And now…the Nineties.
Transferring that pic to the foil surface of the packaging didn’t do it any favors. It’s hard to tell looking at the scan, since it sort of flattens everything out and mutes the effect, but having every line on Shaft’s face be a little silver streak is both distracting and disturbing.
Here’s a group shot from card #2:
The quote from Liefeld on the back of the card sums it (and by “it” I mean “the superhero comics industry for the majority of the decade”) all up:
The more things change…
it was the nineties, and specifically books like Youngblood and its ilk, that turned me off from comics.
Great stuff, thanks for posting this. Just when you thought Liefeld’s art couldn’t look any worse, we bring you FOIL!
Also, I stole that card back for my Random Comics Panel of the Day today, it so perfectly sums up what was wrong with the Image Nineties I just couldn’t resist. Thanks again for sharing it.
Dear Lord, I actually worked for the company that produced these things–not this specific set (it was before my time there), but made lots of hideous, Image-based merchandise. A dark, dark time for comics.
Pshaw. How out of touch was Rob Liefeld? I mean…music videos? On MTV? I don’t think so.
[…] (Image ©1992, Rob Liefeld, and by way of Progressive Ruin.) […]
I’m always amused by people trash talking the nineties. There are some really horrid comic books that came out then (Marvel I’m looking at you), you’ll get no debate from me on that. However there’s also some damn fine work and concepts that were produced then too. It’s an era that pulled a LOT of people into the hobby and I’d be keen to know what the attrition rate was on the noobs. I wonder if anyone has stats on that?
When it comes to superhero/mainstream comics, (to quote CGB) the 1990’s were the worst decade ever!
E-frakking-gad.
Huh. That quote actually sounds like a high concept idea that Ellis, Morrison, or Casey might have come up with. Funny that everyone automatically slams it because it’s Liefeld. I probably have this entire set somewhere. While I’m not a fan of his art anymore, he and the other Image founders really got me into comics again. A shame we don’t have any creators making the amount of noise these guys did in the early 90s.
Liefeld too what he learned from the media took the lesson as: splash pages! Posing! No one can pay attention long enough for a plot
Ellis, Morrison, or Casey and took it properly into an audience that was ripe for deep media experience. Pacing had to become more like a movie but the audience still wanted plot.
http://coveredblog.blogspot.com/
A cover homage to Airboy with the Heap. Just another swamp monster appearance.
This sort of thing is one of the reasons my comic-buying ended in the late ’80s and didn’t resume until the 2000s. Too shiney for my tastes.
Wait, did Liefeld really draw that Shaft picture they printed on the package? The character has pupils!
Check out the bulge on Shaft. Wow.
Can’t quite make sense of the perspective on that card wrapper, but the way it’s rendered looks like something Frank Quitely might have done. Y’know, like if he were to draw Hawkeye as he was aging very rapidly because of … oh, I don’t know, radiation or something. Maybe an evil scientist.
“When it comes to superhero/mainstream comics, (to quote CGB) the 1990’s were the worst decade ever!”
My Starman omnibuses say you’re exceptionally wrong…
Dear God, what’s up with Shaft’s…shaft?
What little of Liefeld’s Marvel work I’ve seen looked better than this. Were their editorial standards forcing him to draw better, or were the inkers fixing his art?
Mike, please tell me some genius decided to make Shaft’s GUMS shiny, too. Because that would seriously make my week. I can’t think of another reason why they should be blue, but I admit I’m no Youngblood expert, either.
MTV had music videos?
Yeah, right.
Just imagine Rob Liefeld at his drawing board in 1992, watching Michael Jackson’s “Black Or White”, Madonna’s “Holiday”, Guns N’ Roses’ “November Rain”, Metallica’s “Enter Sandman”, Van Halen’s “Right Now”, Def Leppard’s “Let’s Get Rocked”, Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Give It Away” and “Under The Bridge”, Pearl Jam’s “Alive”, Eric Clapton’s “Tears In Heaven”, John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Get A Leg Up”, Tom Petty’s “Into The Great Wide Open”, Bruce Springsteen’s “Human Touch”, Weird Al Yankovic’s “Smells Like Nirvana”, U2’s “Even Better Than The Real Thing”, Genesis’s “I Can’t Dance”, Kris Kross’s “Jump”, Marky Mark & The Funky Bunch’s “Good Vibrations”, Ugly Kid Joe’s “Everything About You”, MC Hammer’s “2 Legit 2 Quit”, Sir Mix-A-Lott’s “Baby Got Back”, En Vogue’s “My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It)” and plenty more…
…and did he ever get any Youngblood done?
And I’ll bet the most-watched TV show in the world back in the 90’s was a syndicated soap opera with singers, athletes, and models portraying lifeguards. Or maybe there was a even a TV series starring Swamp Thing…
[…] The 1990s were a bad decade for superhero comics. Good decade for other comics, though […]
“This sort of thing is one of the reasons my comic-buying ended in the late ’80s and didn’t resume until the 2000s. Too shiney (sic) for my tastes.”
You describe my experience exactly with your words CW. I’m sure there were exceptions (somebody mentioned Starman and Sandman was still going strong for example),but as a whole the industry was producing more dreck per square inch than even the industrial waste industry managed. I stopped buying comics well into 2006 because of the taint of crap like this.
[…] improves a Sluggo Saturday, Valentine’s Day cards from pals Dana and Jorean (1 and 2), behold the 1990s, remember when Brainiac was awesome, Absorbing Man absorbs some cancer and it’s totally […]