Finding the Good , Among the Shit

Marvel Comics had a lot of horrible bad comics in the 1990's. A fact I will discuss later on down this post. In the early 1990's it was hard to really find anything good at all regarding Marvel as a whole. But there was some solid decent work in those years and a lot if looked over. Writers like Kurt Busiek , Warren Ellis and Peter David were chugging along , trying to do decent work while around them the company was going through major problems.

One of the good books was written by Warren Ellis as I posted . His "Hellstorm" run is mentioned here as one of the best big work for a company as his career was just launching.

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources...and-druid-1-4/

Ellis came onto Hellstorm at #12 and gave the character of Damian Hellstorm his best new touch. Marvel at this point wanted to try a direction as the article states , was more horror driven. Like the classic work on Swamp Thing by Alan Moore and Hellblazer.

Another great book was Marvels .




Marvels was a beautiful series written by Kurt Busiek and painted art by Alex Ross . The series brought both men to the big time in a sense. Busiek himself had written for years for Marvel and DC. From "Powerman & Iron Fist" to "Red Tornado" miniseries at DC in the 1980's. But it was this series that many cite as what got him the attention he really deserved. Also the same could be said for Alex Ross. He too had been around comics awhile and did work for Now Comics in the early 1990's . But this miniseries made him a big name artist.

Marvels is considered one of the best works to come out of the early 1990's Marvel era.

Peter David meanwhile was doing what he could as writer of the Incredible Hulk. For years David had taken the series in different fun directions. During the 1990's period as things were starting to crash around him , David seemed to not notice it. Beyond being asked to shoe horn Hulk into an event as I will discuss later. David also was doing a hell of a run on X-Factor as well when this was happening. His run on X-Factor sadly wasn't as long as the Hulk. But David revamped that series into something that would fix the status quo awhile for Havok and Lorna Dane.


And there was THE BAD ....

A key problem Marvel had in the 1990's was the expansion of the publishing . Marvel went from publishing a set number of books to expanding the line to ungodly levels to handle the debt load that Perelman had pushed the company into. Marvel had expanded into buying theme parks , trading card companies and more. The pressure was on the publishing part (and only real money making part of Marvel) to handle the load.

A lot of characters got books and miniseries . Its pretty sad and silly that characters like Shroud would get a miniseries. Or a character from a short lived TV series called "Mad Dog". Its hard to believe any of those books would be good at all. Or , the fact they would do countless Venom miniseries . From the "Madness" to whatever the others were called.

Either way when your publishing 175 books a month , at a point ....there isn't gonna be many good books. Quite a lot will be bad.


And the Ugly ....


The most sad and "ugly" books of the early 1990's was where Marvel clearly saw a successful formula DC Comics would do. That formula was that DC was changing their established heroes and taking huge risks . They crippled Batman , killed Superman , replaced Green Arrow with his son and made Green Lantern go insane in grief. These changes sparked lots of controversy and lots of sales. The sales part is what Marvel executives saw and decided they needed to compete with that. The results was utter disaster .

Marvel decided that where as DC had put new heroes into the long established mantles of the characters , they decided they would have their cake and eat it too in a sense. Why change the characters with new people ? When you can simply have the same character take the mantle anyhow . This makes no sense right ? Well the big wigs at the time had ideas how to do this.



Iron Man was one of those situations where Marvel decided that long standing hero Tony Stark would go insane and turn traitor against the Avengers. Stark had been a hero who had battled a drinking problem and been shot earlier. Yet in this new revelation it was revealed that time traveling villain Kang would have gotten to him. The result was it made Tony Stark more of an asshole and gave him a drinking problem. As he battled against this programming Kang had done.

The next result was instead of a new hero in the mantle , the Avengers decide to recruit a teenage Tony Stark . This Tony Stark would meet and battle his older self. Eventually becoming the new Iron Man. Or the new , old , younger Iron Man. Either way fan reaction was so angry it made Marvel get scared. The company quickly realized that Teen Tony had to go and months later sent the Iron Man character into Heroes Reborn where Tony Stark was restored as his self.

What made the whole Iron Man situation more comical was a year earlier , DC had done the near same situation with Hal Jordan . Driven insane with grief over Coast City , Jordan went on a mission to bring it all back. He destroyed the Corps and old friends....killing them. His mantle was passed to Kyle Rayner. Where as DC took huge anger over it from long term fans , they simply told them this was gonna be the new status quo from here on out. Fans slowly took to Rayner and DC was applauded with how they handled the situation.

This wasn't the 1st time that Marvel would do a storyline that was near the same as we saw. In late 1993 , Marvel would approve a storyline for Frank Castle that basically mirrored the Reign of the Superman storyline that DC had done months earlier. Where as Reign was again given critical praise for how it introduced a new Superboy and John Henry Irons as Steel ...."Suicide Run" was scorned. With remarks Marvel had clearly saw the Superman books and what had worked , and decided that Frank Castle's books could do the same near trick.

Instead of giving the Punisher a new jolt creatively , It didn't happen. Less then 2 years later all of the Punisher books would be cancelled .

In the next part I examine "Spider-Clone" and look at the other titles that had fallen from great highs. Thanks for reading.