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So in the summer of 1990, these came along: the first issue of what we referred to as the “adjectiveless Spider-Man, a new ongoing series drawn and written by the immensely-popular superstar artist Todd McFarlane. If you were a fan of McFarlane’s art, it was absolutely a visual tour de force, giving you the most McFarlane-est of McFarlane Spider-Man art. The writing was…well, I think in retrospect ol’ Todd got grief way out of proportion to his actual scripting skills. Perhaps he wasn’t the most talented wordsmith in the world, but for a goofy ol’ Spider-Man comic, it was fine. I’ve read plenty worse, I assure you. And while the opening captions to issue #1 took the brunt of the derision, it was turned into a wonderful piece of audio by my old pal Andrew and thus, how can I ever feel anything but love for it?
But look, we’re not here to talk about the contents of these Spidery-Sam books, we’ve come to poke sticks at the variant covers! Of the 1990s Big Variant Cover Hoohas, Spider-Man #1 was the first, with two differently colored covers (one printed with in green and black, the other black with silver ink), and then two additional versions with each cover sealed inside a polybag with “COLLECTOR’S ITEM!” printed all over it. Note the “Legend of the Arachknight” blurb, clearly referencing DC’s Legends of the Dark Knight #1 and its multiple covers.
Of note is the fact that the black bagged variant had no price printed on its cover, but instead had a $2 price tag on the bag. Gettin’ ya for an extra quarter there. The green bagged edition still appears to be the regular $1.75 price, though I could have sworn both were $2 at the time. Hey, it’s been thirty years, I forget things. However, for that extra quarter, you were buying a comic that was genuinely a variant in that the actual cover had a printing variation. But if it were removed from the bag, technically the collectible would be “incomplete,” so just being a variant in and of itself wouldn’t be enough, I’d thought. But just checked the eBays and someone there is trying to sell one of unbagged, cover-priceless versions of that black ‘n’ silver variant for $70, but I don’t know if that’s within reason or simply “high hopes.”
And yes, there’s also the bagged newsstand edition, with a UPC code on the cover instead of the Spidey face in its place. Can’t forget that. Plus there was the gold-inked 2nd printing, and the platinum edition and newsstand gold edition that you can read about here.
At any rate, we definitely sold a boatload of things…just stacks and stacks, with plenty of folks grabbing multiple copies. This was, of course, back in the day when you ordered heavily on a first issue, as, if successful, the series would go on for a long time and there would always be customers looking for that first issue in the future, because surely no publisher would be dumb enough to relaunch a series with a new #1 every year or two. In these days of direct market frugality, where everyone’s ordering as close to the bone as possible, it’s hard to imagine actually having that much stock on anything new, much less having speculators look at said stacks and view them as investible material. Compare to today, where speculation depends on pouncing on titles ordered at low-ish but reasonable numbers, creating and taking advantage of that additional scarcity in an already thinly-spread marketplace.
At the time, my previous place of employment had plenty on hand. Of the two regular covers, at least…my boss thought the polybagged-editions were “stupid” and refused to have anything to do with them after the sold out. Just wouldn’t buy them from collections, that sort of thing. Eventually we did get two that showed up in a collection that we just sort of ended up with, so out into the back issue bins they went. I think that was the one exception.
My personal thought on those bags back then was that they would eventually do damage to the comics inside, as they aged and broke down and decayed on the comics themselves. In recent years I’ve had my hands on those polybagged Spideys in my own shop, as well as other prebagged comics of that decade, and it doesn’t appear as it this has been the case. Whether that’ll change in the decades to come…well, of course it will, it’s cheap plastic, it’s gonna break down eventually. Whether that’ll happen soon enough for any of use to care, I don’t know.
I’d said the McFarlane Spider-Man #1, and the rest for that matter, were plentiful at the time. Not to beat that poor old dead horse some more, but after thirty years and shops vanishing and new shops cropping up and old back issue stock going away and all those copies purchased but then those were either not well cared for or simply thrown out…it’s very possible the available stock left in the world is at least somewhat lessened. Add to that the younger customers who weren’t around or too wee to be buying these off the racks, and are discovering them now. Regardless of the reason, these Spider-Man comics are currently in high demand, at least for me. I just can’t keep the darn things in stock.
And do those variants make any difference to buyers now? Not that I can tell. I haven’t had the quantities on hand to make a clear judgement as to whether there’s a consumer preference for the green cover or the black cover, but both (and the gold reprint) sell nearly as soon as I price them. This is, I think, one of those cases where cover variation is playing no real part in sales. It’s all “early McFarlane art,” or “it’s a #1 for one of the main Spider-Man series,” or “it’s a major Marvel #1,” period, all of it pushed along by a not-insignificant number of current speculators.
Next time: weekly X-Men variant covers…advantageous!
Not too long ago I purchased a copy of the above comic for my shop…Marvel Super-Heroes #1, from 1966, reprinting what was then a few relatively recent-ish comics from the publisher.
But of course, in 1966, most fans didn’t have the option of strolling on over to ye local comic book emporium to peruse the stacks and fill in gaps in their collections. Not to say there weren’t avenues to find old comics…there were stores here and there that had some, and you could always try mail order, but for the average comic book reader the newsstand was their source, which meant just the latest releases. So, if you had an interest in a particular character and title, and came to the property a tad late, these reprints held a lot of appeal.
Both Marvel and DC cranked out the reprint books throughout the 1960s and 1970s…the work was already paid for, and just sitting around in the archives, why not get it out there again? And it was, perhaps, easier to sell to an audience that tended to refresh every few years, meaning this old stuff was hitting new eyes.
I feel like Marvel’s reprints may have had more of a hook, however. DC’s stories were, by and large, standalone items, where, outside of their out-of-continuity “Imaginary Stories,” all the toys were put back in place by the tale’s conclusion, no matter how scattered or destroyed they may have been during the course of the plot. There were exceptions at DC, of course…the Legion of Super-Heroes springs to mind, and the status quo of Supergirl changing from “Superman’s Secret Weapon” to “Supergirl Reveals Herself” (ahem) is a fairly significant alteration to the premise. But a Superman story is a Superman story is a Superman story…if you read one Superman adventure, you don’t feel like you’ve missed any backstory, any twists or turns or surprising revelations.
In Marvel’s case, their superhero comics had adopted a more soap-operatic strategy. Stan Lee often ballyhooed Marvel’s “illusion of change” in their comics, but the subplots and relationships felt like they built on what came before, that there was forward progress being made with each character as they lived what seemed like, well, not “realistic” lives, but at least suspension-of-believable existences. This made you want to know what had come before, as coming in on issue 34 of, say, Amazing Spider-Man, will make you want to know what happened in the previous 33. You feel like you’ve skipped ahead to the 34th chapter in a book with 33 previous chapters (oh, and a prologue in Amazing Fantasy #15), and who knows how many chapters left to come. (Answer: this is one hell of a long book.)
Thus, the great appeal of Marvel’s reprint lines. You get those early chapters, maybe not in precise order, and not always in the same reprint title, but with some perseverance one could piece together earlier storylines. You could see beginnings of character relationships, early clashes with recurring villains, where those subplots had traveled prior to the more recent installments. Plus, in the 1960s, with Marvel’s new superhero line having only started a few years earlier, filling the gaps back to the beginning and getting the whole story probably seemed somewhat within reach.
The interesting thing is, in the modern marketplace, a lot of those early reprint books remain affordable, especially in lesser conditions. The copy of Marvel Super-Heroes #1 sold for $15, and I had several copies of Marvel Collectors’ Item Classics (don’t forget that apostrophe!) that sold from $1.50 to four or five dollars. Still have fans today trying to fill in those early stories, looking for the foundations on which the Marvel Universe was built. And doing it the old fashioned way…hunting and collecting and piecing it together. Sure, you can buy trades with the stories in order and on nice paper (assuming they’re in print), or even (gasp) digitally…but what’s the fun in that?
So over the last couple of days I’ve been grading and pricing a big ol’ pile of Thor comics spanning over the last couple of decades. Some of them reminded me of that period of Marvel (mostly improved now) where the covers were just generic images of the hero, indicating nothing of the story inside. It’s like Marvel was resigned to the idea that the only people buying their comics were the people who were going to buy their comics anyway. They might has well have had a generic of Thor on the front and just changed the issue number with each new release. (Amazing Spider-Man had a problem with that, too.)
Well, this new variant cover style, debuting this week from Marvel, has me wishing for the Good Ol’ Days of “Cover #14 in A Row of Spider-Man Swinging on His Web” —
Um…that’s not terribly inspiring. I saw some folks online (and one of my customers, who called me Sunday to ask about these) saying they thought this was just a fill-in graphic, holding the space in various catalogs and online databases. But nope, that appears to be the actual cover.
This was probably information that was revealed a while back, but I’ve been otherwise occupied and didn’t follow up on this whole “On Sale Wednesday” variant stuff after first seeing them as line items on an order form. I don’t tend to order a whole lot of Marvel’s “free to order” variants anyway, since most folks just want the regular cover, so I shouldn’t be stuck with too many of these. I did mention on the Twitters that maybe these’ll be like the “sketch” cover variants, with just an extra wraparound cover stapled over the regular cover. If that’s the case, and the “On Sale Wednesday” covers do end up not selling, I can just tear off the overcovers and vee-ola, Regular Cover Amazing Spider-Mans for sale!
And anyway, what exactly is the point of these? Marvel thumbing its nose at DC because DC changed their on-sale day for new products to Tuesday? A reminder to customers “hey we’re putting out new comics again, come get them every Wednesday unless the shipping company delayed the package or the distributor shorted the retailer copies.” Not sure how much of a burn it is in the former, and, well, kinda preaching to the converted in the latter. But here’s Yet Another Variant™ to order, because goodness knows there weren’t enough already.
So remember last week when we were talking about the Marvel/DC crossovers, and which ones I thought we the good’uns? Well, a couple of you had questions, so let me address those first:
John Lancaster tossed his line into the water with
“Seems to me that a lot of good crossovers that aren’t Marvel/DC are getting forgotten”
and then he proceeds to list some ones that are indeed good. My focus of the post was specifically just the Marvel/DC encounters, but I had planned on address some of the crossovers involving other companies as well. In other words, let’s talk about Deathmate:
Ah, just ribbin’ ya a little, and I’ve already talked about Deathmate at length if you want to go relive that.
But yes, there were plenty of crossovers among the smaller companies, sometimes even with either Marvel or DC. A personal favorite is 1994’s Archie Meets the Punisher (AKA Punisher Meets Archie, as per the Marvel-published diecut cover version):
General reaction to this at the time when this was announced was “Whaaa–!?” and for good reason, though it turned out to actually be a bit of fun. with art by Stan Goldberg and John Buscema.
Archie Comics, in fact, seems pretty game to cross over their character with other companies even to this say. John mentioned Archie Vs. Predator (which featured some fairly shocking content for an Archie comic, but in this post-Afterlife with Archie world, pretty much anything is fair game, I suspect). We’ve also had Archie meet up with Batman ’66, and the Archie gang turned up in issue #13A of Gen13 back in ’96:
I remember that one surprising me more than the Punisher crossover, for some reason. Like, Marvel and the Punisher were fairly “mainstream” and high profile, versus a relatively unknown (though admittedly popular) indie book. Wasn’t sure what Archie was going to get out of that…except, after thinking about it for a second, exposure of the characters to an audience that might otherwise not have paid attention to them, duh.
I suspect creator-owned titles are a little easier to negotiate with when it comes to crossovers like this, simply due to less layers of bureaucracy being involved. I mean, I’m about to exaggerate a little, but assembling the deal to make this happen feels like it probably only took about five minutes:
Don’t write to tell me I’m wrong, I know I am, but you have to admit the process of Todd ‘n’ Dave getting together to team up Spawn and Cerebus probably was a great deal less involved than JLA/Avengers. And Mr. Sim wasn’t shy about letting Cerebus show up here and yonder in other people’s independent comics, which again probably consisted of a fax asking if they could use the character, and Dave faxing back “yeah, sure.” Okay, granted the two that immediately come to mind are Journey and normalman, both Aardvark-Vanaheim publications at the time, like Cerebus, but I know there were others. Alas, the fabled X-Men/Cerebus didn’t happen (beyond a piece of promo art). But look, all I got for that Mr. Monster/Swamp Thing proposed team-up was a single piece of art as well:
…so we all just have to suffer.
More on specific crossovers next time, maybe, but let’s address Thom H.’s query briefly:
“I mean, is it that difficult or costly to have an inter-company meeting to discuss splitting the costs and profits 50/50? It seems like something two lawyers could do via email.”
As it was explained to me by someone also in the comics publishing business, it’s the potential profits that are a problem. Apparently neither Marvel nor DC feel like they’d be making enough profit on bringing any of these back in print, that having only 50% of the take isn’t enough. Now it seems to me making a little money is better than making no money (believe me, I’ve told myself that plenty of times at the shop after looking at the end-of-day receipts) but the Big Two don’t see it that way, I guess.
My half-facetious solution was that each company get the rights to publish their own paperbacks reprinting their crossovers…like, DC could publish JLA/Avengers under their own trade dress, and Marvel could do the same, titling it Avengers/JLA and putting it out with their trade dress, and they could agree to just keep all the profits from their versions. But I can see other problems arising from this (like, what happens when Marvel lets theirs fall out of print almost immediately…can DC still keep publishing their own?) so that may not be much of a solution.
So I don’t know, Thom…maybe when we enter a cashless society then someday all these comics will come back into print. In the meantime…WRITE YOUR CONGRESSPERSON! I’m sure they have nothin’ else going on right now, let them deal with this issue.
Okay, more crossover talk next time? Eh, we’ll see. In the meantime, be good to each other, wear your masks and wash your hands, and for God’s sake quick setting off your firecrackers at night, old comic shop owners need to get their beauty sleep.
Continuing from Friday’s post, where I was going on about intercompany crossovers…well, once again I ran out the clock on my blogging time, so let’s see what I can cover at least briefly here. I did want to mention a couple more favorites of mine…though, oddly enough, I ended up putting a couple of them on sale here at the shop, like a big dummy, but I suppose I can replace them someday.
The first two Marvel/DC ones I wanted to point out as being particular notable, and the first tow have one thing in common: John Byrne. Now, Byrne seems to be most in his wheelhouse when playing in Jack Kirby’s playground, and that’s definitely the case with Darkseid Vs. Galactus: The Hunger:
It helps that Galactus is a character I’d liked since I was a kid, and that Byrne’s Galactus is the one that I was really into, so it was nice to see Byrne returning to him. And pitting two of Kirby’s big baddies from either side of the publishing aisle is hard to resist. Sadly, it’s been a while since I’ve read this, so I forget most of the details (again, wish I hadn’t given up this comic) but the conclusion, as I recall, is a pretty good and clever defining moment for each character.
The other Byrne-produced crossover was Batman/Captain America, presented as a period piece with both characters in the World War II-era incarnations. You’ve likely seen the much-scanned-and-posted sequence from this book where the Joker, discovering that his partner in crime, the Red Skull, is a Nazi, turns on him, declaring himself an all-American criminal (shades of The Rocketeer movie). It’s a good scene, and the comic overall is a lot of fun…Byrne gets to play with Kirby’s Cap, and I’ve always liked his version of Batman.
Of note, I had a copy of this in the shop recently, and posted a pic on the store Instagram. I received a lot of requests for it (not just on Instagram, but in email, via Twitter DMs, etc.). Alas, had but the one to sell, but it certainly demonstrated the demand for these things.
Another book I wanted to mention was Incredible Hulk Vs. Superman, featuring beautiful art by Steve Rude (and honestly, would you expect any less from The Dude?). As was noted in the comments to my last post, it’s a nice retro-presentation for both characters, with the early ’60s version of the Hulk and the Golden Age-esque style of Superman, which nicely matches Roger Stern’s story placing this encounter early in the careers of both.
It’s a common thought I have about comic works of notes, but it’s a real shame material like this is out of print and difficult to come by. A nice, permanent edition of this (or any of thse intercompany crossovers) would be perennial sellers. I realize there are economic reasons that make it difficult to keep these in print, but still, what a waste and what a shame.
Okay, it’s been a long day, and I’m starting to write this late, but thankfully reader Matthew Murray dropped in a question that I can type about for a few minutes here:
“…What are your favourite intercompany crossovers?”
OOH BOY. There are quite a few, actually, and now that I’m pondering the question I realize this is a post that could go on for a while. So, let’s see what I can do tonight before Mr. Sandman whisks me away to sleep.
Well, JLA/Avengers, already discussed, is a great one, I think. Really, you look at it, you look at how crammed full it is of, well, everything, and there’s literally no way it could have worked in this particular form except for the fact that it’s by Kurt Busiek and George Perez. It should have been a disastrous mess, but instead it’s a towering achievement. Good on them.
The very first intercompany crossover I bought was the second Superman/Spider-Man crossover from 1981, published as Marvel Treasury Edition #28:
…and in many ways, it still remains my favorite. Marvel and DC, for their first batch of superhero meet-ups, were trading off the producution duties, so DC did the first Superman/Spidey, Marvel did this one, DC did Batman/Hulk, and Marvel did that X-Men/Titans one.
And I think it was the Marvel-ness of it that made me really like this particular event. It very much felt like “What If Superman Was a Marvel Character?” with Supes drawn in a very Marvel style by one of the most Marvel of artists, John Buscema, and colored in more somber tones than the usual brightness of DC’s Super-books. It felt…gritter, more “realistic” if you’d pardon the expression. This was not a version of Superman I was used to seeing, and I very much took to this version of the character.
Alas, I no longer have that original treasury edition, or any of those original four crossover books from the ’70s/’80s (not counting the Wizard of Oz adaptation DC and Marvel teamed up to produce) as I have that trade paperback reprinting of the four instead. Kinda loses something shrunk down like that (especially since my eyes would probably appreciate the larger format right about now). Also, I could be wrong on this, but it feels like they colored Superman’s costume even darker in the reprint than in the original tabloid. But, it’s still a good read, if you can find a copy.
Now I briefly mentioned the other super-crossovers between Marvel and DC published around that time. I actually liked them all quite a bit, but that second Superman/Spider-Man team-up is the tops of the bunch for me. But look, that Batman/Hulk treasury was full of giant pages of Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez art, and X-Men/Titans was chock full o’Walt Simonson. Those initial four comics have images and dialogue that have been stuck in my head for decades now…just a lot of fun.
Yeah, okay, surprise surprise, I’m being long-winded about this. Let’s pick up on this topic on Monday and I’ll try to think what more recent (i.e. 20 years ago) intercompany crossovers really strike my fancy.
So the 11-year-old niece and the 9-year-old nephew were telling me the other day how much they wanted Marvel and DC to have their characters meet. Specifically, they wanted the Justice League and the Avengers to fight.
“Oh, they already did that!” I told them. “I can show you a book of–”
“A BOOK!?!?” they exclaimed. “Why would you want to read a book of that? We meant a Marvel and DC movie!”
Well, I figure we’re some time away from a movie like that…probably going to take the collapse of the superhero film industry to make everyone desperate enough to band together, much like the ’90s collapse of the comics industry encouraged such crossovers. But, boy, speaking of which we sure did have a lot of those crossovers between Marvel during the ’90s, and while they used to be as common as dirt in the back issue bins before, now that some time has passed they’re not quite as plentiful.
I’m sure part of the reason is the same one I’ve given before, that a lot of the shops that existed during that period, and had wholesaled stock of those titles from distributors and possibly still had extras in storage, are now gone. Maybe their stock made it to other shops, maybe that stock is languishing in some poor bastard’s garage or storage unit, but whatever the cause, those crossovers don’t seem to pop up as often as they used to. Not long ago I had a copy of the Batman/Captain America team-up, and I’d posted a pic on my Instagram…and I had multiple requests to buy it. Demand definitely outstripped supply in that case.
And it’s just not that comic…once common, low-demand examples of Marvel/DC crossovers like Spider-Man/Batman or Batman/Daredevil never seem to last long. And high-demand ones like Hulk/Superman barely even get a change to get put in the back issue bins before it’s out the door.
It’s a shame that the deals between the companies that could result in keeping them in print (like they did in a series of paperbacks collecting them all together) are gone. And no more terrible example of this is JLA/Avengers.
I pulled my copy of the oversized, slipcased hardcover set to eventually show to the niece and nephew, who will probably glance at it briefly, shrug, and tell me “this isn’t a movie,” which is fine. But it was nice to look through it again…and at this size, it’s a lot easier for me to enjoy given the eyeball problems I’ve had of late.
It really is amazing…it’s nothing short of a miracle and Kurt Busiek and George Perez were able to cram in pretty much every character ever associated with either team, fill each page witih multiple panels and plenty of dialogue, and still have it come out at the end beautiful and readable. Sometimes you hear folks talk about how “not an inch is wasted” when discussing comic art, and boy howdy, does it ever apply here.
The real shame here is that it is not in print. This should be a perennial seller, constantly available, and it practically sells itself. So much money being left on the table by not having this available, and so many new fans just missing out on it. Well, okay, some people are just downloading it for free via file-sharing, I’m sure, but they’d probably do that anyway even if it was in print.
I’m saying the book should be available, as well as the other crossover collection paperbacks. But, it was pointed out to me on the Twitters when I was griping about this very thing, the economics of it probably don’t work very well, with money on each copy sold would have to be split between Marvel and DC. My idea was that maybe each company can just publish their own version of the paperbacks and keep all the profits from their own book. Like, DC could put out JLA/Avengers, Marvel could release Avengers/JLA, identical except it’s under the Marvel label and they get all the cash. I don’t know, there’s probably reasons why that wouldn’t work (least of which that the two companies probably wouldn’t want competing products that were essential the same), but…I just want JLA/Avengers back in print. Somehow. Just look at all that work that went into it…only for it to be dropped down the memory hole.
I would like to see Marvel/DC crossovers again…I tended to enjoy most of the ones that were released. I never did get my Swamp Thing/Man-Thing comic, despite cameo gag appearances. Ah, well. I know Todd McFarlane was throwing the idea out there of a Spawn/Spider-Man team up, to generate some excitement and get folks into stores after the retail shutdowns. That’s Image/Marvel, not DC/Marvel, but it’s the same kinda thing.
In conclusion, the niece and nephew better like seeing my copy of JLA/Avengers. At the very least, I’m sure they’ll enjoy that crazy “every character from either team ever” image on the slipcase. Honestly, what kid could resist that?
So I had a fella bring in a few Spider-Man comics to sell the other day, and he had them stowed away in a small cardboard carrier. That that carrier looked a little something…like this:
I bought the comics, as it turned out I needed them all, and the seller left behind this box when he departed. At first clance, I thought it was a homebad box, as I’ve certainly seen a lot of personally-decorated comic boxes over the decade.
But no, the lettering appears to be printed directiy on the cardboard, which doesn’t preclude someone making one of these for himself, but more likely it’s some kind of mass-produced item. And it’s not official Marvel merchandise, given the lack of copyright notices. Not sure if this really counts as a copyright violation, despite the phrase “Amazing Fantasy” appaering, and having a spider dropping from the name “Peter,” which must be some kind of look ‘n’ feel thing.
Anyway, no idea where this comes from. I’d be very surprised if this was an Official Spider-Man Item™, but if you know where this came from, let me know!
Not to get all Inception on you, but I’m going to address some comments made to a post where I was addressing your comments from a previous post, before returning to responding to more comments from the initial post. Got it? Good.
Anyway, I wanted to say just a few words about Marvel’s (or editor-in-chief Jim Shooter’s) “New Universe” publishing initiative, in which on the event of Marvel’s 25th anniversary (counting from the publication of Fantastic Four #1) they were going to introduce a whole “new universe” (hence the name) of superheroes completely unrelated to the shared world with Spider-Man, the Hulk, etc. The tagline was that this would be “the world outside your window,” with a somewhat more realistic take on what supeheroes would be like and what impact they would have on the society and people around them. Even the time scale in which the comics operated was “real time,” with a month passing in story time between each monthly issue. (Not sure how long that was kept up, to be honest.)
This dovetails nicely with a post I made recently about “realism in superhero comics, and I’m sure much of New Universe’s inspiration was informed by the success of Watchmen and Squadron Supreme. Star Brand, the one NU title I followed all the way through, had several examples of this sort of thing, such as pointing out a superhero costume wouldn’t really hide one’s identity very well, or the main character getting lost while flying around…little things, but details that commented on that nature of the genre.
Like I said, Star Brand was the one I kept on with, though I liked early issues of D.P. 7 (a superhero team) and tried out an issue of Merc or two. Star Brand, being the work of the NU creator Jim Shooter, would probably be the title that most exemplified what the whole imprint was about…at least in my opinionl, since as noted I didn’t really read too many of these titles. But it did try to tell a superhero story in a different and unconventional way. The hero’s “costume,” as such, was kinda drab, the hero himself wasn’t exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, as I recall…at the very least, he was a flawed human and no paragon of perfection. He even flew funny, in an upright, “standing” position instead of the usual “one fist forward” Superman pose. Even when John Byrne took over the book for the final few issues, and it began to look like a somewhat more conventional superhero comic, it still underminded the genre here and there, even if seemingly biting a particular plot point from Miracleman.
Even the trade dress of the comics was unusual, at least for the initial couple of years, with each cover framed in a black border, like they were in mourning for something. It gave everything a sheen of solemnity, that this wasn’t some flashy comic with dudes punching each other. It was something different, something somber, with dudes punching each other realistically. Or perhaps the more obvious interpretation was that black frame was a window frame, tying back into the “world outside your window” concept…you’re lookiing through your “window” at the New Universe that’s outside it.
The imprint was shaken up a bit with The Pitt (not to be confused with, well, you know) in which “the world outside your window” was distanced from the New Universe with the destruction of Pittsburgh. And then that was follwed by The Draft™ and then The War™ and my sense was that emphasis was less on keeping the New Universe “realistic” and more “something customers might keep buying.”
Anyway, the imprint eventually came to an end, with the last issues of the series reading “# [x} of a [x]-Part Limited Series,” which was sort of clever. And that was that, ’til elements of the New Universe started to creep into the regular Marvel Universe (a crossover that was once verboten). It started with some stuff in Spider-Man 2099 and in Quasar early on, and continues even today, with reboot series and character appearances and such.
I don’t think the original New Universe was a bad idea…kinda beat the big rush to everyone starting up their own “new universes” a few years later during the Big Comics Boom/Crash. And I think, in a way, the “Ultimate Universe” was a continuatino of the idea with marginally more realistic/deconstructive takes on the standard Marvel heroes. Of course, it ended the same way, eventually petering out with shake-ups to the premise and then getting folded into regular Marvel Universe continuity. But what probably did the New Universe in wasn’t necessarily the execution, but the rejection of Marvel fans to buying new Marvel comics that weren’t part of the regular Marvel universe they’d been following. I mean, sure, the Ultimate Universe books did fine at first, but those featured the familiar characters…this was a whole new batch of weirdos and unless they were going to fight Wolverine at some point, why bother reading them?
Or maybe it was the execution. A couple of them were pretty bad.
Now this all started prior to my entering the world of comics retail in 1988, so I don’t know what initial sales/customer reaction was like at the shop. I’ll have to ask former boss Ralph when next I see hiim…or maybe I can finally start going through these stacks of ancient invoices he passed along to me for research purposes, now that my eyes are a little more up to the task.
In the meantime, you should at least read John’s comment explaining his Spitfire #1 collection.
So Marvel’s been teasing an upcoming series/event/thingie that involves a murder, prompting folks to draw comparisons to DC’s recently concluded murder mystery even comic Heroes in Crisis. Which, you know, fair enough…there’s no shortage of times Marvel’s copied something successful of DC’s, and DC’s copied something successful of Marvel’s. I’d just mentioned Marvel Comics #1000 a few days ago as a very recent example.
This time around, the general assumption seems to be that Marvel is biting DC’s recently concluded mini-series Heroes in Crisis, which also centered around a superhero-related murder mystery. I saw the reaction online from here and there wondering why Marvel “didn’t learn from DC’s mistake,” why they would model one of their own projects on something their competitors did that was “bad” and a “disgrace” or whatnot.
The answer, of course, was that Heroes in Crisis, despite what anyone may have thought of it online, despite what perhaps you thought of it…it still did very well. Sold well enough for individual issues to go into multiple printings to meet demand. And just from personal experience, many of my customers were really into it and greatly anticipated each succeeding issue. It had a base of readers who did like it quite a bit.
Despite online grousing, was well received by the comic buying public. Of course other companies would take inspiration from it. It has nothing to do with how good or bad you might think the actual story is — and personally, I thought it was 5 pounds of story in a 30-pound bag, with good intentions but questionable results — it made money, which is the most important metric for publishers.
Reminds me a bit of that classic Batman comic book series y’all liked so much, All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder, nearly every issue receiving an enormous amount of derision online. And yes, and I even said this at the time, as I recall, at least at our store it was one of the highest-selling, if not the highest selling comic for that period. Outsold X-Men, the other Batman titles, Amazing Spider-Man, several others…lots of people hating on it online, but someone was buying it. And it wasn’t all bloggers picking up copies to scan and mock on their sites.
Anyway, if you find yourself wondering why a publisher puts out this comic or that comic, or why they’d emulate someething their competitor did that you didn’t care for…it’s all about the…Washingtons? Lincolns? I don’t know your youth slang of today. But you get what I mean.
It did get me thinking a bit about different publishers mimicking the sales strategies of others. Especially after reading this week’s new issue of Doomsday Clock — only one issue to go, where hopefully the previous 11 issues of set-ups and mysteries will get resolved in a normal-sized comic and not an 80-giant giant like it seems it will require.
But despite that, what I was thinking was what Marvel-published work that had previous been standalone, but also highly regarded, would be the equivalent of DC’s ,cite>Watchmen? And, would also be highly inappropriate to mix Marvel’s modern superhero universe with it. Most of the things I was thinking of were either under the Epic imprint and not technically owned by Marvel…like an Avengers/Moonshadow crossover or something…or like The ‘Nam, but that had a Punisher appearance of all things, so I guess that was kinda done.
Marvels doesn’t really count, because that’s just the regular Marvel Universe, told with a then-fresh viewpoint and art style. Unless Marvel took a month to have all their titles transform their contents into Marvels-a-likes. We did have Marvel’s anniversary celebration of that series with tribute variant covers, so we got kind of a taste of that, with mixed results.
So anyway, if you think of a good one, let me know.
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