Comic Books In the 1990's

November Nineties continues today with a post about comic books. 

Comic books were weird in the 1990's.

Comic books (like any industry) are prone to cycles of boom or bust. And after the heady rush of the 1980's, comics were on a headlong rush into self-immolation in a desperate rush to keep the good times going no matter what.

The company wide crossover where "everything changes...FOREVER!"? Yeah, let's have more of those! Then fuck them over with with excessive editorial interference. Do NOT get me started on the fuckery DC made of War of the Gods by George Perez. 

Big guys with BIGGER guns are a thing? Let's do MORE of that!!!  Marvel produced a nearly weekly offering of The Punisher with the main monthly title and various spin off series and specials. Including Armory specials that were no more than pretty drawings of Frank Castle's guns.

Capes and tights? We don't need no stinkin' capes and tights! The whole "big guys with BIGGER guns" motif affected super hero series with guys like Rob Liefield creating characters with over designed ensembles with armor, pouches and belts. 

Eventually, Liefield along with Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee and other creators would pick up their toys and leave Marvel to form their own company called Image that at first specialized in nothing but this sort of excess.

Eventually Image would become the haven for more interesting independent comics other than excessively muscular and armored archetypes.  

"Excess" was not only a problem for art and design. It was a problem for writers and editors too. The 1990's introduced long form story telling with a massive arcs taking place over several books over several months. The worst of these was perhaps the Spider Man "Clone Saga" that ran over the through Spider Man, Amazing Spider-Man, Spectacular Spider-Man and Web of Spider-Man. The original concept was to follow up on a story Gerry Conway wrote for Amazing back in the 1970's that introduced clones of Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy. The new story was to run across the Spider-Man titles for a few months but Marvel liked the sales results of the initial issues so much, they mandated the story line to continue. And it did.

For over 2 years from October 1994 to December 1996.

To keep the saga going and going, elements of the storyline kept getting changed like who was really Peter and who was the clone and who was the big bad behind it all and so on and so forth. 

Marvel wanted the big bucks to keep rolling no matter what. All the Clone Saga did was piss off Spider-Man's fans. And the 1990's ended with Marvel filing for bankruptcy. 

DC was not immune to his sort of excessive extension of a storyline. Some worked. Superman's first battle with Doomsday, his "death" and "resurrection" was a well handled long form storyline. 

But the temptation to revisit this sort of long form storytelling gave us such misfires as Blue Superman. 

For reasons of plot, Clark Kent's super power set shifts from the super strength, speed, etc etc to...  electro-magnetism. 

What the hell? Really?

And this story lasted a WHOLE YEAR! 

The power shift rid us of the red cape and gave us a blue body suit.  This change in outfit was called out on Saturday Night Live in a Weekend Update segment where Norm McDonald said the suit was changed because the original Superman was "not gay enough".   

Batman went the whole 9 yards of 1990's excess with the Knightfall storyline. Bruce Wayne gets the living crap kicked out of him by Bane and Bruce brings in former assassin Paul Mark Valley to take over as Batman who updates the Bat suit with armor, belts and pouches.  

It took about a year and a half to get through this storyline. 

Breaking the Bat wasn't enough. The 1990's ended with the breaking of Gotham City itself in the massive No Man's Land event that last about 2 years.  

Another innovation of the 1990's was the creation of something to make someone buy the same comic twice: variant covers. 

A comic book would have more than one cover option. The most infamous was the foil embossed cover that would add a whole $ to the cover price. And then there were the variant covers with completely different art. This didn't add to a company's sales. Instead of buying comic book A & B, they were just buying A twice.  

The 1990's was a decade of excess as Marvel, DC and various independent publishers kept trying to squeeze more golden eggs out of one exhausted goose. 

It was a decade of overestimating the appetite for comics of a certain style.  I believe comics retailer Mike Sterling as a complete long box of unsold issues of Youngblood#1.

Damn! That is premium grade Rob Liefeld 90's excess right there!

Tomorrow, November Nineties continues with Your Friday Video Link featuring Friends.