics. Comics industry consultant Mel Thompson conservatively estimated that 6,000 of the 12,000 card dealers operating in 1992 had added comics to their product inventory by
CHAPTER FOUR 90
1993, and that many of those stores experienced sales gains from doing so (Reynolds 27). The card store owners often saw comics as a mirror image of the other product they sold: something to be marketed as a collectible rather than as a form of entertainment. As more and more comic lines emerged in 1993 and growth seemed endless, plans were born by three companies to create nationwide chains of comic shops. Big Entertainment, Starlog Franchising Corporation and Classics International Entertainment all announced initial stock offerings in September 1993 to fund the purchase of comic shops. As Thompson stated, “The existing direct market is on the close order of a billion dollars a year at retail. My belief is that there’s at least a billion dollars of business out there that can and will develop over the next ten years” (Powers and Groth 9). Thompson’s outlook, however, proved to be wildly over-optimistic. By the end of 1993 comic book sales in America followed those of trading cards and were tumbling downward at a startling rate. The bubble had burst as the bottom dropped out of the comics sales boom. For the month of November 1993, Capital City reported that the market had shrunk to 200 million units sold – half its size from just seven months before. It was a startling turn of events. The jubilation of the spring season turned into outright panic by the end of autumn as many retailers discovered they had over-ordered comics they could not sell. Making the industry downturn all the more painful was the realization that much of it was selfinflicted. And the publisher at the center of it all was Image Comics.
Image Runs Free Image Comics was the comic book industry’s biggest success story of 1992 but Image’s upstart creators didn’t receive all the profits from the sale of their books. Instead, Malibu Comics printed and arranged distribution of Image’s line in exchange for 10% of the net profits. It didn’t take long for the Image founders to decide they should manage their affairs entirely on their own. As Erik Larsen put it, “It just seemed to many of us that, well, even at a 90/10 split, what the hell [is Malibu] doing?... It eventually came down to just, ‘Enh, let’s just do this on our own. We don’t need them. It’s not that complicated’” (Khoury 29). The Image founders incorporated their line as an independent company, Image Comics Inc. Each partner was asked to put some money into a fund to cover startup costs. All of the original Image rebels invested their share with the exception of Whilce Portacio who was too preoccupied with the recent death of his sister to continue as an Image partner.
In 1993, Image Comics published Sam Kieth’s The Maxx, a bizarre series that would later become an MTV animated series. TM and © Sam Kieth.
Tears, and Todd Johnson and Larry Stroman’s Tribe, about a group of African-American super-heroes. With sales of around a million copies, Tribe #1 (April 1993) was the bestselling comic ever produced solely by African-American creators. Likewise, Shaman’s Tears #1 (May 1993) proved to be one of Mike Grell’s most successful publications, with orders exceeding 500,000 copies (Pinkham 27). Former Sandman artist Sam Kieth revamped a character he created for a 1983 issue of Comico’s Primer anthology in order to produce the most off-beat of Image’s “second year” titles: The Maxx. As first seen in Darker Image #1 (March 1993), and spun out into his own series the same month, Maxx is a purple costumed behemoth caught between two worlds. In the modern world he is a confused homeless man who often seeks the refuge of his social worker, Julie Winters. In the primitive Outback, however, Maxx is the ferocious protector of the Jungle Queen (who bears a striking resemblance to Julie). Kieth’s over-the-top artwork combined with William Messner-Loeb’s graceful writing creates a bizarre narrative that has Maxx questioning the reality of his experience. The Maxx became one of Image’s most enduring series, running until the end of the decade.
As 1993 began, then, Image was truly independent with a greatly expanded lineup that included titles spearheaded by creators who weren’t Image founders. Besides Dale Keown’s Pitt, Image also published Hilary Barta’s Spawn parody Stupid, Al Gordon and Jerry Ordway’s sci-fi adventure Wildstar: Sky Zero, Keith Giffen’s outrageously violent Trencher, Mike Grell’s Native American-themed Shaman’s 91
1995
The Exclusivity Wars
As 1995 began, retailers could only reminisce about the comic book boom of a few years earlier. The downward sales slide that began in 1993 continued unabated two years later as consumers seemingly abandoned comic books for good in favor of other diversions, like video games or the ever-growing World Wide Web. In 1993, 9,400 comics specialty shops operated in the United States. By 1995, only 4,200 of them remained in business (Gray 26). If anything, comic sales were even worse than those grim numbers reflected. Series such as WildC.A.T.s and Bloodshot, which frequently sold close to 500,000 copies per issue when they premiered, struggled to sell a fraction of that number. Only the mighty X-Men and Spider-Man series maintained strong sales. Many observers saw this prolonged drop in sales as a sign of the apocalypse for the entire industry. A common lament placed the blame for a “lost generation” of fans on the speculator boom of the early 1990s. As Capital City Distribution co-owner Milton Griepp testified, I’ve heard more than one retailer use the phrase “We’ve lost a generation” to describe what has happened. This lost generation seems to have come into specialty stores in huge numbers in ’92 and ’93, attracted by the publicity surrounding the death of Superman and the excitement around the new Image and Valiant lines. Unfortunately, much of their interest was related to the lottery ticket aspect of comic collecting – “How much will this be worth next month?” This interest dissipated as quickly as the presses could be cranked up to print more copies of the book with the “hot” designation. (Griepp 56)
A major paper shortage exacerbated the problem. Over the course of a few months, the cost of high-grade paper rose from under $400 to over $700 per metric ton. Several publishers passed that expense on to their consumers. DC raised its prices in April and May, with $1.50 series increasing to $1.75. (Superman and Batman titles were bumped up even higher, to $1.95.) Fantagraphics and Warp Graphics also raised their prices by a quarter per copy. The higher price points depressed sales even further because even the most devoted fans only had so much money in their wallets to spend on comic books, and as one Atlanta retailer explained, the mid-range selling titles were most severely hurt by the price increases: “Readers of those books seem to be subconsciously looking for a reason to drop the titles, and a price hike is a very good reason” (O’Neill 131).
CHAPTER SIX 164
Marvel, though, held the line. Many of its standard format series proudly boasted “Still $1.50” on their July through November cover-dated issues. But while Marvel’s prices remained stable, the same couldn’t be said for the rest of the company.
Marvel’s New Heroes Marvel Comics began the 1990s as the most popular comics publisher in America. In 1991, Marvel published 47.5% of all comics sold in America. By 1994, that number plunged to less than 32% (Howe 361). Marvel’s executives blamed the drop on the inability of retailers to properly promote their series in a crowded marketplace. Furthermore, the executives believed retailers couldn’t identify comics that held the potential to be hot sellers because they didn’t receive the right level of support from their distributors. Marvel’s sales managers approached distributors to request ideas on how to improve sales. According to Capital City Distribution co-owner John Davis, Marvel didn’t like the answers that the distributors provided them: “We felt Marvel’s core problems were too many titles, especially multiple titles overexposing the same character, like Ghost Rider and the Punisher. There was a perceived overall low quality, low value for the dollar spent on Marvels, both at the consumer and retailer level. Rightly or wrongly, that’s how it was” (Reynolds 12). A retailer in Salt Lake City, Utah, concurred, “In our store, Marvel sales have dropped more than 25% in the last quarter, and the reason is not because we aren’t paying attention to the Marvel line. It is because people just no longer care about Reed Richards and Tony Stark” (Gallacher 14). Marvel management disagreed with those assessments. They believed the true problem was that distributors carried publications from all companies and therefore couldn’t devote themselves full time to promoting Marvel Comics. Based on that line of thinking, Marvel executives concluded it was time to take matters into their own hands. In early 1994, they tried selling directly to consumers via the Marvel Mart mail order catalog. When that proved ill-fated, Marvel got more ambitious and acquired Heroes World Distribution in December 1994. The purchase set off all kind of alarms among retailers and
One way Marvel attempted to win back market share was by pricing a line of comics at 99¢. TM and © Marvel Characters Inc.
distributors. Bill Leibowitz, head of retailer clearing house The Direct Line Group, summed up what their mood was like in January 1995: “the phones, faxes, e-mail [sic] and industry magazines and newspapers are burning up with speculation, prediction, and general paranoia. Some of the rumors and speculation say that Marvel is about to destroy the direct market, retailers will be hit with declining profit margins, increased cover prices, and erratic sources of supply” (Leibowitz 2). Many of the fears Leibowitz expressed turned out to be well founded. On March 3, Marvel publicly announced that effective July 1, 1995, Heroes World would become the exclusive distributor of Marvel Comics throughout the world. Essentially, Marvel became its own distributor, which meant that retailers who didn’t have an account with Heroes World would no longer have access to new Marvel releases. Marvel executive Matt Ragone claimed the depressed comic book market made the change necessary: “The fact is that no segment in this industry is satisfied with 1994 performance, or early 1995 performance. Sales and profits are down at every level and retailers report that customer traffic is down” (Ragone 3). No one could deny that traffic and sales were down, but many believed Marvel’s move to self-distribution would only make matters worse.
As this dollar share chart shows, between 1992 and 1995 Marvel struggled to maintain its market dominance.
165
1998
The Heroes Return
In some ways, the American comic book industry returned to stability in 1998. Marvel emerged from bankruptcy, DC continued its steady production, and even the crossover craze of 1996 and 1997 subsided as fewer inter-company events saw print in 1998. Perhaps the most promising news came from the Comics Buyer’s Guide which reported, “we have more publishers in the field than ever before” (Thompson 4). Unfortunately, an abundance of publishers didn’t equate to a prosperity in the market. Comic book sales continued their dramatic decline with the top 300 comics selling a cumulative 84.45 million copies in 1998, a drop of 16% from the previous year, and they retailed for a total of $210 million dollars, a drop of 14%. Former distributor Frank Mangiaracina put these numbers in perspective: “Measured in dollars, the comics market is about the size it was in 1983, measured in units it is about one-fifth as large” (Mangiaracina 1). For many, running a comic shop barely paid their expenses. In response to a summer 1998 survey, 76% of store owners stated they earned $22,300 in annual take-home pay. That was over 25% less than the national average salary of $30,500. Tellingly, no respondent reported they were very satisfied with their compensation (“Viewpoint Report” 22). It’s no surprise then that 9% of Diamond accounts stopped working with the distributor in 1998, an indication that they went out of business. That left approximately 3,600 active comic shops in America by the end of 1998 (Field 30). Not every retailer seemed to be suffering, however. Indeed, some stores claimed to be flourishing. One Denver retailer reported sales in 1998 were “better than the last three years” (Bennett 58). Similarly, Boston store owner Tom Devlin boasted, “[we] made more money [in 1998] than [we] ever had before. Talking to other stores that stock a lot of alternative comics […] everybody seems to be doing better than they ever have” (Groth 10). The question that needed to be asked was if these thriving stores were merely anomalies or harbingers of more prosperous times.
Toy Biz buys Marvel When Marvel Comics filed for bankruptcy in December 1996, months of rancorous legal wrangling ensued with intensified acrimony amongst shareholders Carl Icahn and Ron Perelman and Toy Biz executives Avi Arad, Ike Perlmutter and Joe Ahearn. For a brief period interested parties had the chance to acquire Marvel, its intellectual properties, SkyBox Cards and Panini Stickers. Companies such as MGM, Sony and Time Warner (owner of DC Comics) reviewed Marvel’s financial paperwork as did a team of investors led by former Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter and retailer Chuck Rozanski. They all came to the same
CHAPTER NINE 242
grim conclusions: the comic book market was shrinking, Marvel had an insurmountable amount of debt, and its bankruptcy slowed the marketing of its heroes while its SkyBox and Panini subsidiaries experienced massive losses. In the face of those realities, each potential bidder decided Marvel was a poor investment. As Rozanski related, “What an exercise in futility. The lawyers involved love it, but the rest of us are just so burned out” (Raviv 238). The matter began to get resolved only when Toy Biz first won the right to take over Marvel’s management, effective October 1, 1997. Then, in June 1998, Toy Biz merged with Marvel to bring the publisher out of bankruptcy once and for all. They formed Marvel Enterprises and quickly relisted its stock on the New York Stock Exchange using the symbol MVL. The protracted legal battles had taken its toll, however; MVL opened at a mere $7 per share, down from the $17 price it sold at before the bankruptcy. Peace in the boardroom didn’t ease the stress inside Marvel’s editorial offices. The new management team, led by tight-fisted Toy Biz executives, quickly set to work cutting Marvel’s staff, including employees from marketing, front office and the field representative team. Among those fired were Executive Vice President of Publishing Shirrel Rhoades, Vice President of Editorial Planning Jim “Ski” Sokolowski, Editorial Director Jackie Carter and editors Kelly Corvese, Glenn Greenwald, Jim Kreuger and Tim Tuohy. Many of those who remained likely wished they were let go too, especially since the new executives implemented rules that were seen as arbitrary, extreme, and aimed at cutting costs without consideration of editorial quality. They required employees to punch time clocks, removed free coffee and bottled water from the offices and mandated the offices’ electricity be turned off at 5PM. As with previous management, Marvel’s new executives forbade unnecessary long-distance calls and even forced employees to reuse paper clips. Mandatory drug testing was even considered. Office tensions were so high that one senior employee remarked, “it was like being in a war zone” (Howe 399).
Captain America returned to the main Marvel Universe in 1998 with his former creative team of Mark Waid and Ron Garney. TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.
Four #1 by casting Mole Man as its feature villain. Lobdell and Davis also added healthy dollops of contemporary humor and family antics, but the creative team only lasted three issues. Starting with FF #4 (April 1998), Chris Claremont scripted Lodbell’s plots before taking over full writing duties with FF #6. This was an ironic inversion of what happened in 1992 when Lobdell replaced Chris Claremont on X-Men. At the same time Davis handed over art responsibilities to Salvador Larroca after FF #3, and under Claremont and Larroca, Fantastic Four became a consistent Top 15 seller. Fans enjoyed both the familiar FF family interaction and the clever ways Claremont played with the heroes’ powers. For instance, the Invisible Woman, besides training with martial arts master Iron Fist, began using her force field powers for new purposes like creating weapons or forming invisible sliders. Claremont was also inclined to separate the team from each other during their cosmic adventures, reuniting them for grand finales.
The Return of the Good Guys Despite the poor office morale, Marvel launched two major 1998 initiatives that laid the roots for long-term success. “Heroes Return” and “Marvel Knights” added muchneeded luster to several of Marvel’s most iconic heroes and reasserted the power of Marvel’s intellectual properties. Though 1997’s Heroes Reborn returned Avengers, Iron Man, Captain America and Fantastic Four to the top of the sales charts, many fans felt the kind of style the Image creators used was inappropriate for the classic heroes. Therefore, 1998’s “Heroes Return” brought fan-favorite creators back to those titles. These writers and artists used more traditional storytelling approaches which simultaneously embraced modern styles and respected tradition. Fantastic Four #1 and Captain America #1 were cover-dated January 1998. Avengers #1 and Iron Man #1 followed one month later with Thor debuting with a July cover-dated issue.
For Captain America, Marvel turned to a creative team that had already made a significant mark on the character: writer Mark Waid and artist Ron Garney. As Waid said, “I actually got the impression from Marvel that things never [were supposed] to go any other way [once Heroes Reborn ended]. It was also nice to have people excited about the prospect of us coming back even after a year of not being on the title” (Senreich 70). Unfortunately, readers who were expecting the kind of extended run that the creative pair
Scott Lobdell took on the task of writing Fantastic Four with Alan Davis handing art. The creative pair delivered a slick first issue that paid tribute to 1961’s original Fantastic 243
1999
No Man’s Land
If the story of the comics industry in the late 1990s was low sales, then 1999 represents the nadir of that tale. The grim truth was that monthly comics sales in America were at their lowest levels in decades. As one anonymous publisher reported at the beginning of the year, “My 1999 publishing plans are literally on hold at the moment while I try to digest the disintegration of the comic market week by week. I am leaning more and more towards halting comic book publication altogether” (“A bleak forecast” 8). Only a handful of comics, including Uncanny X-Men, X-Men, Danger Girl, Tomb Raider and Battle Chasers, sold over 100,000 copies per month. Worse, sales on the next tier of titles were way down as well. By December 1999, only twenty-five ongoing comics sold over 50,000 copies per issue. Overall for the year, sales for the top 300 comics were down 8% compared with the already anemic 1998, and industry-wide retail levels were a third of what they were five years earlier. While sales of trade paperbacks went up by 9%, they only represented $17 million of the $270 million comic book industry. In a sign of the times, Marvel released fewer comics in 1999 than any other year since 1984. In one striking month Marvel released only thirty-six comics. The same month DC put out ninety-six comics. Marvel had emerged from bankruptcy, but as far as everyone could tell, its future was still uncertain.
However, the American comics industry wasn’t all grimness and depression. A new generation of comic series seemed to present an alluring vision for the next millennium. Comics like Transmetropolitan, Astro City, Black Panther, Inhumans and Preacher shined a promising light, with modern storytelling that struck a chord in receptive readers. One of comic book’s most iconic characters even proved that all wasn’t hopeless, that fortunes could be turned around with the right creative decisions. Or put another way by DC Comics editor Jordan Gorfinkel, “If any one character can lift this industry out of its doldrums, it’s Batman” (Morrisard 43).
Batman: No Man’s Land Gotham City had suffered cataclysms in its long history, but nothing prepared the citizens of Batman’s home town for the earthquake that struck in 1998. Even worse was the quake’s aftermath. As described in the No Man’s Land one-shot (March 1999), by writer Bob Gale and artist Alex Maleev, the formerly civilized city gave way to anarchy. Prior to this storyline, Bruce Wayne failed to persuade the U.S. Congress to fund the restoration of his beloved city. Instead, the federal government chose to cordon off Gotham, forbidding anybody from entering or leaving it. To do so, the government blew up all the bridges and tunnels into the city and made Gotham a true “No Man’s Land.” As the epic storyline kicks off, the military has surrounded Gotham’s perimeter. The city has no fresh food, no clean water supply and no working police department, other than a rogue team of police officers. Gotham’s only inhabitants are the poor, those who were too stubborn to abandon their homes, and the criminals. Batman has
CHAPTER TEN 262
been missing for 93 days as whole sections of Gotham are now controlled by some of his most vicious enemies, such as the Penguin, Two-Face and Poison Ivy. Territories have been marked with spray paint, but as the issue ends, a caped figure spray-paints the bat symbol on walls across the city. No Man’s Land continued into several overlapping storylines that encompassed Batman, Detective Comics, Legends of the Dark Knight and Shadow of the Bat. As “No Man’s Land” proceeds, Batman returns to his home town, but his beloved Gotham is different from anything he had ever expected to encounter. Wayne Mansion was destroyed in the earthquake, along with the Batcave. Though Batman has allies – including an important new one – the scope of the destruction and gang violence puts the Caped Crusader in a completely new situation, where the conflicts he faces are more confusing, ambiguous and bizarre than he had ever faced before. Batman’s new status quo came about in part because the character’s editors simply felt bored. After all the turmoil of “Knightfall,” “Knightquest” and “Knightsend” in 1993 and 1994, the Batman comics had settled into a predictable groove, but by 1998 the editors’ concern was that their own boredom would spill over to their readers. Facing that ennui, editor Jordan Gorfinkel walked into Batman group editor Denny O’Neil’s office one Monday morning with a 12-page proposal that detailed how “Cataclysm” could lead into the “No Man’s Land” event. Gorfinkel expected O’Neil to hate the idea, but the veteran editor actually embraced the gamble: “it seemed like a dangerous story to try. It’s a story that has never been told, as far as I know, certainly not in comics. That’s always a reason to do something” (Morrisard 43-9). One of the reasons why the changes seemed new to Batman was because of the new writers and artists who had never written Batman comics before. Besides the aforementioned Bob Gale, the screenwriter for Back to the Future, crime novelist Greg Rucka was brought on to write “No Man’s Land”’s third story arc. He would become a mainstay of the Batman books into the new millennium. Other writers new to the Batman line included Devin Grayson, Kelley Puckett, Larry Hama and Bronwyn Carlton. Longtime Batman writer Doug Moench was one of the few who opted out of the storyline, complaining “I didn’t think it was a good story and didn’t want to write it. I thought it was absurd that the U.S. government would deliberately cut Gotham off from the rest of the country.”
After 1998’s “Cataclysm,” Batman faced a “No Man’s Land” in 1999. Batman TM and © DC Comics.
helps Batman in the “No Man’s Land” fray. Afterwards, DC provided her with her own ongoing title in 2000. For many fans, even more exciting than a new Batgirl was the insertion of a popular Batman: The Animated Series character into the DC comic universe. Harley Quinn first appeared in a 48-page one-shot written by B:TAS cocreator Paul Dini and drawn by Yvel Guichet and Aaron Sowd. In Batman: Harley Quinn (Oct. 1999) psychologist Harleen Quinzel falls in love with the Joker while caring for him at Arkham Asylum. After being committed to the asylum herself, Quinn walks out when the earthquake hits Gotham. She then seeks out the Joker and happily teams up with him as he tries to carve out his own section of Gotham during “No Man’s Land.” Batman: Harley Quinn sold a solid 55,000 copies through Diamond.
Sales for the storyline were extremely strong. A retailer from Seattle reported, “Sales on the ‘No Man’s Land’ storyline continue to amaze us. We increase our orders, place reorders, and still can’t fill customer demand on these titles” (Halstead 22).
With Alex Ross, Paul Dini also delivered a new tabloid oneshot, reminiscent of their 1998 Superman: Peace on Earth. But where Peace on Earth pontificates on Superman’s sense of idealism, Batman: War on Crime expresses the Caped Crusader’s sense of dread. War on Crime tells a story of loss and retribution on a much more intimate level than Dini and Ross’s previous comic. In it, Batman witnesses the aftermath of a murder in which a young man is orphaned in the same way that young Bruce Wayne was many years previously. However, the boy is poor and lacks the ability to escape the urban hell that continually drags him into dangerous situations. The dramatic contrast between the
“No Man’s Land” is also significant for introducing a new version of a familiar hero. As the story arc begins, Helena Bertinelli abandons her Huntress identity to assume Barbara Gordon’s former alter ego of Batgirl. The change was short-lived, however, as in Legends of the Dark Knight #120 (Aug. 1999), an argument between Bertinelli and Batman leads to someone else donning the Batgirl costume. Her name is Cassandra Cain. Unable to read, talk or write, because of her assassin father’s uncaring approach to her, this silent Batgirl can only communicate through body language. With Barbara Gordon’s blessing, the new Batgirl 263