Accortding to the cover, it was intended to be an ongoing series.

July & August 1993

Nobody knew it at the time, but April 1993 would be the peak of the speculator boom. The number of comic shops had swollen due to the easy credit terms distributors were offering and many of the books that were ordered this year were never paid for due to the fact that the fly-by-night stores were closing as fast as they opened. Whenever a crash like this occurs, people look for someone to blame. Some people blame the speculators. Others blame the distributors, retailers and comic book companies. Despite the fact that a crash was inevitable (after all, what goes up must come down), my conclusion is that everyone was responsible because everyone everyone became too greedy. If there were victims from the speculator boom, it was the regular folks who just wanted to read comics and didn't care about making money from them. 

It's hard to know how much Marvel were countering the moves other companies were making. I suspect that they were, however I also suspect that they were slow to take action and bold initiative. They ran an X-Books crossover to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the X-Men with special hologram covers. This was the storyline where Magneto ripped the adamantium out of Wolverine's body. Peter David claimed credit for this idea, but Chris Claremont had floated similar ideas where Wolverine went bad (i.e. Dark Wolverine) and Colossus ripped his claws out. The X-writers may have concocted this shock tactic as a counter to the Death of Superman and Batman having his back broken (a storyline which struggled to gain traction at first), but the problem was that Wolverine wasn't anywhere near as famous as Superman or Batman amongst the mainstream media. Fanboys ate it up, and sales were well above the previous year, however Batman #500 would become the last comic released on the direct market to sell over a million copies for 21 years.

Alan Davis finished his second run on Excalibur with #67 which was a blow for fans of good comics. 

Starlin's cosmic line got another book to add to the Infinity fatigue with Warlock Chronicles. Talk about milking a cow for all it's worth. I'm surprised by how many side gigs Starlin took in this era as well. You remember it being all Infinity this, Infinity that, but he was pumping out street level stuff as well (Punisher, Daredevil, etc.)

Daredevil #319 introduced the Fall From Grace storyline, which led to Daredevil's new look and the controversial resurrection of Elektra. The interesting thing about this storyline, to me, is that it didn't garner much attention at first due to Daredevil's low print run, but interest began to pique and the sales rapidly increased. I like organic trends like that much more than the gimmick covers. It reminds me of Ren and Stimpy becoming one of Marvel's best sellers against all odds.

Marvel full all-in on the anti-heroes with Sabretooth and Deadpool receiving limited series off the back of their success with the Venom mini. Grim and gritty Night Thrasher was another series debut after a testing-the-waters limited series and the fairly well-received New Warriors book. 

The weirdest thing about these two months? Probably the two part Micro Chip origin series. Way too late, way too irrelevant in 1993. 

And he came from an aviation background, not animation. Because everything about him had to contain the letter "v". He was vile that way.

Warlock Chronicles was a reprint of the old Warlock issues, by Starlin, not a new comic (or, at least, new stories)

Heavy Hitters also included Howard Chaykin's Midnight Men, which was actually a pretty good pulp adventure series, where a safecracker ends up pulled into a heroic legacy group. It had elements of The Phantom (the legacy), a bit of his Dominic fortune, a bit Zorro and a bit of crime fiction. It was my favorite of the bunch.

Regardless of Gerard Jones' later crimes, The Trouble With Girls was a fun series and this continued it, from its previous Malibu incarnation. I had only read a couple of issues of the Malibu series and enjoyed the heck out of it. If you can separate the work from the man, it is a good read.

The Invaders mini featured new villains, based on the Justice League or JSA, if memory serves.

As far as the Speculator Boom/Bust, the fast buck merchants carry the blame for inflating numbers, which encouraged the publishers to feed into this mentality, which led the distributors to hawk this stuff to clients, which led the comic press to promote it (especially Wizard, who was the biggest cheerleader of that mindset, in that era), which led other people to jump on the bandwagon and entice normally sensible comic shop owners to over purchase and the more insane ones try to get rich by buying bulk copies to sell at inflated prices. It all fed on itself, causing each segment to act more irrationally, until it couldn't sustain itself any longer. It was a byproduct of the boom & bust investor cycles that exploded through the 80s, leading to things like the Savings & Loan Crisis, the Credit Crunch, the speculator bubbles in stamp collecting, card collecting and comic book collecting, Beanie Babies; and, eventually, the Dotcom Bubble, the Sub-Prime Mortgage Bubble and whatever the next one will be (which seems to be cryptocurrencies, though that seems more contained). Those of us who had studied economic history, like the Tulip Bulb speculation of the 1630s, in Europe.

September & October 1993

Marvel kept chugging along throughout the summer. It's staggering the number of books they were releasing. This helped Marvel retain its market share even if they weren't producing many high-selling titles, and also helped Marvel to increase their revenue from 1993, however there were worrying signs as core titles began sliding down the sales charts. There was the occasional book that generated interest like X-Men 2099 #1, and the best-selling franchises, Spider-Man and X-Men, remained steady sellers, but everything else was slipping.

Instead of shoring up these books, it was business as normal. The number of books being produced by Marvel UK was incredible. They even tried their land at their own line of mature readers books called Frontier Comics. Likewise, Marvel kept publishing Clive Barker comics despite the fact they were always cancelled, presumably because they wanted to eat into some of Vertigo's market share. Golden gooses that were struggling went into crossover mode, as though crossovers were the remedy for all sales woes.

DeFalco and Gruenwald were just as culpable as anyone else. Who were the masterminds behind two of the most redundant, unnecessary limited series of the summer? DeFalco with his Thor Corps (his spin on the Green Lantern Corps using a bunch of Thor imitations) and Gruenwald's Avengers: The Terminatrix Objective (pairing up US Agent, War Machine and Thunderstrike, yeah baby.)

Amid all the doom and gloom, was some of the most exciting news of 1993 -- Frank Miller's return to Daredevil. I can't begin to describe how excited I was for Man of Fear in 1993. Frank Miller together with John Romita Jr? This was probably the most excited I had been about a Marvel comic since my early collecting days. I haven't read the series since 1993, if I recall correctly. I know some people were unhappy with the retcons that Miller made to Daredevil's origins. etc., but I absolutely loved this series as a kid and would argue for it being up there with Hulk: Future Imperfect and Marvels as the best books of the era.

Reed Richards and Dr. Doom died in Fantastic Four #381 to barely any fanfare. This run... I imagine it would blow a few minds. The Thing with a bucket on his head, Sue Richards with her boob tube uniform, Johnny married to a Skrull, an adult Franklin looking like an X-Men castoff, grandpa Nathaniel running around like Cable. It was seriously addictive. 

Kirby knows why....that is just hideous excess!

Agreed on Pinhead vs Marshal Law, the comic with the most skin punctures!

January 1994

Suicide Run brings us the beginning of the end for The Punisher, at least in this incarnation. Sales on the Punisher books had begun to decline, particularly sales of Punisher War Journal. While it should have been apparent to Marvel that if you publish a million books starring the same character, you'll inevitably kill the golden goose, the solution to The Punisher's flagging sales was a 10 part crossover. Well, 11 parts technically since they had a "zero" chapter. Long story, short, an entire skyscraper collapses on The Punisher and he's presumed dead, only he isn't, but his books will be in about 18 months time.

If you had told someone at the height of Punisher-mania that his entire line of books would be cancelled in a few short years, they'd have laughed in your face. How did it all go wrong? Well, for starters they leaked that he was going to die at the end of the storyline, since that had worked so well for the Superman books, and to a lesser extent, the Batman books, but right from the outset there were angry fans threatening to cancel their subscriptions if he died. The actual storyline played out like a 90s action film, and has some defenders. There's a healthy dose of satire with all of the fake Punishers who crawl out of the woodwork after his "death." Everyone's favorite being "Idiot Punisher," a slob who is inspired to get off the couch and fight crime in the wake of Frank's demise. 

The problems came after the crossover when they tried to rejig the line and the continuity became a mess. Some of the books were set prior to Suicide Run, some of them were set after Suicide Run, and no-one, even the creators at time, could keep track of what was going on. 

It's amazing to me that they cancelled West Coast Avengers only to release limited series of the different team members. I wonder what genius thought that would multiply sales. There was a new Nova book out this month as well, as Marvel continued to shove first issues down their customers' throats. 

Iron Man made it to 300 issues. I've never read anything of the long Lee Kaminksi run, but I've read more than one person describe it as underrated. Whether that means it's better than the rest of the dung Marvel was flinging or it's genuinely good, I don't know, but it has its fans. 

Also released this month was Marvels #1. I've often wondered why Busiek didn't have a steady gig around this time. After he was fired from Iron Fist and Power Man, aside from the independent work he did, the only real freelance work he got was short stories, or the odd annual or fill-in issue. He did write the Darkman limited series in '93, but it appears to have been Marvels that kickstarted his writing career. Marvel could have done with him on their books earlier than that, if you ask me.