Byrne, I would say, was probably the jealous one, as he made a lot of noise about the derivative nature of the Image books, while he was putting out the same thing, with Next Men and Danger Unlimited.  David merely defended the role of the writer, in general, and Louise Simonson, in particular, in regards to her involvement in the creation of Cable.  The debate challenge was issued by McFarlane, and even David, immediately after, felt dumb for agreeing to it.  Most of his criticisms were limited to countering specific claims of being held back, providing specifics of how Marvel had bent over backwards to accommodate them, previously, and such topics as late books. 

Don't forget, people, that 1991 was a period of mourning for us all when Marvel Comics' Transformers was cancelled.

Welcome to the forum! Yeah, I enjoyed some of the SS books back then.

Of the two comic shops that were in local malls, one was really good and the other was okay. But I believe these shops were around before the boom, so they probably don't fit the phenomenon. One was part of a small chain of 2 or 3 shops.

However, a local video place did start selling comics, which may be part of this.

Part of the problem was that the demise of newsstand sales meant that twelve year old no longer had easy access to Spider-Man comics. Everything tilted toward the direct market buyers, who were older and could drive to a LCS and spend more money than a sixth grader. Nicer paper, better color, more adult-oriented stories.  It seems to me that Marvel at least tried to offer non-superhero titles in that format, but the audience wasn't interested. They just wanted more Wolverine, so that's what they got.

It's cool to see a couple people mention Spider-Man 2099 and Spider-Girl. I like both, although Spider-Girl started in the late 1990s and I didn't start following it until well into the 2000s (the second series - Amazing Spider-Girl). I read the early issues sporadically and then went back and bought pretty much everything. Someday, I'm going to binge my way through the series.

Spider-Man 2099 was interesting, because even though he uses a name from a class superhero, a lot of things are different or even inverted. Miguel O'Hara has both his parents (and a sibling), but he's arguably worse off family-wise than Peter Parker, because his parents were both psychologically abusive and his father was physically abusive. There was a cynicism to the series and a great critique of corporate power in the dystopian world. Aside from Peter David's writing, Rick Leonardi's pencils (and I think Al Williamson on inks) were great, too.

I see that DC did have a Looney Tunes (Bugs Bunny etc.) comic regularly in the '90s, and Animaniacs... so they were trying to provide something lighter and younger. Harvey was around again too wasn't it? I've always felt if I had a great story for adults I would think of taking it to a text publisher where I know the largest adult readership is, and there would not likely be super powers or costumes involved. There is nothing at all wrong with adventure or genre storytelling, obviously I love it at it's best or even average, but somewhere a lot of people who may not have actually ever read say Return Of The Native or Wuthering Heights, never mind Crime And Punishment, seemed to believe after reading x number of comic books and seeing x number of movies that are most like the visual fantasy comics specialized in, that they could write meaningful adult literature with super costumed people that would make real history... or something like that... well not my cuppa, I found it a mess. No more of a success than E.C.'s short-lived Picto-Fiction, or Marvel's magazine format line of the '70s-'80s only there you had a format less traditionally aimed at children. People who really think Dark Knight and Watchmen are far beyond Camelot 3000 or Howard The Duck are people who don't really read much else but comics is my suspicion. That Denny O'Neil's first run on Green Lantern/Green Arrow and some of his Batman stories, or Spider-Man #121-122 made history is something that became exaggerated, and they were unique more as breaking the formula so that once that becomes the formula ('dealing' with real life issues, death, drugs) there is no impact, and there is damage done to sustainability in so far as you are involving super powers and costumes and all those tropes that were originally cooked up for the twelve year old. Moby Dick with costumes and codenames and fantasy powers... really? Oooookay. It might be interesting, very interesting, to try for the heights as one sees it, but the higher you aim with these previously simpler forms the higher the possibility of not succeeding at any level. So not so much a case of forbidding such attempts but it does seem like going back to straight forward adventure and fun is very difficult after such attempts or even successes... and there are those trying to go further and top Alan Moore or Frank Miller (first nude bi-racial lesbian vampire sex scene in a superhero comic, yay, I'm a footnote in the Overstreet guides now, I have arrived). Gary Groth and toffee-nosed company might make money off tie-ins with these things, but are they ever going to be a big enough audience? Actually it sure seemed clear they were the most critical of such attempts and certainly hated Image to the point of irrationality. And anyway, how as a writer or artist do you enjoy working for an audience of obsessive nit-pickers armed literally with encyclopedias of fictional information to check against? Talk about a creative straight-jacket!

The '90s: where pretensions and sheer milking of properties hit the fan.