Mikester

Back to the Most 1990s Comic discussion…as a reminder, my personal pick for the title is X-Force #1 for both artistic and marketing reasons. But, you folks have brought up some good contenders, so let us continue with Tom W and Marvel’s The Age of Apocalypse event (1995):

In my very long-ago pre-internet days, I did a little write-up on the announcement of this event for one of the BBSes I frequented. I can’t recall exactly what I said, all these years later, but I vaguely recall saying something along the lines that this was a drastic attention-getting stunt to grab the readers they could during what was a very apparent industry downturn from the salad days of just a couple years prior. Or if I didn’t say that, I should have.

This was one of those “alternative timeline” stories, where via some time-traveling shenanigans the Marvel Universe finds itself drastically changed, and all the regular X-titles were replaced for a few months by mini-series set in this milieu. For example, Wolverine became Weapon X, Generation X became Generation Next, and I’m not sure what was turned into Gambit and the X-ternals but that series was there too.

Tom describes the comics as containing “characters that are naught but grimaces and cool, endless splash pages of distorted, indecipherable anatomy [and] barely-there plotting” which may be the case, but it certainly sold well at the time and sold out of the back issue bins for quite a while thereafter. They don’t move quite as much now, but the chromium-covered X-Men: Alpha and, to a lesser extent, X-Men: Omega, which bookended the event, still sell fairly well.

As an embodiment of 1990s Comic Sins, I’m not sure how to categorize this. It is, as Tom noted, an attempt to latch onto then-current trends of comic book storytelling popularized by Image and its other imitators. My initial sarcastic idea was to put it in the “Hello, Fellow Kids” category, but to be honest, Marvel’s own form of 1990s excess was at this point well into its own unique style. And, y’know, it wasn’t all completely terrible, to be fair (here’s Chris B for the defense). So maybe let’s file this under “Forget Everything You Know” for its parallel universe stuff. But I’m open to suggestions.

As Roel says, “it looks like DC Comics badly cosplaying Image Comics,” which makes me want to place it in the aforementioned “Hello, Fellow Kids” category. More so than pretty much any other Marvel or DC book I’ve seen, Extreme Justice tried to emulate the, as it says on the tin, “extreme” art style that all of Today’s 1990s Youth were into, and cargo cult-style hoping that would draw in the big numbers that Image was, or at least had been, receiving. It only lasted a year and a half, so clearly it didn’t.

I’d only read a couple of issues of this series myself, and that was more than plenty. The most egregious of this title’s transgressions was its reworking of Booster Gold, who’d been generally a genial and occasionally goofy character, into whatever that is pictured on the cover I posted above. He was refitted with an armored costume, which I remember had one reviewer asking “if you’re going to be armored, why would you leave the top of your head exposed” which seemed like a good question to me.

This was a real try-hard of a book, and I’m not going to blame the creative team as they were likely following an editorial edict to “MAKE THIS COMIC KEWL.” In fact, the previously used “Kewl Style” category is probably where this should land, even if that doesn’t seem strong enough. The near-manic desperation of it probably overlaps with my somewhat facetious “Hello, Fellow Kids” category, so let’s give it that one too I mean, why not.

…which he compares to the slightly-fancier-covered (and already discussed) Turok Dinosaur Hunter #1 from the same company. This would probably just go into the general 1990s Sins “Gimmick” category, with its chromium card glued to the cover there. But as 1990s comics go, this isn’t…quite the offender as other titles have been, or at least it isn’t seen in quite the same like as that Turok first issue.

According to the Valiant Fans site, it had a print run of about 850,000 copies, which some publishers would push their favorite auntie into an industrial shredder to get those kind of numbers now. But that’s only about less than half of Turok #1, which feels slightly more ubiquitous. Not that Bloodshot #1s aren’t hard to come by (I think I have three in my store right now), but if I recall correctly sold quite well at the time and continued to sell as back issues afterward.

So I’ll probably stick with the “Gimmick” category for this one. As 1990s comics go, this wasn’t quite the burden on the marketplace as others have been.

JohnJ mentions not being able to find the cover this is from, but it’s actually from an ad if I recall correctly, that ran on some back covers here and there. An ad for what, exactly, I don’t know…a convention or a mail order house or some damned thing, I don’t particularly feel like delving too deep in Liefeldity right now. (But this cover is pretty close.) Also, apparently there’s a new explanation for why the drawing…looks like that going ’round, decades after the fact, but again don’t really want to entertain RL too much.

The actual Captain America comics Liefeld briefly worked on didn’t feature anything quite as extreme as the above image. Not saying they were good, but they at least weren’t as epically…let’s say “fanciful” as that pic.

Now in its own way this is about as iconic a representation of what 1990s comics were all about as any actual comic you can think of. It’s not a specific comic, though, so I should likely exclude it from categorization. I’m not even sure what category I’d put on it if I did. “The Rob Liefeldest,” perhaps?