Was he though?  Most of the characters he introduced, either there or in Youngblood, were pretty much carbon copies of existing characters, in interchangeable costumes and interchangeable bodies.  Most of his stuff you could put into one of those books were the image is separated on three panels and you can flip back and forth to change one or more segments.  He was young and that's what young people do; but, it was hardly better than leaning on established characters, that were better designed or had more rounded personalities.  It's all a matter of preference, though.  Cockrum had some of the same problems with his Futurians characters, who were mostly copies of the X-Men and Legion characters he created or re-designed.

I'll give him credit that it was selling, so he was reaching an audience, regardless of what I think of their tastes.  My interests, in that time frame, where in things like The Question, Suicide Squad, The Maze Agency, Grendel, and Dark Horse Presents.  With Marvel, my only regular books were Classic X-Men (for the reprints of comics I missed and couldn't afford in back issues), Nick Fury and The Destroyer, plus some odds and ends.

March 1990

It seems apropos that one of the first comics published in January, 1990 is New Mutants #87. The 90s are here, baby, and there's nothing you or I can do to stop them.

Marvel Age spotlights the six new books Marvel has planned for 1990 -- Robocop, Namor, Ghost Rider, Guardians of the Galaxy, The New Warriors, and Todd McFarlane's Spider-Man. So, basically a license, a revival of a perpetually cancelled title, two Bronze Age properties, a new idea, and a spinoff series. That's pretty consistent with the books that have come out under DeFalco thus far. 

Robocop lasts for 23 issues, Namor ran for 62 issues, Ghost Rider made it all the way to 93 issues, Guardians of the Galaxy also ran for 62 issues, The New Warriors had a 75 issue run, and Spider-Man lasted 98 issues before being relaunched as Peter Parker: Spider-Man. I'd say that was fairly success given the volatile climate of the 90s and the market crash. 

At the time I was most interested in Byrne's Namor, though in retrospective I should have realized that he would have some sort of disagreement or other that would lead to him quitting. I liked the design of the new Ghost Rider, and so did a lot of other people it seems. The Guardians of the Galaxy were new for me at the time and an intriguing concept. I liked the early years of The New Warriors and started buying the book off the stands. But for some reason, I was never interested in McFarlane's Spider-Man. I actually collected Erik Larsen's Amazing Spider-Man run instead. I guess I had more faith in the flagship book than the spin-off.

Replacing McFarlane with Larsen was a smart choice by Jim Salicrup as Larsen drew in a style that was similar to Todd's, which made it less of a shock that Todd had left the book. Back in those days, I didn't have a lot of access to the trade magazines and no access to the internet, so the only time I got any info on creative changes was either in the back pages of the letter column or in Marvel Age, or a comic store flier. It was a shock to me as a kid that creative teams changed and that an artist could leave a book and go work on another one. Heck, I was so naïve that it was a shock to me when there was a fill-in issue or a guest penciller. Sometimes I'd keep reading a book when the creative team changed because I liked the characters and other times I would drop the title completely. Amazing Spider-Man I kept reading throughout the DeFalco era. 

Other points of interest -- there's a collection of Abslom Daak - Dalek Killer with a very 90s looking cover. There's a new Super-Ted comic, which makes me nostalgic. Epic releases Frank Miller's Elektra Lives Again and Marvel chuck in a trade paperback of Miller's Daredevil in case you wanna fork over some extra cash and get that too. Gerber is working on She-Hulk with a young Bryan Hitch, doing typical Gerber things while firing shots at other creators. Howard the Duck makes an appearance during this run. Byrne later returns to the title, and in typical Byrne fashion he dismisses everything that happened in Gerber's run as a dream she was having. 

Some of that (Rio, definitely) is likely due to some of the increasing instability in the independent scene.  The first Rio GN was done at Comico and they were still going, but having problems with cash flow, after trying to go the newsstand route.  There were some connections at Marvel, too.  Doug Wildey had worked for them, back in the Atlas days and few did westerns better than him.  Elaine Lee had done Starstruck at Epic, so there was that.  Grant & Wagner were probably connected to Clive Barker and Marvel was doing several Barker projects, because of Hellraiser's success and the uplift that gave to his books.  Blueberry was an extension of the ongoing relationship Marvel had with Moebius. 


McKeever had a connection to Archie Goodwin, after showing him some artwork, in the mid-80s, at a comic con, while he was working as an editorial artist.  Goodwin encouraged him to show his samples to as many publishers as possible, which got his Transit picked up by Vortex, for publication.  Plastic Forks was supposed to be done at Comico, but their bankruptcy ended that.  He showed the finished art to Archie Goodwi, who signed it up, immediately.  McKeever also did Metropol, at Epic, but left a follow up, after Marvel switched editors on him, partway into production.

Archie was well respected and gave useful advice to young creators and people wanted to work with him, which explains a lot of Epic, compared to the mainstream Marvel.  At this point, you could be assured that the book would come out, unlike some of the indies, who were experiencing cash flow problems.  Comico went into bankruptcy, First started having problems, Eclipse had been having issues, since their flood, in 1986, which destroyed most of their backstock, which was sold mail order and generated a lot of cash.  They limped along, using the money from the sales of one project to get the next one printed and their gaps in series became noticeably longer and longer.  Deni Loubert's renegade Press closed up in 1988.  Vortex took a big hit in 1988 and limped along, after securing a NASCAR license, that surprised some people about how well it did.

1988 was a rough year on the independent side.  There had been a big boom, in the black & white publishing, in 1985-1986, thanks to the success of the TMNT and many others jumped in, in 1987, with color comics and 1988 saw the B&W boom over and done with (most had died by 1987) and the others who jumped in with color soon saw how expensive that was to maintain, especially if you didn't have the cash flow to ride it out while you tried to attract readers.  DC and Marvel had a ton of stuff out there, choking off the stands in the shops.

Epic was pretty much Archie and when he left for DC, it was pretty well dead, in spirit, despite continuing under Carl Potts.  There is a definite shift in the quality of things, aside from the continued licenses, like Akira.

Starjammers was okay; nice to have Cockrum back on his creation; but, Terry Kavanagh was so-so, on story.  It would have been much better, back in the late 70s, when the material was sort of hot.  By that point, it was a reminder of how impenetrable X-Men had become, for an outsider, or people like me, who walked away from it and tried to look at an issue, out of curiosity.  Plus, it was a cool mix of characters, who never really got a chance to be fleshed out, before Cockrum was off the book.

I hadn't made the connection to Comico folding and other indies struggling. Still impressed that Marvel published some of this stuff. 

June, July & August 1990

Marvel really flogged its faithful during the summer of 1990. Not only did the annuals have individual crossovers amongst titles, but more titles than ever before went bi-weekly during the summer and the majority featured multi-part storylines. Add to that a growing number of one shots, limited series, prestige format books and graphic novels, it was almost impossible to keep up with it all There was so much on the market that they even released a special Marvel Age preview issue to cover everything.

Not a lot of the content is memorable 33 years later. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find a classic storyline among the summer offerings. I ate up The Return of the Sinister Six storyline at the time, but don't know if it's still fun all these years later. 

Not part of the Heroes for the 90s campaign during the first six months of the year, but still receiving a revamp, was Deathlok, or rather a new Deathlok for the 90s. His four part prestige format series did well enough that he earnt an ongoing series the following year. This marks Dwayne McDuffiie's shift from an editor to a freelance writer. 

Fabian Nicieza stepped up as a full-time writer during the summer and was charged with revamping Alpha Flight and launching The New Warriors. 

Tales from the Heart of Africa shifts over to Marvel, and I'm sorry to say I don't know much about this 1980s strip, but it sounds like something I should be aware of. 

Brute Force is an odd series about bionic animals fighting to save the environment. Knights of Pendragon is a decent Marvel Universe title produced by Marvel UK. 

Marvel continues to release a ridiculous amount of Punisher material per month. There's even a comic released detailing his armory, ffs. 

Spider-Man #1 debuts and sells 2.5 million copies thanks to the Marvel marketing team playing the market like a fiddle. Spider-Man continues to be the best selling book in the industry for the rest of the year despite criticisms of McFarlane's writing ability and the pacing of his initial storyline. Todd begins to clash with editorial over the dark content matter of his stories despite the sales.

Here is a review of some of it..........


It was written by a former Peace Corps volunteer and is definitely through that perspective.  

They credit Dan Chichester as shepherding them at Epic, but not much is said how it went to Epic, after a couple of issues at Slave Labor Graphics.  My guess would be that maybe Dan Vado helped steer them to Archie, as he took his own, The Griffin, to DC, after doing a couple of issues at SLG, and then wrote some comics for them, for a bit.  SLG continued publishing; but, they were usually small releases.  Plus, with the industry instability, SLG might have needed to curtail things a bit.

Marvel and DC were glutting the stands, especially in the summer months, which was part of why the indies were struggling, as they were being squeezed out in favor of more DC and Marvel product.

In regards to the Punisher, never underestimate the power of America's gun fetishism, of which I can admit my own guilt, though the only firearm I have ever owned was a .20 gauge Harrington and Richardson shotgun, which was given to me on my 14th birthday, for rabbit hunting, on my grandfather's farm.  It got used for a couple of seasons, then put away for decades, after I had my fill of hunting, after my father wounded a rabbit, picked it up and it started squealing.  After that, I fired firearms in the military and nothing since.  Nevertheless, back in the day, I had copies of gun magazines and the book Small Arms of the World, though part of that was reference material for drawing my own stuff.  I read the Executioner novels and they had an Executioner's War Book, which featured his War Wagon (a tricked out van that he traveled in) and his primary weapons (the .44 Automag, long before Dirty Harry picked up one, and all kinds of military firearms and long range sniper rifles).  The Punisher swiped those ideas, right down to the title of the companion series, Punisher War Journal.  Later Mack Bolan books, done in the 80s and later, featured actual illustrations and photos of weapons used in that month's book.

Fabian Nicieza and Alpha Flight.....don't get me started on that one.  Hey, let's finally admit that Northstar is gay and have him come out....in the middle of a fight scene.....against some conservative jerk called Major Mapleleaf....in a Mountie's uniform!

Wonder why Neil Gaiman got awards from GLAAD and other LBGT advocacy groups and Nicieza didn't?

Might have helped if Marvel hadn't gotten cold feet and buried any mention of it, after it hit the national news and they were unprepared for the feedback.  Any mention of it disappeared faster than Nick Fury and Wolverine's cigars, on trading cards.