It's very much a product of its time, a lot of it is satire tapping into the spirit of the time. It may work for some people and not for other people, so a $50 omnibus is a big step to take if you're unsure of the title.

It's the Ghost Rider I started reading first. Then branching out to the reprints, at the time, of the originals in The Original Ghost Rider. I liked it, but if you have an overall turn off to something that is a "product" of the 90's, this series probably won't be any different. I'd say the first 24 issues or so are the best, in their own right. Following that with crossovers with Midnight Sons (unless you like those characters) and X-Men, etc, probably would be a dip in quality for most apprehensive about 90's material. If you liked that I think the following 26 issues would be plausible, but still very much a lot of crossovers and guest stars, as though Marvel wasn't sure GR could stand on his own. 50-80 or so are Salvador Larroca art, which is huge plus for me, but still the same formula as before. And to be honest, though I greatly disliked Pop Mhan's art that finished out the series, I really thought the stories were going places and were as good as when it started. But then it got abruptly cancelled with the final issue coming out some 10 years later.

I'm trying to praise it without letting nostalgia cloud my viewpoint because, like Kyle Rayner being my first GL, Danny Ketch was my first GR, and I am partial to both. Though I think GL was far less a product of the 90's formula than GR. GR was definitly aiming to please a younger audience, especially in the middle. But I think Howard Mackie held it together for the 90% of the series that he wrote. So at least, it is consistent in writing. And I really like a lot of GR's villains, like Blackheart, Snowblind, Scarecrow, and Hobgoblin showing up at times.

Until you get to the late 90s with Marvel Knights and Heroes Return where you get some phenomenal work from Priest on Black Panther, Jenkins and Lee on Inhumans, Waid and Garney on Cap (plus their pre-Heroes Reborn run on Cap post Gruenwald is even better than their second turn on the book), Busiek with Perez on Avengers and Chen on Iron Man, you've got the 2 arcs in the anthology Marvel Universe (the Invaders in issues 1-3 and Monster Hunters in 4-7 that are very, very good, you've got Busiek on Thunderbolts which starts off very well (i'll admit my interest tailed off a year or two in though), you've got Quinn and DeMatteis on the tail end of Doc Strange earlier int eh 90s that's some strong stories, etc. etc.

There was a lot of crap in the 90s, especially from Marvel, but there were a fair number of very good stories and very good books coming out, but there was a lot of crap in the 60s, 70s, 80s 2000s etc. too. I won't deny Marvel was far from their peak in the 90s, but writing off the entire decade means you will miss a lot of good stuff, even from Marvel...

-M

Marvel's bankruptcy had little to nothing to do with the quality, or lack thereof, of their product line in the early 90s.  It had everything to do with Ron Perelman spending obscene amounts of money on ToyBiz, Heroes World, Panini Stickers and a couple of trading card companies and then having the wheels come off on the speculator/collector's boom leaving Marvel with a ridiculous debt to income ratio. 

It's a product of the times, and has a late 70's feel, but, it's still classic IMO and well worth the money.

One of the best things Marvel ever produced.

As for Marvel Frontier line, it was from Marvel UK, and rough in spots, but there was some cool stuff in there. Worth looking at, and most of the issues can be found on the cheap.

As far as I can remember, it didn't connect direct with the 616 universe, which is fine with me, but that didn't help sales and it was lost in a glut of other titles until the bubble burst.

I have most of the issues and would like to sit down and read them sometime.

I'm sure some day Marvel will re-introduce the characters again, like most anything they own.

Someday they'll do the same thing with the Malibu characters as well.

I'd like to see that.

That's part of the richness that has made the DCU with the multiple layers of other publishers' characters they've integrated.

I didn't say it was dated, but there is a lot that a younger reader or a reader that wasn't raised in that environment won't get. (Same thing with younger readers reading Watchmen these days without having lived through the Cold War.)  Some of it still works well.



Nope, then again I never read anything Lapham that I did like (and I've tried quite a bit over the years) so I only got one trade.