Marvel Comics 1990's - "The Good , the Bad and the Ugly" Pt. #3

[SUPERECWFAN1]

As posted last time , today I will discuss the Good , The Bad and the Ugly of some Marvel events. A lot were really not so good as Iron Man's "Traitor Storyline" or ill-timed "Suicide Run". And some were done that were completely head scratching . But lets look at the good shall we .


The X-Men : Age of Apocalypse !


In the 1990's as I posted in part #1 , the X-Men booted off long time writer (and father) of the X-Men , Chris Claremont . The idea was that Jim Lee would stick around and untold sales riches would forever go to the X-Men. This didn't happen as we know and Bob Harras quickly brought in John Byrne for a few issues and realized he wasn't gonna work as his ideas was to basically do the X-Men from the 1960's. (Years later Byrne would get to do this with his X-Men : First Class series)

Harras was in a spot and he could have rose and fell inside the company had his X-Books lost sales. In a story that sums up more luck than actual anything at the time , Harras saw Scott Lobdell working in the office and told him he was the new X-Men writer and he needed the next issue written soon. Lobdell basically went to work and would stay on the X-Men books for the next 5 years. The sales stayed and even went higher , making Bob Harras appear to be a genius as he had just picked a young writer no one had heard of to write the companies biggest selling line at that time.

Of course the biggest complaint was the books never did much of anything. Lobdell was given strict orders by the X-Men editors not to rock the boat so to speak. Claremont wanted a huge storyline where Wolverine would turn evil by the Hand and influenced by the Shadow King. His idea was to end the Wolverine series and do that as his next big X-Men arc. Marvel editors took the idea of turning the money character Wolverine evil and said....HELL NO. So for the big part of the run , Lobdell was only allowed to do the big things the X-Office allowed.

The biggest storyline Lobdell had a big hand in and one that got critical raves , was "Age of Apocalypse" which featured an alternate world where things turned out completely different for everyones favorite mutants. The storyline got attention and gave Lobdell something to hang his hat on as an X-Men writer . The biggest character from that series was "Blink". Who became such a fan favorite character , Marvel years later decided to let her be the star of the Judd Winick launched book "Exiles" .

I won't explain the whole series or the set up to it. Because it would take this entire thread and even then I'm sure there would be more I'd need to explain with it being an X-Men storyline. It introduced a group of X-Men related characters who would become stars in the Marvel Universe soon after.

While Harras kept the X-Books and trains running on time , the other books wasn't so lucky.



When Good Books , go Bad .

By the early 1990's a good bit of the Marvel mainstream books had seen better days. In the 1980's you could name books and runs by a variety of people. You had Claremont's X-Men , Simonson's "Thor" , Roger Stern's "Avengers" and so on. These books were considered great and had the writers that made them work. By the 1990's however everyone of these writers had left. Wizard Magazine itself would make jokes about how bad the Fantastic Four had become under Tom DeFalco as the hey day of John Byrne's run was long gone.

How bad was Fantastic Four by Tom DeFalco ? Well whenever your boss writers a storyline it has to be hard being the editor who has to sit and handle what is turned in. For a few years DeFalco essentially totaled the family dynamic and brought in characters not many gave a **** for. His storyline was a big **** you to years of fans following a grown up Johnny Storm who had dated and married Alicia Masters.

The big nose dive for the Fantastic Four is considered to be the issue where Masters was revealed to be a skrull named Lyja who was having Johnny Storm's egg baby. One has to wonder if you weren't the EIC of the company would the story have been approved by the editor ? Odds are we will never know. The final result was DeFalco then killed off Reed Richards and Doctor Doom in an attempt to shake things up. Which really never resonated at all with fans either.

Another one great book that sadly fell on hard bad times was Captain America....




Captain America itself had seen new highs in the 1980's after years of creators coming on and leaving. Mark Gruenwald had been the editor for a few years and finally got to write the character. He started his run off pretty well and introduced new rogues (Serpent Society , Mad Cap ) and even had Steve Rodgers be replaced as Captain America in a big storyline that ran nearly 2 years by Johnny Walker.

But by the 1990's things started to get stale for Gruenwald and people whispered he should have handed Cap to another writer. The moment where things started to go off the rails is considered to be the arc where Captain America turned into a werewolf. The arc is considered , so bad its weirdly good in a way. After it the big storyline would launch in 1994 and that was "Fighting Chance" where Rodgers super soldier serum was killing him now.

The arc is considered mostly terrible for the new characters introduced (Jack Flagg and Free Spirit) and the overall situation Captain America was in. As he kept trying to be that hero , Rodgers did more damage to his body. Finally as his entire body was shutting down Iron Man helped build him Cap-Armor. Which was joked by Wizard , "We wanna read Captain America , not Iron Man as Cap." Gruenwald wrote a death issue to tie things up as Cap basically was dying even with the armor and he said good-bye to everyone.

As I posted above , Gruenwald is a true legend writer who took over Captain America and did every well with it and gave the book a steady presence. Sadly he over stayed on the series and this effect would hurt books at times. Over at DC Marv Wolfman hurt his run on the Teen Titans by staying for years and turning in stories that obviously was never gonna be as great as his early run. So it happens.

Thor itself was named as a title that had fallen so hard from the Walt Simonson days , so long its pretty sad. It too was written by Tom DeFalco for a number of years and even had its Thor replaced by Eric Masterson (Thunderstrike). This change happened awhile and finally the true Thor came back. In the next arc by Ron Marz , Thor would be driven by madness to fight everyone in the Blood & Thunder arc. The arc wasn't considered very strong and even with cool battles where Thor battled the Surfer Surfer , Warlock and others ...many debated it.

Avengers itself as a team title also had fallen on hard times since the 1980's by Roger Stern. The book after he left had rotated among writers like Simonson and Byrne . Finally falling to Bob Harras. Some have claimed Harras run isn't terrible. That his "Gathering" arc is considered ok and that the team he used finally made the team get stable after so much change the previous two arcs. Of course a big complaint is that Harras who was editor over the X-Men , tried to make the Avengers into a near X-Men clone in a way.

Even going as far as to have during the Gathering arc , a group of alternate Earth Avengers who show up to face the current Avengers roster. It was the type of storyline you would see from the X-Men in this time period. But the arc which got the most hate and anger was "Avengers : The Crossing". Which had an alternate future where the Avengers were being hunted and 2 travel back to stop that future from happening. It also is the arc most famous for turning Tony Stark into a pawn of Kang's.

One title that rarely gets mentioned for being "Bad" during this period was Doctor Strange. I have a few issues of this book during its near end and I can honestly tell people that I have no idea whats going on. Or why Doctor Strange looks like some young rock star.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

The Ugly of Marvel

The biggest , most ugly of Marvel during this time involved Marvel's marketing department. A big reason that many don't realize the main fault of the Clone Saga was at the feet of the Marketing Department . If you have like hours to kill , read this Life With Reilly column and learn how the Marketing department at Marvel Comics stretched a 6 month storyline into one that lasted over 2 years.


http://lifeofreillyarchives.blogspot.com/


Everyone knows the Clone Saga , Ben Reilly returns during Spider-Man's darkest time. A period where Peter's parents turned out to be robotic type clones sent by Chameleon and Harry Osborn as part of his last endgame plan. This would make Peter Parker into an angry bitter person who wrapped himself in a web cocoon and proclaimed himself "The Spider". Like picture Batman as Peter Parker during this time.

The entire thing looking back was silly and Marketing itself took hold of the huge sales the storyline was doing for the Spidey titles and kept pushing to make it go longer. Also throwing out die-cut covers and more. Because the sales would be stronger. Its a weird situation where the story the writers planned was suddenly hi-jacked by another part of the company and they had to play ball with it and keep it going beyond the point anyone wanted to do it.

Also a point is made in the Life of Reilly column , a poster on CBR years ago blamed Bob Harras for extending the Clone Saga . When Harras got into power at the time as Editor-In-Chief , the Heroes Reborn deal had been signed and would launch that fall. Harras realized the big storyline they had planned for the summer would run beside the planned conclusion to the Clone Saga. So he asked them to hold off a few months because the Marvel Universe at this point was playing a big part in the "Onslaught" crossover and they couldn't logically do it at the same time.

Yet people will at times blame Bob Harras for it . You can blame him for how he handled the X-Men as editor or how he would handle things later as EIC. But its clear , Bob Harras did not extend the Clone Saga like Marvel Marketing did. Or should get blame for how things went. He came in at the tail end of it and had to juggle things going on at the time with the overall company and direction ahead , so he asked the conclusion happen that fall.


Stay tuned next time for when I examine the effects of Marvelution and the END OF MARVEL as we knew it.