Image
Marvel had new talent coming in, the more experienced artists holding art classes to the new talent. As a result of this, Marvel books looked good and read good. Shooter decided it was time to do another major event like with
Secret Wars. This event would become known as
Infinity War, Beginning in 1992. Infinity War concerned The Mad Titan Thanos assembling the Infinity Gems. Despite the efforts of the Marvel Heroes, Thanos succeeded and as a show of force, wiped out half the universe, before the heroes were able to undo the snap. Ironically, Marvel itself would find itself split in half.
Jim Lee's Punisher: War Journal Wolverine Cover
Jim Shooter is a divisive figure, he can be a hero or villain. Regardless of how one feels, Marvel was in its heyday when he was running the ship. He worked to keep creators happy, seeing them as the company's lifeblood. Shooter even defended John Byrne when someone complained to Stan Lee about his work. Shooter was also an artist and occasionally carried his own weight, even when he gave advice that contradicted Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's own rules on creating comics. The Position Artist-Editor was created by Stan-Lee for creators who were seen as not needing editors. This didn't work and it was removed by Shooter, but Byrne could occupy it well. Byrne was famous for his Marvel Superman story during the superhero exchange program and his work on Fantastic Four and X-Men. After the Phoenix Saga, Byrne wanted to bring back Jean Grey. Something Claremont was against. Shooter needed to mediate between Byrne and Claremont when Byrne introduced an apparently alive Jean Grey in Fantastic Four, who was retconned as a clone. Byrne left after Shooter rejected multiple requests to bring back Jean Grey. This left Peter David and Todd McFarlane to take up the Hulk title that Byrne had been writing. McFarlane was moved to Spider-Man, introducing Venom and turning the book into a big seller. Marvel also recruited two new artists in Jim Lee and Wilce Portacio. Lee was given
The Punisher: War Journal. Lee's image of the Punisher's shirt with Wolverine's claws poking through became as Iconic as Todd McFarlane's cover depicting the Hulk reflecting on Wolverine's claws. Lee got to draw Wolverine even more when he was moved to
Uncanny X-Men. Marl Silvestre was also becoming Popular. McFarlane was succeeded by Erik Larsen on Spider-Man. Louise Simonson was given a new artist on
The New Mutants named Rob Liefeld, a controversial figure. Self taught. Known for drawing normal humans as deformed mutants , big guns, and big pouches. Liefeld was seen as everything wrong with the 90's, a self parody with all sincerity. Despite his faults, Liefeld revived
The New Mutants by introducing Cable and Deadpool, which Simonson fleshed out into full characters. Liefeld was often called "The Idiot" by his fellow coworkers, but he was about to receive his first big break. McFarlane wanted to draw his own book. Shooter allowed this and even offered words of encouragement and suggestions. McFarlane was given his own original character: Spawn. Liefeld, who had also rebooted
New Mutants into
X-Force, wanted a similar deal. These artists were having their rise fueled. Everything was perfect. Then Liefeld made a bad move.
Rob Liefeld
Todd McFarlane
Liefeld was offered a job at Malibu Comics and accepted, failing to convince anyone else to leave with him.. He announced that he was making a new series for them called
The Executioners. The first character he created was based on himself, led a Superhero team and was named Shaft.
Executioners was similar to
New Mutants. Liefeld was threatened by a lawsuit and backed down. McFarlane had a desire to leave start his own company anyway to allow himself full control of his creations. Shooter was famous for trying to keep his talent happy. When Chris Claremont complained about a trip to the Midwest, Shooter asked him where they wanted to go. Claremont as a joke said Paris and Shooter arranged a trip to Europe with the X-Men staff. It was an all expense paid trip to London, Paris and Rome, paid largely by Foreign Companies like Marvel UK happy for the promotion. Jim Lee was asked to fly to New York and Shooter paid for Lee's wife to fly there as well. However, even Shooter couldn't stop the massive egos of what the other members of the Marvel Bullpen called "The Rebel without a Cause" and "The Rebel without a Clue" and despite his efforts both Liefeld and McFarlane would depart for Malibu Comics. McFarlane would later post on twitter the hundreds of rejection letters he received, and at the very last, one from Shooter suggesting where he could improve and who he could talk to in order to improve himself. McFarlane gave a heartfelt goodbye and a hug. Liefeld's goodbye to Shooter was to come to the office with a brown box. Shooter would pick up his coat and be bitten by something. He found a rat giving birth in his coat pocket.
Steven Massarsky
Shooter had another rat in his office, Steven Massarsky. A Lawyer and then investor, it was Massarsky who convinced Shooter to publish Mario Comics and Wrestling Comics as he had licensing rights with Nintendo and WWF. Massarsky was in a relationship with Melanie Oakin, who was one of the chief controllers of Triumph Capital. Shooter was aware of this but had ignored it, not thinking it would effect the company. Unfortunately, Massarsky was now making plans to sell Marvel to Triumph Capital behind Shooter's back. This led to the company attempting to cut off all ties to Massarsky and losing a large chunk of their funding. Massarsky switched sides to kick Shooter out when he had previously been the one protecting Shooter. Shooter fought back as he believed several of the artists under him would lose their jobs as soon as he left. What he feared happened and Shooter was kicked out along with the artists and writers he'd defended, most of which were only given boxes of their belongings thrown onto the sidewalk. Things seemed bleak for Shooter, fired from his own company. This was the lowest point, but then again, that's usually when the Hero shows up, but this was the 90's, who showed up instead were the anti-heroes.
Hearing of the plight of Shooter and the writers, McFarlane, along with several other writers, including those which had quit from Marvel as a result of Shooter's firing such as Mark Silvestre, Wilce Portacio, Erik Larson, and Jim Valentino formed their own company. McFarlane hated Valentino's inclusion but saw this as a necessary team up. This seemed to be because Valentino was not a big name writer, having written the largely forgotten original
Guardians of the Galaxy, far different from the more popular version introduced later, and was not an artist while the other members of the party were both Writer and Artist, even Liefeld who was seen as bad at both and Shooter, who was willing to draw an issue himself and had a formula for how to write Marvel stories akin to the Hero's Journey, but made for self contained stories. Shooter was offered a chance to join the growing group. McFarlane had risen in the ranks of Malibu and was soon to be running the company, planning on renaming it after himself, but he still thought they could takeover Marvel and hand Shooter the keys back. The entirety of the assembled writers stormed into Massarsky's office at Marvel and demanded the company back, threatening a lawsuit. The Conversation is vague as there are different accounts by each person there. Tom DeFalco was editor-in-Chief at the time and he was walking by and was invited in. Some say he was eavesdropping and they opened the door. Liefeld and only Liefeld says he did a pratfall when the door opened. DeFalco says he simply opened the door and entered, not realizing the meeting was occurring. At the meeting, Shooter and McFarlane made a list of demands that were refused and Marvel was taken to court. The Incident was known as the Marvel Civil War hereafter. Rumors are Liefeld left the most important meeting of his career to go to the bathroom, loudly declaring this to everyone.
Valiant Comics Logo
Despite the chaos behind the scenes, publication of the Comics continued almost unabated. Shooter and McFarlane formed the Valiant Comic Company to create works and keep the creators. Shooter hated Liefeld for the rat prank and wanted him fired. According to Liefeld, Shooter told him "There's always someone else to pick the cotton." Shooter denies ever saying this. McFarlane kept Liefeld around, referring to him as "The Court Jester", because the whole running their own comic company thing was Liefeld's idea. McFarlane had made something bigger out of it, similar to other creators transforming Cable and Deadpool, Liefeld's most popular creations, into Unique characters in their own right. McFarlane had improved on the original idea, in his own words.
Valiant did surprisingly well, growing to rival the big two as a potential third option. There was also Dark Horse Comics which boasted Mike Mignola's
Hellboy and Frank Miller's
Sin City among other creators such as John Byrne. Shooter set out to obtain obscure Golden Age heroes he fondly remembered from his childhood owned by Gold Key Comics such as
Magnus: Robot Fighter, Solar: Man of the Atom, and
Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. Shooter scooped them up and retold them, setting
Turok in the distant past,
Magnus in the distant future, and
Solar: Man of the Atom set in the Present. Under Valiant, 7 studios were formed. Jim Lee's Wildstorm, Silvestre's Top Cow Productions, Larson's Highbrow Entertainment, which had the Flagship character of Savage Dragon, seen largely as Hulk with a fin on his head since Peter David had made the Hulk intelligent at that point due to falling sales on that book, managing to revive it as a megahit, Valentino's Shadowline Ink, McFarlane's Todd McFarlane Productions and Liefeld's EXTREME Studios. Portacio stayed with Shooter to give him another big name creator to keep Valiant alive. It was already difficult to do art and writing due to the bigger level of quality demanded.
Rob Liefeld's Youngblood
Liefeld tried and failed to get his series
Youngblood off the ground, due to it being a ripoff of his previous titles. He then incorporated ideas of the series into his brief stint on
Teen Titans, which was ill received(Comic Reviewer Lewis Lovhaug has commented that Liefeld Ruined
Teen Titans for him and committed to reviewing every issue). Liefeld, now that he could create his own characters, created a Thing-like character called Bedrock, with his catchphrase "Yabba-Dabba Doom". Naturally Hannah-Barbara, owner of the Flintstones, sued. Not wanting to be dragged down by this stupidity, Shooter cut Liefeld loose. He was on his own now, sink or swim.
Spawn
Todd McFarlane started his own
Spawn series, continuing the the tale of an undead hero losing his powers overtime. Other creations was Lee's
Wildcats, Silvestre's
Cyber Force, Valentino's
Shadowhawk, Larson's
Savage Dragon and others boosted company's credit. Most of these books had schedule slips, leading to readers falling back on the Valiant line as it kept stable.
Perlman, after failing to buy Marvel, continued his practice of buying failing companies, such as selling New World to Rupert Murdoch for 2.5 Five Million Dollars. Perlman believed Marvel could become a new Disney and was determined to buy it. With Shooter gone, he saw his chance to try again and was coming close. He planned to replace Massarsky with Bill Jemas, who bribed Stan Lee, tripling his salary. Realizing that if Marvel had the potential to be its own Disney, then Stan Lee was Mr. Walt Disney. Stan Lee was the brand even though his role was honorary at this point. Perlman also knew that the characters Marvel owned had potential for films. Lee had tried a few times to get movies made of the Marvel Heroes, selling the film rights of the various characters to multiple companies but Perlman thought he could have pulled it off. Marvel Comics were beginning to rise in popularity. Perlman had Marvel sell multiple versionss of Todd McFarlane's first Spider-Man story
Torment in multiple covers. These sold well and the gimmick was repeated, again and again. This was the birth of Cover Gimmicks, to appeal to collectors. Tom DeFalco was given the order to continue the prophets. This was hurting Marvel by appealing largely to collectors. Valiant did not fall into this. Most Comic Book would, especially comic shops at risk of closing down constantly. The process was so lucrative, that Silver Sable #1 was released and sold half a million copies. This was seen as a disaster due to the massive amount of sales at this time.
Shooter realized all the gimmicks were hurting the company and made plans to either buy Marvel back and avert the disaster, or buy it after its fall and restore it. When the price went up and people stopped buying and the sales were shown to be dropping, the gimmick was quickly wearing off. The Market was shrinking. Then one day, Perlman went to see the Danny DeVito 1991 film "Other People's Money". DeVito in the film made a speech commenting that the quickest way to go broke was getting an increased share of a shrinking market. The realization hit Perlman hard and he demanded a drop in the Cover Gimmicks. The
X-Men titles were condensed as the
X-Men spinoffs were no longer selling well. Valiant, DC, and others were still carrying on the Cover gimmicks. Then DC announced that Superman was going to die. The event helped saved Superman and DC. Sales grew while the market shrank and very soon the bubble would burst. Shooter and his group were allowed back into the company in the face of the declining sales.
The 30th Anniversary was approaching for many Marvel mainstays from the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, and Spider-Man. Spider-Man had multiple titles. An old idea pitched by Stan Lee called Marvel 2099 was launched. Prior to this the big Limited series invents had been
Secret Wars and
Infinity War. Both were successes but planned sequels to Infinity War never materialized. Instead Marvel wanted to push new events rather than sequels to existing ones(This butterflies away the OTL Infinity War, which means the character of Doppleganger does not exist). Special issues for Spider-Man's 30th anniversary were released. One plot point had Peter's parents appear to be alive, later revealed to be robot duplicates. At around the same time the character of Venom was turned into an Anti-Hero, and an evil counterpart to Venom was introduced in Carnage. This led to the event
Maximum Carnage(known by the Marvel staff as Maximum garbage). Carnage in the story goes on a rampage, killing innocent civilians and forcing Spider-Man and Venom to team up. Harry Osborn was also killed off after mentally snapping and donning the Green Goblin suit for a final time. While saddened by Harry's death, Spider-Man did not brood for long, as Tom DeFalco saw this as a disservice to the character.
Th Avengers had an event known as the Kree-Shi'ar Wa(Operation: Desert Storm not existing to inspire
Avengers: Galactic Storm). The X-Men had Executioner's Song with Jim Lee and Wilce Portacio and then other planned X-Men events. Peter David disliked the crossovers, comparing them to mandatory dental work, and was able to convince them the higher ups to cancel several planned events such as
Fatal Attractions and
the Phalanx Covenant. The Storylines were successful but were seen as transparent attempts to inflate the number of books. Taking the approach of Less is more, a big single event was planned in
X-Men: Age of Apocalypse. In that story, Professor X's son travels back in time to kill Magneto but travels to a time when Xavier and Magneto were friends and Xavier takes the bullet for Magneto. This causes the assassin to disappear and Magneto to form the X-Men in memory of his late friend. Apocalypse rises up and takes over the world. The Status quo would be restored. The event was a critical and financial success, cementing the position of Bob Harras at the company.
At Valiant, things had changed, Shooter was back in Marvel but had passed ownership of the company to Jim Lee as Editor-in-Chief. Lee happened to be good friends with Steve Massarsky. Ironically their companies were fierce competitors, but a deal was made, speculated to have been planned by Shooter, but this is unlikely as Shooter would not trust Massarsky again. Todd McFarlane, taking too long on
Spawn brought in veteran comic writers and legends in their own right to write the series instead. This included Alan Moore, Dave Sim(known for the series Cerebus the Aardvark, which crossed over with
Spawn), Frank Miller(who crossed over his run with Batman), and Neil Gaiman. Each legend wrote one issue. Gaiman naturally wrote about what it was like to be Spawn and the Cosmic scope of the Universe and introduced two beloved
Spawn characters, Angela and Cagliostro, as well as the idea that there had been many Spawn throughout history. McFarlane loved this as it expanded the franchise. Gaiman was happy because this meant that due to the way Valiant was run, all royalties would go to him. McFarlane had specifically enforced this as he had suffered with characters he created. McFarlane had drawn a scene of Marvel and DC characters in Hell, trapped because they couldn't enjoy the freedom that Spawn and his creator did. It would be hypocritical for McFarlane to not allow Gaiman to keep the rights to his characters, and yet that is exactly what McFarlane did.
McFarlane argued that Gaiman was a work for hire and that since he had drawn the characters, they belonged to him. The two sued each other and the likes of Lee and Shooter backed Gaiman on this. Since there was now bad blood between Gaiman and McFarlane, it was decided to let McFarlane go. Gaiman was seen as far more worth keeping on, having penned
The Sandman, considered one of the greatest comics of all time. Gaiman didn't feel comfortable continuing the story of
Spawn, so for awhile it would be tossed about, eventually landing in the lap of Mike Mignola(leading to a crossover with
Hellboy). Gaiman at least had permission to write Cagliostro and Angela.
Image Comics Logo
Lee and Shooter had a plan to gather up all the looser companies, most of which had a problem with scheduling. It was discovered that Valiant saw story as the most important thing while most of the artists that split off to form their own companies saw Art as the most important element. Massarsky was a businessman. Lee was an artist, so they saw their craft as being the most important element. Massarsky wanted the sales Valiant had and Lee wanted to draw beloved Marvel characters. The two were curious about the thoughts other creators had and a meeting of the creators was called which included Liefeld due to his company being represented. A conversation with Rob Liefeld revealed that to him Story was an afterthought. McFarlane, present at the meeting is said to have mumbled under his breath that it was more like an afterbirth(or something that sounded like that when mumbled). Liefeld thought that he was being called an afterbirth and believed Shooter had made the comment(he was sitting beside McFarlane). Liefeld left the meeting and shortly after McFarlane was let go for his feud with Gaiman. It was no secret Liefeld and Shooter hated each other, but now McFarlane and Liefeld had both left once again. Malibu Comics was happy to have them. Shooter was finally convinced from this experience that there was no pleasing everyone and let them leave, making no effort to keep them onboard. The two returned to McFarlane's owned Malibu Comic Company, rebranding it to Image Comics.
Deathmate Prologue
Massarsky and Lee began to collaborate on potential crossovers behind Shooter's back. Lee also collaborated with McFarlane to create an event known as Deathmate. Valiant writers hated working with Image because they carefully ran the company while Image was still new and fresh. Lee was able to get Liefeld, Wilce Portacio and Mark Silvestre onboard with his storyline. The pitch involved The Valiant character Solar and the Wildstorm character Void engaging in a battle that accidentally merged both universes. Rather than numbers, the crossover was individual stories held to a single issue. Two for Valiant, Two for Image, one written by one writer, Lee would write one and reluctantly asked Shooter to have a hand in the writing process, being surprised when he said yes. Shooter would write the other volume of the crossover event. McFarlane and Liefeld each wrote one on the Image side. Bob Layton also did some writing when Liefeld fell behind. When it became evident that Liefeld couldn't finish his work on schedule, Layton went to Liefeld's house and stayed there, being overall rude to Liefeld and refusing to leave until Liefeld finished his work. Layton inked his project soon after in his hotel room. Liefeld was booted off the project but since McFarlane had no one to replace him with, the cracks in Image began to show and so it became a fully Valiant book, while released on time it showed the incompetence of Image and their chronic lateness, a recurring problem that would only get worse.
Among the books that executive order was provided to in order to finish was the
1963 Annual and
1963 #½ The 1963 annual was drawn by Jim Lee and pitted the Marvel Silver Age expies from his series against the more morally ambivalent characters from the Image partners. Moore also contributed to
Youngblood: Judgment Day. Alan Moore reshaped the
Youngblood universe to bring back the spirit of the Silver Age, such as turning
Allies into a modern-day
Justice League and
Youngblood into an equivalent of
Teen Titans. He also wrote the magical adventure with
Glory and
Maxi Mage. Moore also introduced a relationship between Suprema and Big Brother and introduced a stand in for Martian Manhunter(Thus butterflies away
Promethea, which OTL involved the unused ideas). Alan Moore in particular, took a liking to the Superman Expy Supreme and requested he write a solo series for the character. Many expected he would turn it into a jaded and cynical take on Superheroes. Instead Moore wrote the character as a return to the Silver Age lighthearted and hopeful stories of Superman. A breath of fresh air. Alan Moore weaved a massive multiversal conclusion to the story. Moore's run was followed by Alex Ross, who went onto pen the storyline "Supreme: World War Infinity" a tribute to Crisis events.
A Popular Statue of Supreme and his Supreme Dog Radar.
Other Image series to be completed were
Darker Image #1-4,
Doom’s IV #2 and the “Doom’s IV Sourcebook”. During the "Images of Tomorrow" event,
Bloodstrike and
Brigade were given their full run to issue #25. Image also created licensed comics based on Power Rangers Zeo, which crossed over with
Youngblood. Of course, one wonders if any of this was possible without what happened to Liefeld.
Stan Lee was campaigning as the face of Marvel, trying to, since the late 80's, get Marvel projects out there. A Daredevil Animated series and a live action Black Widow TV Series were the latest examples brought into the world thanks to his efforts. New World had sold Captain America and the Punisher to Cannon films, resulting in films. Still there was money to be made in expansion. Junk Bonds were introduced by the Marvel company. New World had begun to crank out films and that led to their collapse as it was clearly quantity over quality. Marvel also bought several sticker companies and began to eye Toybiz for buying out. All this to become something as big as Disney. Perlman would buy companies just to balance out the rest of the money he owed. One sticker company Panini, signed a deal with Disney to produce exclusive sticker books for them. A baseball strike occurred that was just barely resolved by the time of the World Series, which would have endangered Marvel's ownership of several Baseball card companies, namely Fleer, which was also bought.
There was just one problem, Valiant's success, Comics Crossovers selling extremely well, the sales of Actions Comics #1 for Millions of Dollars fueled the idea that novelty and gimmick covers were the way to go. Speculators bought them up. The problem was large amounts of Comics were not being sold. Comic companies did not want competition and so the two biggest Comic distribution Companies: Diamond and Capitol(who owned all the Comic Shops between them) shut the door on competition, preferring to keep the competition small. The number of Retailers got so big and many were in it for the money, threatening the entire industry. Demand for the products wanted began to fall and so the Gimmick was abandoned when it became clear what was causing this. Hit the hardest by this was Image, which could never meet the deadlines. Publishers cut down on the number of books.
The industry was hit quite hard and Marvel nearly collapsed. Marvel had been the chief force behind the cover gimmick and now it was about to nearly destroy the company. A phone system was set up when the industry began to collapse as a result of the Comic companies rapidly losing money. So many calls came in to the Marvel server that the computers and servers, kept in a room without ventilation, caught fire, burning almost the entire building down. Diamond, one of the chief Comic book store companies signed a deal with DC for exclusive distribution rights. Their rival Capitol, appealed towards the other companies Dark Horse, Image and Valiant and convinced them to sign exclusive rights to their books, helping to balance the industry. Perlman tried to buy another company that made Basketball cards and mixed it with Fleer, hoping to somehow balance out the mess. This didn't balance out the company and instead things got worse. Perlman announced Marvel Mart to sell exclusive Marvel merchandise but this threatened to worsen the crisis. It was Capitol who proposed a solution. They suggested that Capitol become the main distributor of Marvel just as Diamond did with DC. Capitol would willingly give up control of Valiant, Image and Dark Horse to Hero's World, a smaller distributor in the midwest, who could handle the smaller load compared to the big two. A full on monopoly would actually hurt business so a tense balance was achieved instead. It wasn't much and things were about to get so much worse. This was beginning of what is often erroneously called the Bronze Age Collapse.
