final ’90s countdown

Behold, our second two-vote-receiver in the favorite indie comics of the ’90s poll…and it’s a title I’m pretty sure you’re all familiar with:

Gen 13 (Image Comics, 1994)

Even as the comics industry was starting to collapse all around us at the time, there were still the Hot Items that would hit the shelves and excite the comic readers who remained and toughed things out. Sure, shops were beginning to rely on POGs and Magic The Gathering cards to help shore up the sales that slipped far away from the Milk ‘n’ Honey times of the then very recent past, but there was still the occasional glimmer of hope on the stands yet.

Wizard Magazine, the comics industry hype man for all things new, popular, and investible, was at the height of its powers then, putting a price guide into the hands of The Common Man, versus that comparatively stodgy annual Overstreet Price Guide. And it would get the word out about all the Hot New #1s coming from your favorite publishers!

This was the world into which Gen 13 was unleashed. Nominally a super-team book, the initial mini-series introduced* to us Grunge, Free-Fall, Rainmaker, Fairchild, and Burnout, all superpowered teens. They are accompanied by the older, militarily-trained John Lynch. The initial five-issue mini-series was a hit, necessitating a second printing of the first issue. The youthful team, written by Jim Lee and Brandon Choi, featured the major selling point of J. Scott Campbell’s dynamic art. The exaggeratedly-legged and improbably-torsoed caricatures of the ladies read as “sexy” to potential readers, giving also-youthful comic fans an energetic and mildly-sensual alternative to boring ol’ comics aimed at their grandfathers, like Avengers and Justice League. This was a book for today’s mid-1990s young adult fans!

Given the mini’s popularity, an ongoing series was launched in 1995, with the relatively infamous thirteen variants for the first issue (discussed here). Trust me, for folks reading this who are newer to comics, at one time in the industry’s history “thirteen variants” actually seemed like a lot. But beyond everything else, those variants presented a cheeky sense of humor and a willingness to do some wild stuff with their comics. Of note in the second series is the three-part issue #13 (released as #13A, #13B, and #13C) in which Gen 13 crossed over with other companies’ characters, such as Jeff Smith’s Bone and, kinda surprisingly, the Archie Comics gang.

The second series continued on for 77 issues (plus a #0 mixed in there somewhere), wrapping up in 2002. With #37 the book became part of the Wildstorm imprint at DC Comics, and by this point the original creative team had left, leaving a variety of characters to carry on the book. Most notably, Adam Warren, of Empowered and Eclipse’s Dirty Pair fame, took over writing and cover art chores on the series, with interiors by Rick Mays, Ed Benes, and others, with the book concluding under his watch.

Along the way there were a number of tie-ins and spin-offs, most notably the anthology title Gen 13 Bootleg (which includes a story or two written and drawn by Warren, probably the best sellers from this run, at least at our shop). I mean, there were tons of them, and I’m just going to point you to the lists here and here instead of trying to transcribe every title into this post. I would like to note the Gen 13/Spider-Man intercompany crossover, as well as the Gen 13/Monkeyman and O’Brien mini, illustrated by Art Adams! Oh, and their crossover with the Maxx, and, and…well, you get the idea.

And speaking of Wizard, as we were earlier, here’s the cover to #44 from 1995, with the ladies of the team:

A brief aside: for all its failings, Wizard did succeed in, as I noted at the beginning of this post, hyping up comic titles to a certain core audience of readers, many of whom were new to the hobby, and more importantly, many of whom were young. Teenagers/young adults getting excited about comics that were aimed at them is something this business hasn’t seen in a while, at least until Absolute Batman caught on. I know Wizard could be juvenile, and that its taste could entirely be in its mouth, but boy, I preferred folks getting turned onto new books via a magazine they read versus them hunting books they see in the Hot Comics Apps like they do now.

And you know, that’s not really an aside. There have been attempts at revivals of the Gen 13 franchise, like reintroducing the team in a New 52-era issue of Supergirl, but Gen 13 may really have been Of An Age. As in, of that period in the ’90s when comics had been hot, but were on their way back out, but there was Wizard still pushing material to the kids who were still sticking around. But those kids are gone, the specific demographic that had been ready and willing to snap up a title like this, that was directly targeted at them, are gone. Or have moved on to, as I said, Absolute Batman. The niche is filled.

Look, I’m sorry to the two folks who voted for this title, and for any other fans reading this. I’m not trying to slag the comic. But it sort of feels like it was in a very small window of potential and opportunity, and those exact circumstances have yet to repeat themselves.

Or…have they? I’ve noted an uptick in back issue sales of the Gen 13 comics, so there may yet still be an audience. Maybe it’s nostalgia, maybe it’s new readers. But ol’ Gen 13 is still hanging in there.

Collected editions were wildly available during its heyday, but the most recent thing available is a Gen 13 Starting Over deluxe hardcover from a couple of years ago. It reprints the original mini, the first five issues of the second series, and some other material. Can’t tell if it’s in print or not…Lunar’s search engine tells me it exists, but won’t let me place an order on it, which maybe isn’t a good sign. Feels like this is one of those titles that would benefit from one of those super-thick paperback omnibuses, containing dozens of issues.

Anyway, Gen 13…a star that shined brightly for a little while, and maybe could reignite once again, someday. In the meantime, while you wait, you can watch this Gen 13 animation from 2000.
 
 
 
* Technically, they first appeared in Deathmate: Black, but no matter how hard people try on, like, eBay, literally nobody cares.

And thus we begin the next phase of this countdown, the comics that got two votes in the poll for favorite ’90s indie comic. For those of you new to this thingie I’m doing, I just want to remind you that only getting one or two votes isn’t a knock on the quality of the book, but simply an indicator of how many good indie books were coming out during that period of time. In fact, today’s pick is one of my favorites as well! I had such a wide variety of submissions from readers I was wondering if I’d see any sort of consensus. (SPOILER: eventually I did!)

So here we go, today’s beloved comic series:

DORK! (Slave Labor Graphics, 1993-2006)

Absolutely one of the greats. I was already a big Evan Dorkin fan due to Pirate Corp$/Hectic Planet and, of course, those incorrigible dairy products Milk & Cheese. The series still lives large in my head, to the point where someone the other day was asking at the shop for a trade paperback collection of the new Image Comics series D’Orc, and I immediately reached for the most recent book reprint of Dork! (more about that book later). No offense to the good folks on D’Orc doin’ a popular comic, but I think Dork! is the superior choice for the discerning comics aficionado.

These eleven black and white comics are compilations of mostly original material (with some reprints from other sources), usually short humorous pieces, including Milk & Cheese. Of particular note are his newspaper “funny pages” parodies, featuring a virtual onslaught of multiple strips, varying from purposefully dumb, to very dark, to observational, to sometimes vulgar and violent (but hilariously so). One recurring strip is “Myron the Living Voodoo Doll,” who is shown wandering the streets and getting some form of damage inflicted on him, with the final panel showing a person experiencing the same damage while declaring “I’ve got to find that doll!”

Here’s a small sample of another of the strips, picked for perhaps obvious reasons to long-time readers of the site. This is one of those observational, yet still funny, ones:

Also included in this run of books is a reprint of the “Murder Family” strip from Marvel’s Epic Lite #1, along with new stories featuring those characters, as well as the “Kyle and Evan Critics at Large” music review strips that ran in Reflex Magazine, co-produced with Kyle Baker. His material from an earlier Dark Horse Comics anthology, Instant Piano, is collected here as well, along with strips he did for a book called Generation Ecch. Oh, and just flipping through my stack of Dork! here, I noticed that a cover he did for the UK version of Deadline magazine gets reprinted on one of the back covers.

Perhaps most famously are several installments of the “Eltingville Club,” stories about a group of friends who are comic book/fantasy/sci-fi/role-playing/etc. fans, and, shall we say, are not shown in the most favorable light. It’s here that Dorkin gets to unleash every critique of fandom behavior (and the exploitation thereof), and you can just feel his vitriol and/or pity and/or personal experience through every bit of ink crammed into each hilarious panel. “There but for the grace of God, I hope” sez I. Here’s a cover featuring those gentlemen:

And of course I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the Eltingville Club animated pilot, which did not go to series because, alas, the world was not prepared for such beauty.

This just barely scratches the surface of the amount of material present in these comics. And not an inch of space is wasted…every page is almost Kurtzman/Elder MAD-esque in its need to fill every space with something, and it’s just a pleasure to drink it all in.

Material meant for the never-published issue #12 ended up running in Dark Horse Presents (2011 series) #10-#12. That material was reprinted in turn in the 2012 House of Fun one-shot from the same company, making that, more or less, the 12th issue.

Now…to the reprints! Look, I’m just gonna cut to the chase and tell you that all the Dork! material, the House of Fun stuff, all the extra Eltingville Club stories, every Milk & Cheese strip, can be found in this one, currently-in-print, giant volume of cartooning called Nerd Inferno:

No need to chase down out-of-print collections. It’s all here! Waiting for you! Watching your every move!

There were previous collections, like the Dork! hardcover in 2018, which contains, I think, everything except the Eltingville Club stories. Those get reprinted in their own Eltingville Club hardcover from 2016, including their first appearance from Instant Piano, as well as the two-issue mini-series from 2014 that wraps up that particular saga. (And just to be complete about it, there’s also a Milk & Cheese: Dairy Products Gone Bad hardcover from 2018.) But like I said, it’s all there in Nerd Inferno.

Look, I admit it may not be for everyone. It can be a little abrasive at times, but that’s a feature, not a bug. Those with sensitive constitutions may not want to read more than a few pages at one sitting. Me, I’ll park in my Egg Chair and read the entirety of Nerd Inferno cover to cover if I could make the time, and I’m a guy who’s already read all this stuff. It is top quality hilarious cartooning that I just adore. Evan Dorkin has been a favorite of mine ever since I picked up that one comic because I wanted to know why that weird alien was wearing a Fishbone t-shirt, and his comics never disappoint.

So at long last, here we are…at the end of the single vote-getters in the Final ’90s Countdown poll! To repeat myself yet again, a single vote is nothing to be ashamed of, given the relative number of votes I received and the number of high quality titles folks had to pick from! And today’s subject is….

TUG & buster (Art & Soul, 1995-1998)

Now, despite owning most of these comics (I think I’m still missing an issue), I remember very little about this comic other than having Marc Hempel’s usual great cartooning. So, in a first for this series of posts, I’m going to pause here for a moment while I reread at least the first issue.

Hang on a sec.

[TEMPUS FUGIT]

Okay, I’m back. Well, that issue of TUG & buster, as Hempel himself stylizes the names, was quite the wild ride. The hugely muscled, leather-jacketed, continally-smoking, flammably-coiffed TUG remains entirely mute throughout the story, while his diminutive…buddy? Brother? Fifth-dimensional imp? buster constantly runs his mouth, extolling TUG’s virtues and basking in the glory he perceives from his idol. In the introduction to the comic, Hempel straight out says it’s “about hero worship…how low self-esteem alters our perception of ourselves and others.” TUG is basically inert throughout, cutting an imposing figure but doing little else, with buster’s continual praise clearly meaning to show how cool he himself is simply by being in TUG’s presence. So many actions and adventures are described by him, with none evidenced.

The story is about the two of them being dropped off at the local hangout by buster’s mom, where they hook up with a couple of ladies who essentially settle for them, despite buster’s constant self-and-TUG-aggrandizing and TUG’s lack of any interaction. The romantic encounters that follow involve TUG…essentially doing nothing, and buster putting moves on his partner by essentially saying throughout “and here’s what TUG would do!” And both achieving some success, oddly enough.

It’s a wild and adult story, the humor coming primarily from buster’s endless blustering dialogue. It’s not without some minor pathos, as once the pair are separated and each with their “date” in their respective rooms, it becomes clear that buster is a little lost once he’s away from TUG. Though, that goes away quickly once, as I said, buster begins to be all “WWTD.”

We also get introduced to a couple of supporting characters in this issue…the dour and downbeat Stinkfinger, who’s at the bar making sure people know he would rather be somewhere else but prefers to stick around to let people know he doesn’t want to be there. And then there’s Ben Genital who…well, he’s like Hitman‘s Bueno Excellente, except somehow worse. You can almost feel the sweat peel off this guy as he perpetually monologues about sexual things in a repellently non-sexual way.

Sorry, I haven’t really done straight-up “plot summary” in these entries much, but this should at least give you a sense of of what TUG & Buster is like. As I said, it’s been a while since I’ve read any of these, so I don’t know if TUG eventually says even a single word, or if there’s any growth of any of these characters. But I’m presuming it’s just variations on the formula…buster talkin’ big about the both of them, TUG not really doing much of anything, Stinkfinger and Ben complicating matters. All of portrayed beautifully in Hempel’s black and white illustration.

While Hempel may be best know for his work on DC’s Sandman, and perhaps his collaboration with Mark Wheatley on Mars, TUG & buster is probably most closely related stylistically to his Piranha Press book series Gregory, in which we follow the imaginative exploits of a young man confined to a mental ward. It’s all about the same level of “political correctness” (i.e. hardly any at all, on the surface level), all hilarious and compelling with a touch of “oooh, perhaps I shouldn’t be laughing at that.”

This probably isn’t the sort of book that’s easy to find in the back issue bins, giving its indie status and its late ’90s release dates. My sense is that if you can handle a little ribaldry filtered through critiques of various forms of “masculinity,” it’s well worth seeking out. There were seven issues released by Art & Soul, followed by a single issue from Image in 1998 (which I’m guessing the easiest one to track down). There is one reprint collection, The Four-Fisted Adventures of TUG & buster, released by Image in 1998 (and in a limited signed hardcover by Graphitti Designs). The collection contains only issues 1-6 of the Art & Soul run. Should also note there’s a TUG & buster/Radical Dreamer flipbook preview from 1995, which I believe contains material from the first issue of the Art & Soul run.

So…perhaps not for everybody, but a completely unfettered bit of cartooning from Marc Hempel that I think is worth seeking out. And definitely another example of the kind of work in comics that is unfairly consigned to the back issue bins and should probably still exist in some kind of in-print form.

Only one more single-vote receiver to go after today’s installment of the Final ’90s Countdown! And like I always say, getting only one vote isn’t a thing of shame, but rather a testament to all the beloved books that came out during this usually maligned decade! That said, here we go with

Supreme (Image Comics/Maximum/Awesome, 1992 – 2000)

So, where to start with this comic? It’s got bit of a convoluted history but we’ll get through it!

It all kicks off in Youngblood #3 (August 1992), where the character is introduced. A creation of Rob Liefeld and Brian Murray, Supreme, a somewhat more violent take on Superman, got his own series in November 1992, in a first issue inexplicably labeled as “Volume 2.” …I’ve seen explanations for that ranging from “someone messed up” to “it’s implying a long previous history” to “it’s setting up an eventual ‘Volume 1’ series that would go into the character’s past history.” (And we sort of get that last one, but more on that later.)

But whatever the reason, the actual premise of the series itself sounded interesting to me at the time, in which Supreme, active during World War II, leaves the Earth for decades and returns in our absolutely current and modern year of 1992. And then, let the kicking of asses and the taking of names ensue.

I have to admit, despite thinking the premise was neat, the execution on these early issues were…not to my taste. It was very much an Image Comics of the Early ’90s with “kewl” looks and crossovers with other Image heroes and so on. A brief glimpse at this Grand Comics Database gallery of covers for the first 35 issues shows a whole lot of jagged lines and gritted teeth and just did not seem to Be For Me.

…Um, I realize that I did have someone place a vote for this as their favorite ’90s title, so I really don’t mean to yuck your yum, as people on podcasts say. I’m just giving my surface-level personal response to these “before-times” Supreme comics and for all I know, they read great. I see Shawn McManus drew a couple of them…I like his work! And Keith Giffen is in here somewhere, too!

Anyway, all that said, I don’t recall a whole lot of memories about these earlier Supremes during their initial sales at the shop. There was some anticipation for the first issue, sure…Image Comics was still in its Age of Hotness, after all. And I remember it selling fairly well when it came out. I mean, it did have a pretty striking cover by Murray. I know I linked to the cover earlier, but I’ll go ahead and put it here because honestly, I do like it.

Note that’s the newsstand cover, as the cover comic shops got had an embossed foil logo that doesn’t really show up great in scans like this. But still, that’s a cover that made customers go “whoa, look at this” and pick it up…and then they’d ask what “Volume 2” meant, and friend, only Rob Liefeld’s hairdresser knows for sure. (I should note here that there is an origin series for Supreme, called The Legend of Supreme, masterminded by Keith Giffen and Robert Loren Fleming, that covers his origin. If you need a “Volume One” to counter that “Volume Two,” this is close enough, I think.)

So anyhoos, Supreme continued on Supreming, until something very weird happened to the title in 1996. Specifically, this happened:

Alan Moore…yes, that Alan Moore, not any of those other Alan Moores you may be thinking of, took over writing chores with issue #41 (art by oe Bennett and Marlo Alquiza). With its Superman #1 (1939) inspired cover by Jerry Ordway, clearly changes were afoot, especially when you compare that cover to the ones in the gallery I linked earlier. This isn’t the hyperkinetic, violent Supreme we’d been seeing. This is something more retro, more “Silver/Golden” age-y. (And here’s the second printing of that #41, if you’re interested.)

And that’s what we got! Before Moore launched the America’s Best Comics line in 1999, here he was doing fun, silly, Silver Age Superman-inspired stories, complete with his own Lex Luthor type, his own Jimmy Olsen type, his mild-mannered secret identity, his superpowered pet dog, and on and on. Every story was a tribute to that sort of storytelling, as told through modern eyes…not ironically, not parodic, just played straight but still with a sense of humor about itself. It was Moore’s own antidote to the grim ‘n’ gritty trend of the ’80s to which he inadvertently contributed.

(One of my favorite gags is the Jimmy Olsen stand-in character, Billy Friday, finding himself in an endless series of transmutations that continue from issue to issue, referencing the many transformations Jimmy Olsen himself would undergo in his comics.)

This style of Supreme comic continued on for quite some time, and transcended multiple publishers and decades. The original series of Supreme ended its run at Image Comics with #42 in 1996. It picks up with #43 under the name Supreme: The New Adventure, running ’til #48. Then it’s off to Awesome Comics, where we get issues #49 through #56 (including two #52s, a #52A and a #52B), running ’til 1998. We then jump ahead a year, remaining at Awesome, where we get Supreme: The Return. This starts the numbering over again with #1, running until #6 in 2000, essentially being issues #57 through #62.

And yes, that was Alan Moore on all those issues. Notable other artists on these books include Chris Sprouse and Rick Veitch, though to my recollection everyone who worked on the book did a swell job.

So, with #6/#62 from that last series, that was it forever, right? That was the end of this great Silver Age-y experiment, and Supreme was never seen again, correct?

My dates at the top there, of 1998 through 2000, basically reflect the inception of the Supreme title until its eventual end at Awesome. It more of less kept the same numbering throughout, except for that final batch of comics, but I’m still considering it all part of the same run, especially given what comes later.

And what comes later, you may ask? Why, Supreme #63, of course, in 2012 from Image Comics.

Turns out there was still one script left by Mr. Moore, and Erik Larsen illustrated it for this debut issue of a new run of the title. And then the subsequent issues, running through #68 in 2013, had Larsen scripting and drawing, building on Moore’s work on the title while edging it away from the retro look ‘n’ feel that had dominated so much of its run. I read these too, and to my memory they were still a lot of fun…it wasn’t what Moore was doing, exactly, but Larsen comics have an energetic energy all their own and it was applied nicely to the concept.

There was one further Supreme comic in 2015, unrelated (or…is it) to previous goings-on. Supreme: Blue Rose, by Warren Ellis and Tula Lotay, is an interesting take on the very nature of superhero comics themselves [SPOILERS, maybe] , in particular the idea of “reboots.” We find ourselves in a world where Supreme’s reality has been rebooted yet again, but the reboot was somehow incomplete/flawed. It’s one of the few stories to actually dive into what a reboot would actually mean for the fictional world being rebooted (Astro City #1/2 being another classic example) and it makes for fascinating reading for those of us mired in all this superhero universe silliness.

Now, as for reprints…only a few issues of the pre-Moore Supreme were reprinted, with issues #12 though #16 showing up in Supreme Madness from Image. All the Moore Supreme (through the end of The Return) was reprinted in two trade paperbacks from Checker Books, but sadly my memory of these was that the print quality wasn’t that great…everything looked a little fuzzy, like they were low quality scans or they were shot from the original printed pages. I mean, it’s not bad, just not ideal. If that’s all you can find, it’ll do in a pinch.

There we have it…Supreme. A comic with somewhat inauspicious beginnings, looking an awful lot like everything else on the stands at the time, that turned into an almost-forgotten classic. Alan Moore’s run reminded us all of the whimsy and wonder that comics used to give us, while it was surrounded by gritted teeth and sloppy crosshatching. At least he was able to put out as many issues as he did, even if it was under several imprints and with a decade-long gap before his final issue saw the light of day.

Before I wrap up here, I do have one memory from the old shop, shortly after Moore had been on the book for several issues. I had a customer talking to me about how much he loved the Supreme comics, how the character was cool and tough, how ever issue was action packed. “Not like whatever weird things are happening in the comic now,” he said.

As much as I thought Moore’s Supreme run was objectively good, it was a little bit of an eye-opener to encounter someone with the exact opposite opinion. I simply nodded in agreement, probably. I had to look at it from his side…here I am, reading this amazing comic about a super-powered guy who takes no guff from anyone, who’s badass and kicks ass…that suddenly becomes a title involving superpets and looks like it came from the ’60s. I’m sure it was quite the shock.

ADDENDUM: I know I didn’t get into all the spin-offs, like Lady Supreme and Kid Supreme an’ all that, but this post was long enough as is. Just wanted to acknowledge that, yes, I know such spin-offs existed.

Nearing the end of the titles that received single votes in the fave ’90s indies poll! (Again, that doesn’t say anything about the comic, just about how many different good comics that came out in the 1990s!)

Stranger Attractors (RetroGrafix, 1993-1997)

I’ve noted before the main difference between this series of posts and the series I did focusing on 1980s books is that I’m largely more familiar with the ’80s titles. Even if I didn’t read the title itself, I usually had enough working familiarity with it so that I can discuss it at least somewhat non-foolishly.

Once the ’90s rolled along, I just didn’t have the time to keep up with every new title, sometimes only knowing things by their titles and not being aware of the actual contents. Just the sheer number of books available made that difficult, and my ability to keep up with every ‘zine and trade paper that possibly would have filled in the blanks fell to the wayside as well.

Which is a long way of me saying, yeah, I don’t know a whole lot about this comic. We absolutely carried the comic at my previous place of employment, and I recognize many of the covers. Couldn’t tell you how it sold for us, other than having a vague recollection that I had a couple of pull list customers for it.

I apologize for this oversight of mine, and certainly not a reflection on the quality of this comic. I did a little bit of research, thanks to my copy of the Slings and Arrows Comics Guide and judicious usage of the ‘zine search engine, so I can at least tell you that the book, by Michael Cohen and Mark Sherman centers around Sophie, a curator of an extensive museum of unusual artifacts. Normally an introverted and reserved person, she finds herself drawn further and further into an adventurous and exciting life. In space, I should probably mention.

The series also features flashbacks to Sophie’s childhood, and her fascination with sci-fi comic books. In a 1997 Comic Buyer’s Guide interview, Sherman says

“Sophie is a kind of mirror for all of us who are involved in this comics world. I think a lot of us see ourselves in Sophie and herencyclopedic knowledge of comic books. […] We get an almost transcendental thrill out of reading this fantastic literature called comic book. That is kind of where much of Strange Attractors comes from.”

From the sounds of it, it’s a sci-fi comic book adventure informed by sci-fi comic book adventure. Not in the sense of “the writers have only ever read comics, and that’s their only influence,” but in the sense of trying to impart that old energy and appeal into modern storytelling.

That original series ran 15 issues, with a mini published by Caliber Press in 1997. There was at least one reprint collection, Chaos Jitterbug, released by RetroGrafix in 1996, reprinting the first seven issues. In 2021 It’s Alive Press began reprinting the series, releasing at least six issues. (There is an unrelated series with the same name written by Charles Soule and illustrated by Greg Scott.)

All that is out of print, of course, but I imagine it wouldn’t cost too much to assemble a collection of these. The trick would be finding them, I would think. I can’t even say for sure I have any copies in my shop currently.

I hope this was a sufficient if brief overview of the title. I can only beg your pardon for having a hole like this in my knowledge, where I know the title, I know the covers, but could only relate what others have said about it. It’s like asking an A.I. bot, but getting your repsonse from a genuine if flawed human brain. If any of you have anything to add, my comment section is, as always, wide open.

Here it comes, the next entry in the Final ’90s Countdown of YOUR top votes for the best comics of an otherwise maligned decade in the industry. We’re almost done with the one-vote getters, and it’s kind of a two-fer — or four-fer — here:

Stormwatch #37-44 (Image 1996-7), Stormwatch #1-#11 (1997-1998), WildC.A.T.s/Aliens one-shot (1998) and The Authority #1-12 (Wildstorm 1999-2000)

This breaks format just a little, and it’s more than what was actually submitted, but they are of a piece, as one title flows right into another. The connecting thread here is writer Warren Ellis, currently kinda persona non grata in the business, but at the time was a cutting edge writer of interesting and influential comics.

But anyway, as you can see from the list of titles there, it’s bit of a complicated road to follow. Starting with #37 of the original Stormwatch series, Ellis, along with artists Tom Raney and Randy Elliott retool the book into a more “real world” (relatively speaking) setting, with more of a political edge, versus the 1990s “Image Style” book it had been previously. (Think of when Alan Moore took over Supreme, turning it from…whatever it was into the Silver Age-y deconstructive tribute it became.)

The Ellis storylines wrapped up the original Stormwatch series with #50, leading into a second volume of Stormwatch that ran 11 issues, all written by Ellis and joined by artists Oscar Jimenez, Joe Phillips, and Jason Gorder in the first issue, plus other aritsts along the way. Eventually Bryan Hitch and Paul Neary come aboard, and suddenly it’s a whole new game.

Now I have to jump in here and admit…I have not read this particular period of Stormwatch. I’m just sorta cruisin’ around, picking up details and overviews from hither and yon upon the internets. So, I do not have specific first hand knowledge of these books, beyond selling them when they were new. (And noticing the huge jump in back issue demand for these once Authority got rolling.)

So when I say “Hitch and Neary were a new game,” that comes mainly from my knowledge of their art. Bringing in a more cinematic and exciting depiction on the comics that they draw, bringing a more mature form of the energy that early Image tried to produce with their crosshatching and movement lines.

Oddly, right after (or during the conclusion) of this second Stormwatch series comes the WildC.A.T.s/ALIENS one-shot by Ellis and Chris Sprouse, in which some Stormwatch characters were done away with. Interesting that a book crossing over their characters with another company’s licensed property would be the place to make changes like this, given the unreliability of availability in future reprints, but here we are.

And now, finally, we get to The Big One, The Authority, where Ellis and Hitch take the pieces from what had come previously, and reweave them into the very end-of-the-century comic that we know and love. And I did at least read this title, so I’m not completely out of the loop here. It was for this series in particular that I believe folks first started batting around the “widesceen comics” descriptor, based on the, again, cinematic storytelling of the artists and the large scale action scenes/set pieces presented via that style.

It was edgy, political, brutal and effective, making each issue into a real page-turner. It took what should have been a clichéd and childish joke idea, a “what if Batman and Superman were gay lovers,” and actually made those characters’ analgoues on the team, Midnighter and Apollo, enjoyable and fascinating. Jenny Sparks, the “Spirit of the Century” created by Ellis in his initial Stormwatch issue, gets the conclusion of her story as the series approaches the millennium. (More or less, but I think this is addressed in the comics if I remember correctly.) The stakes kept rising, with Ellis and Hitch’s final story on the book involving the team fighting “God.” It was a wild time.

These comics were very much Of A Time…it’s easy to look at these and say “oh, yeah, that’s definitely the early 2000s.” Several folks tried to emulate the art style, and Ellis himself would go to this “tough bastards versus the world or whatever” scripting again and again. Mark Millar, who took on writing chores on Authority after Ellis’s departure, had attempted to follow in his footsteps, but it felt as if the proper “balance of bastardry” was off as the characters seemed to lean a little too hard in one direction. Nice Frank Quitely art, though.

Reprints: all this guff’s been reprinted in that convenient trade paperback/hardcover format over the years, but most recently there was a papperback Authority TP Book One, which reprints all the Authority issues by Ellis and Hitch, along with the crossover Planetary/Authority that mixes the team with another of Ellis’s properties. A large omnibus includes all the Ellis work, as well as Millar’s run, and a short run by Tom Peyer (which I liked!).

All the Stormwatch comics by Ellis have been most recently reprinted in Stormwatch: The Raod to Authority Compendium.

Odd man out is the WildC.A.T.s/Aliens one-shot, which, by its nature, makes it hard to reprint in context with the work around it. A paperback from 2001, Stormwatch: Final Orbit, reprints the story with Stormwatch Vol. 2 #11, and DC/Dark Horse: Aliens from 2016 includes this along with some of the other DC/DH Aliens crossover titles. Neither is currently in print, far as I can tell.

So someday I may get around to reading those Stormwatches, though my current ambivalence toward Ellis may put that off a bit. But the ultimate payoff to those, Authority, did have an impact, at least for a while, on how we thought about superheroes and how they could be presented. That proposed Authority movie might have been interesting, though I suspect some of the edges would have been smoothed down for maximum box office…a moot point now, since it’s been moved to the back burner. Ah well, someday we’ll see a DC movie where our heroes fight God.

Believe it or not, we’re nearing the end of the titles that received one vote in my Final ’90s Countdown survey! (And again, that’s no comment on the quality of the books, but rather the available variety of beloved comics people voted for.)

Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi (Dark Horse, 1993-1994)

The first thing that surprised me when I started doing my research on this title was just how few of them there were, and how short of a run they had. The first mini-series, Tales of the Jedi but later referred to as Knights of the Old Republic, ran five issues from ’93 to ’94. Then there were another half dozen or so mini-series, ending with Tales of the Jedi: Redemption in 1998. In my memory, it always felt like there was so much more than that, probably because I’m recalling the many times at the old job having to sift through the section and restock missing issues.

Anyway, I’m presuming the then-impending release of Episode I: The Phantom Menace may have put a minor kibosh on Extended Universe material dealing with the history of the Star Wars Universe. Or they just had the story they wanted to tell and it was told. I hear that happens too, sometimes.

Now a small problem here is while I did read some of the comics, I think this was about the time I began to realize that there was just no way I was going to be able to keep up with all the narrative Star Wars material. Look, I was eight when the original Star Wars came out, I sat in theater seats for multiple showing, I was all-in on this weird space thing. And as Star Wars books and comics an’ such came out, I did my best to keep up with all of them. (Though even the Marvel comics I kinda faltered on, later completing a run as an adult.)

But with this then-new renaissance of Star Wars material, with the new novels and comics and such, I kept up with everything.

Until I didn’t. And Tales of the Jedi was one of the breaking points. (X-Wing Squadron, too, come to think of it.) It wasn’t a matter of quality or anything, it was more a matter of just time and money. I couldn’t read everything, and I certainly couldn’t afford everything, so cuts were made. And TOTJ, which was okay but didn’t involve the characters I knew from the films, got the cut.

As such, it’s been a while since I’ve read it, and very little of the comics’ contents remain in my brain. I can tell you, thanks to my careful and diligent research, that the titles take place during two significant events in the Star Wars Universe: the Hyperspace War and the Sith War, which were thousands of years prior to the Original Film Trilogy. And these were written by Tom Veitch and Kevin J. Anderson, and as such I’m sure they were fine.

A lot of the Extended Universe material was…rejiggered slightly once Lucasfilm started doing new Star Wars content again. (Look up “Jaster Mereel” and how that was thrown into flux once we met Jango Fett in the films.) The TOTJ material had at least the advantage of being set so far back in time that even the prequels didn’t overlap much, though (again, not having read them in a very long time) I suspect what we learn of the Sith in the movies may contradict what we learn of them in these comics.

It’s pretty much moot at this point, as with the purchase by Disney, any Extended Universe material previously published has since been relegated to non-canon “Legends” status. Dark Horse even followed up these books with stories set even further back in Star Wars history: multiple minis of Dawn of the Jedi, taking place 35,000 years before the Original Trilogy. After the third series, Marvel acquired the Star Wars license, with a new canon “historical” series of books and comics under the banner of “High Republic” being released. These were set a more modest 100 to 500 years before the Original Trilogy.

Like I said, I started to fall off reading the ancillary Star Wars material with TOTJ, and that’s continued on ’til today, to the point where I only read the occasional SW thing. I tried to start with the new Disney-era novels, but decided “no, I already did this once, not again.” As such, I don’t know much of the TOTJ material has filtered into newer Star Wars releases. I’ve often lamented “if Young Mike knew that there were Star Wars characters Old Mike knew nothing about, he’d be very disappointed.”

At any rate, all the Tales of the Jedi series got their own individual paperbacks, as well as two omnibus trades, from Dark Horse. And from Marvel, the entire TOTJ line was reprinted in a series of three “Epic Collections.” The third Epic reprint also contains stories from Dark Horse Comics (the anthology series) and Star Wars Tales.

Outside of comics, West End Games published a sourcebook based on TOTJ for their Star Wars Role Playing Game. There were even a handful of Knights of the Old Republic video games from Bioware.

When this comic was coming out, I remember it being quite popular, in no small part because it provided some world-building for a fictional universe that was in need of some. I remember some of the comics even being (cough) “hot” to a certain extent. Even today any back issues I get in of any of the TOTJ minis fly out the door. After so many years, it still captures interest.

And now, for another one-vote getter for my Final ’90s Countdown survey, and pack a lunch, it’s a long one!

Spawn (Image Comics, 1992-present)

Man oh man, where do I even start.

Arising from the mass exodus of Marvel’s top artists and Rob Liefeld, Image Comics provided these creators free reign to generate whatever new concepts their wild imaginations could conceive, and (most importantly) still have complete ownership of them. And it remains today as a powerful publisher of creator-owned work.

Now, when this whole wingding was announced, I remember thinking, “wow, this is a great opportunity to expand comics into new genres with these artists’ large audiences! Imagine a Jim Lee-drawn crime drama, or a Todd McFarlane-drawn Old West story!” Yes, I was perhaps a little…well, a lot naïve, and frankly I still think McFarlane could draw one hell of a cactus. But what we got was more superheroes.

I mean, at first, they were admittedly very popular superheroes. First out of the gate was Liefeld’s Youngblood, and despite the joshing I gave that fresh-faced youngster earlier in this piece, we had a line waiting outside the door of our shop the day of release (thanks largely to the Rob making a talk show appearance the night before). And the comic continued to sell well, and its style and storytelling had a tremendous impact on the superhero artform.

Which is a long way of introducing the subject of today’s entry, Todd McFarlane’s Spawn. Another popular debut series from Image, we didn’t have a line outside the door for this comic when it first came out, but we ordered high numbers and purt’near sold through them all. Coming off several years of illustrating Spider-Man comics, McFarlane was perhaps neck-and-neck with Jim Lee (who’d drawn X-Men books) for Most Popular Guy Who Quit Marvel, 1990s Edition. This comic just sold and sold and kept selling for a number of years, while the market was there, and even continued on through the mid-1990s market crash at slightly less-outstanding sales levels.

As you can see by the header, the comic is still being published to this very day, along with a myriad of recent-ish spin-offs (including Gunslinger Spawn, so we finally did get that western-themed McFarlane comic I was hoping for, kinda-sorta). Sales have been up and down over the decades, but have been a little strong of late, at least on the main title, which has never relaunched or rebooted or renumbered or any darn thing, issue #373 having come out just a couple of weeks back. Plus, its creator, Todd McFarlane his own self, has been involved in its production more often than not over its long life.

In general, as a writer, McFarlane make a good artist, as we all discovered during that solo Spider-Man title he did just prior to departing Marvel, and we all had our fun with his skills in that department. But, honestly, he wasn’t much worse than, say, Bill Mantlo during his more florid moments, or Chris Claremont-isms like “I…hurt,” and even John Byrne’s scripts had some real clunkers. No one is without sin, is what I’m saying, and eventually, I think, McFarlane turned into the kind of writer that the Spawn storytelling required. Nothing particularly clever or polished, but utilitarian enough to move things along at the necessary pace.

As I mentioned, McFarlane kept his hand in one way or another throughout the series, even as other hands took over the story and art, and the comic remained…artistically consistent for its still continuing lifespan. Imagine 373 issues of X-Men or Wonder Woman, all more or less under the same editorial guidance, all looking reasonably similar stylewise, the story remaining consistent and building upon itself all this time. The only comparisons in American comics would be Dave Sim’s Cerebus, and the also still-continuing Savage Dragon by Erik Larsen, both of whom did write and drawn every issue). I’ve often lamented that Liefeld didn’t keep doing Youngblood every month since that long-ago first issue. Just imagine 373 issues of Youngblood and what that would look like now. It would be bonkers beyond our wildest dreams. It would be everyone‘s favorite comic.

So, what’s the comic all about, anyway? Soldier Al Simmons, upon his murder, goes to Hell, where the demon in charge, Malebolgia, gives him a costume and powers and sends him back to Earth to serve his new master’s ends. Once there, Spawn decides to use his powers for good instead, and, well, hijinks ensue for the next 30+ years. (It’s reminiscent of the 1970s Atlas/Seaboard comic The Grim Ghost, except for the running for 30+ years part.) One gimmick is that Spawn is told he only has a limited amount of “energy” for the superpowers he now has, and once he used all those up, he gets sent back to Hell. As such, we, the readers, are given a little on-panel doodad that occasionally pops up and shows us where Spawn’s power levels are at, even though it’s never explained what each number represents and what exactly depletes what stat.

I mean, at least at first, I only read a handful of issues so I have no idea if that counter was ever explained, or refilled, or whathaveyou. In fact, I only read the first dozen issues myself, because, sure, why not, which meant I was there for the four guest-writer issues (8-11, written by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Dave Sim, and Frank Miller, respectively). I don’t know if that was McFarlane reacting to criticisms of the writing by saying “okay, fine, here are some real writers” or what, but they were pretty good, and at least a couple of them (Moore and Gaiman) added some important pieces to the ongoing Spawn saga (even if one of those pieces, the hunter angel Angela, was eventually lost to Marvel in a whole legal/creator ownership thing that I’ll let this article explain).

As to what Spawn has been up to all this time, since I last read the character, I couldn’t tell you beyond what I know of the character’s publishing history. There were a number of spin-offs early on, including Curse of Spawn and Spawn: The DUndead, crossover adventures like Spawn/WildC.A.T.s (written by Alan Moore), multiple minis with Spawn’s nemesis Violator (also written by Moore!), and a couple of intercompany crossovers with Batman (which would happen again recently). Then, a few years ago, there was another big push to launch more Spawn series, like King Spawn and the aforementioned Gunslinger Spawn, and there’s usually three or four different Spawn series on the rack at any given time.

There are reprints a’plenty, including a series of Spawn: Origins (volume 31, coming in August, collects up to #190), and the giant Spawn Compendiums, volume 7 of which gets you up to #350). And there have been several paperbacks and hardcovers reprinting the many spin-offs and tie-ins, all in varying states of in-printness. And of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the live-action movie from 1997, and the three seasons of the HBO animated series (also starting in 1997). I feel like I keep hearing about a new Spawn movie every couple of years. Oh, and the toys. So many toys.

Spawn remains a touchstone for many former comic book readers, as I don’t know how many times someone has come in, told me “I haven’t been in a comic shop since the ’90s!” and then asked “is Spawn still coming out?” or “how much is Spawn #1 worth?” And speaking of Spawn #1, I continue to do strong trade in those, selling them almost as fast as I can get my hands on them.

Now is it all any good? Well, at least one of you voting in my poll liked it, so who am I to gainsay that? But it’s lasted all this time, through likely multiple cycles of readership. I often wonder what percentage of folks buying the comic have been reading it since buying its very first issue off the stands in 1992? Regardless, it’s had real staying power and a solid fanbase and I suspect, if we check back in thirty years from now, we’ll continue to find it on the stands. Probably at $17.99 an issue, but I don’t think it’s going anywhere.

Oh, hello there! It’s been a while! I promise to get back into the swing of things re: the Final ’90s Countdown, where I discuss your picks for your favorite indie comics series that began sometime within the 1990 to 1999 time frame. Still going through the entries that received single votes…and as I always remind you, that’s no reflection of the quality of the comic, but a result of so many good comics being released that decade.

And awaaaaay we go:

Soulsearchers and Company (Claypool, 1993-2007)

Well, once again I find myself in the tricky position of having to write semi-knowledgeably about a comic book series that I did not read. And embarrassingly enough, it’s a series written by the prolific and popular funnybook scribe Peter David, whose work I normally followed but somehow I managed to bounce off this particular endeavor.

I’m not sure why…I know I at least tried it for a few of its early issues, but either it just didn’t grab me or I was going through one of my not-infrequent financially-necessitated cutbacks on the books I was following. But despite my lack of readership, you can see from the header above that the comic lasted a good, long while…82 issues, to be exact, which ain’t bad for a small press black and white book. The publisher, Claypool Comics, also put out Deadbeats, which also ran 82 issues, and the licensed Elvira Mistress of the Dark comic, which ran a boggling 166 issues. And these might have all run even more issues if Diamond Comic Distributors didn’t drop the publisher from their catalog in order to make room for, I don’t know, more Sexy Anime Statues.

Anyway, the book was written by Peter David, occasionally with Richard Howell. Art was by a number of folks, including Amanda Conner, Dave Cockrum, Gordon Purcell, Joe Staton, John Heebink, Chris Marrinan, and several others. The premise itself revolves around a group of paranormal investigators…by which I mean, the investigators themselves are paranormal, including, like, a fire demon, a shapechanger, a witch, a centaur, and a once-human-now-magically-transformed prairie dog. They would go up against magical menaces and misdemeanors, all told with the David flair for mixing humor with melodrama.

There were six omnibuses reprinting the series up through issue #71. Two trade paperbacks reprinting through #12 were released earlier. The omnibuses appear readily available via Amazon.

A Claypool Comics website exists, but it’s mostly descriptions of their main two series (this one and Deadbeats) plus reviews.

So, a real blind spot in my Peter David reading, I’m afraid. And in a lot of people’s, apparently, judging by David’s comment at the end of that post.

I apologize, it’s been a while since I’ve done an entry in the Final ’90s Countdown series, in which you voted for your favorite comics that began in the 1990s! I’m still in the titles that received one vote apiece…and again, that’s not a comment on the quality of the book, but rather on the breadth of excellent material that decade was producing.

Skeleton Key (Slave Labor Graphics, 1995-1998)

Andi Watson’s fantasy adventure series about a high schooler named Tamsin, who gains possession of the titular skeleton key, a magical item that can open any door and turn it into a path to other realities. Along the way she encounters Kitsune, a fox spirit, who becomes her partner in Skeleton Key-ness and adventures through all these other worlds with her.

Like Scott McCloud’s Zot!, which became slightly more grounded as it entered the back section of its run, Skeleton Key‘s focus on fantasy adventure diminished to some extent in favor of more emphasis on Tamsin’s adventures as a young woman. You can really see the difference if you were to compare the cover to the first issue I posted above with, say, the cover to issue #20. It really does look like a whole new book, and if you were to look at the full cover gallery you can really see how quickly the book and art style evolved.

I wasn’t much of a reader of Skeleton Key as it was coming out, though I’d flip through the new issues when unboxing them for the shelves and admire the art. Especially on those later issues, where the design work is just immensely appealing.

There were additional comics outside that initial 30 issue run, such as a couple of one-shots and a four issue mini in 1999. Some short color stories ran in the 2000s-era Dark Horse Presents that were collected into the 2012 Skeleton Key Color Special.

There are five trade paperbacks that reprint the first 30 issues series and the second 4 issue series, plus a short from the ’90s era black and white Dark Horse Presents. The volumes all appear to be out of print, but may be available on the secondary market.

Anyway, nice series with some appealing art and really deserves to still be in print. Maybe some enterprising publisher can put together a Skeleton Key Omnibus at some point.