So was marvel really creatively bankrupt back then? Wtf happened, they were pulling talent left and right during the mid 80s before shit hit the fan. Are there any good marvel stories during the 90s?
Also post the most extreme versions of our classic heroes. I'll start.
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"Wtf happened"
PAD Hulk is amazing. But you're just here to be a shit.
Fantastic Four went downhill once DeFalco started writing, which confuses me since he's not bad at all on Spider-Man or Thor.
People focus on Gruenwald's Cap run like it's one of the best things he's done when Squadron Supreme and Quasar are infinitely better.
X-Men was still doing well until after Operation: Zero Tolerance ended. Then crippling mediocrity until Morrison's New X-Men run gave the franchise a shot in the arm.
Infinity Gauntlet and Infinity War were both awesome stories.
Larry Hama's Wolverine run is just as important to Wolverine as Claremont's take on him.
And finally, Daredevil got really mediocre in the 90s between Fall From Grace and Flying Blind. And Fall From Grace isn't a terrible story, but definitely shows the downfalls of 90s storytelling tropes. I remember the Fathoms Of Humanity arc being cool, but it's been quite a while since I've read any of that. None of the rest of DD in that time until Flying Blind was all that interesting to me.
DD at least had something nice with Man Without Fear.
But, honestly, Chichester is just bad, don't bother defending any of his stories, he was a literal mistake on Marvel's part, how did they even allow "Alan Smithee", that's Archie tier incompetence.
>X-Men was still doing well until after Operation: Zero Tolerance ended. Then crippling mediocrity until Morrison's New X-Men run gave the franchise a shot in the arm
Wrong, Onslaught was nothing good. It started sucking after the muir island saga then picked itself back during age of apocalypse. Seriously onslaught was so disjointed and long with 100s of pages of nothing happening. It was utter shit.
90s marvel isn't that bad. It maybe that DC did more genre defining stuff for their respective characters during that era like Batman or Superman and Marvel's attempt at doing that resulted in the fucking clone saga but 90s marvel had good gems too.
The avengers were utter shit even with Byrne but Operation Galactic Storm was perhaps the best story of the era featuring the Shiar-Kree War and it was awesome.
We had Busiek with his awesome avengers run during the time X-men were hitting themselves into a coma.
Kevin Smith's Daredevil wasn't that bad and bought itself out of mediocrity after the early 90s fucked it up. Busiek's Thunderbolts is legendary and so is his Iron man.
Avengers forever was awesome, age of apocalypse was cool too, Waid on his marvels mini series, Quasar was the best green lantern comic series ever. Hob Goblin Lives was a cool miniseries by Stern that wrapped out a nearly decade long mystery that had already gotten stale within the first two years. Defalco was a mediocre spider-writer after the clone saga but his earlier stuff was good unfortunately that's pre-90s.
Lets not forget Starlin's death of captain marvel, thanos quest, infinity gauntlet and warlock and the infinity watch that were awesome gems too for cosmic marvel.
90s Silver surfer was great to the point he got his own tv show in the 90s even if it was utter shit.
Unfortunately 90s DC just wrote better shit; we had Robinsons starman, Gaiman's sandman, birds of prey, Dixon on anything batman period, Superman was awesome too at the time, PADs young justice, Waid on kingdom come, Waid on Wally West's Flash book that defined the mythos to the point that Barry Allen's stories are trying to copy it's success, Morrisons super amazing run on JLA, his even more amazing DC One Million concept that his severely under-utilized... their output was overall amazing and character defining.
I remember the time Johnny Storm tried to molest The Thing
Read Marvel Comics: The Untold Story.
In summary:
>Marvel was bought and sold behind the scenes by a revolving door of cigar chomping midget Jews constantly changing around the editorial team
>nobody wanted the EIC job because it meant having to go between temperamental creators and idiot businessmen
>in '91 the X-Men relaunch sold leagues better than anything had in decades and created an inflated comics bubble
>businessmen demanded that Marvel exceed those insane X-Men sales every year leading to more gimmicks: relaunches, new spin-offs no one asked for, events and crossovers, and most famously cover variants
>excessive editorial interference from people like Bob Harras, bigshot artists like Rob Liefeld and Todd McFarlane taking away more creative control, and better working conditions at DC drove off key creators like John Byrne, Chris Claremont and Walter and Louise Simonson
>said bigshot artists reneged to form Image and started shit talking Marvel
>by the mid-90's the sales bubble was bursting but executives were still demanding better sales
>basically became the X-Men line, Spider-Man line, and Everything Else line
>Marvel lays off creators for the first time since it changed its name from Atlas to Marvel
>instead farms out Avengers, Cap, Iron Man, Hulk to Image in a desperate bid for sales (Heroes Reborn)
>finally bought for good by executives from Toy Biz: Ike Perlmutter aka Supreme Overjew and Avi Arad
>Mark Gruenwald's soul is ritually sacrificed in order to buy the company time
>retard Bill Jemas becomes VP, meets Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti at some kind of Hollywood swingers cocaine party where they tell him "make us EIC and give us unlimited creative control and we'll fix Marvel for you"
>Marvel enters the early 00's, the only era more creatively bankrupt than the 90's or late 00's
>are there good 90s marvel comics
Generation X and Thunderbolts come to mind immediately
...
>>Marvel was bought and sold behind the scenes by a revolving door of cigar chomping midget Jews constantly changing around the editorial team
do we know who those Jews were?
...
Wow, that torso just keeps going.
At least we got some good vidya out of it.
I thought Zero Tolerance came before Onslaught?
>Starlin's death of captain marvel
damn, I thought that was fro the 70s or 80s
what a lot of people think of as the 90s for Marvel was actually a very specific period between 94-97.
Prior to that things were pretty normal and after that everything got rebooted and made more or less normal again.
But holy god that two to three-year space is tragic.
A lot of weird runs, even if they aren't EXTREME they are just kind of floundering.
>Avi Arad
wasn't he one of apair of dudes who got himself stupidly in trouble with Gene Simmons by turning to his partner and saying in Hebrew, "now we gut him like a fish" during a meeting with Simmons
I think DeFalco's FF gets too much heat. Even if it's never gonna be held up as one of the standout runs of the book, it's still got a lot of redeeming points. Johnny hadn't been regressed into a manchild yet, Reed had a beard (which is unarguably his best look), Sue continued to mature into a leader (this time without any weird Byrne stuff), and best girl Lyja. It's not, however, a very good run for Ben.
I unironically like the design. The long hair and the outfit works great for both males and females. Natural gender equality, sexual exploitation and equal treatment right there.
it is he's retarded
but he's also correct about 90s Marvel mostly just sucking for the X-Men and Spider-Man
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>jokes on you, i can speak that too
that will NEVER not be funny
I miss when Peter had balls
>pitched Saban an idea for a new Saturday-morning cartoon: Kiss meets X-Men, the Marvel comics superhero team. Saban liked the concept well enough to convene a meeting with Avi Arad, then C.E.O. of Marvel’s toy division.
>At the appointed time, Saban, Arad, and Simmons sat down. The meeting was going well, and the three began to haggle over numbers. Then Saban turned to Arad and, referring to Simmons, confided in Hebrew, “Now we gut him like a fish.” Without missing a beat, Simmons—who, unbeknownst to Saban, was born Chaim Witz in Haifa, Israel—replied in Hebrew, “You asshole. I’m one of you.”
Avi Arad fucked us out of Kiss meets the X-Men.
>Then Saban turned to Arad and, referring to Simmons, confided in Hebrew, “Now we gut him like a fish.”
I hate Avi too, but that was clearly Saban's fuck up
pic unrelated?
>Are there any good marvel stories during the 90s?
Priest Black Panther started in the late 90s (although it was part of the Marvel Knights imprint which some consider to be the end of 90s Marvel), it's pretty solid
well, I guess the way he ran off was rather woman-ish
>early 00's, the only era more creatively bankrupt than the 90's or late 00's
That era was definitvely the best era for Marvel since the 80s. Late 2000s was Marvel spamming events.
wasn't Jim Lee's X-men good?
Yeah but that ended pretty soon due to all of Marvel's top guys (and Jim Valentino) leaving to start Image
...
It's sort of an odd feeling when you go through most of your life not believing in stereotypes, then eventually finding that there's truth in some of them
>People focus on Gruenwald's Cap run like it's one of the best things he's done when Squadron Supreme and Quasar are infinitely better.
It might only be Gruenwald's third best work, but it's the best Cap run hands down, and the fact that he kept the quality up for over a decade is nothing short of amazing.
...
>Chaim Witz
Kinda off topic, but is that his real name? I think I heard Lois on Family Guy say it.
Just want some confirmation here.
It is. Well, I doubt Gene's got a ton of people in his life who call him "Chaim," but that's the name he grew up with.
Carl Ichan and Ron Perelman (not to be confused with Ron Perlman). Both didn't care the least about comics and just wanted to wring every penny out of the company before taking it behind the shed, shooting it in the back of the head, and burying it in a shallow grave. But they had a huge knockdown, drag out public fight over who'd get to drain the life out of the company.
Arad and Perlmutter saved Marvel from their clutches. For all the justified shit we give Ike, it's important to remember that Marvel wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for him. Arad and Perlmutter actually like comics, and want the company to last.
Also, Ike looks and acts like an IRL supervillian. If anyone is going to mismanage Marvel, it might as well be someone who fits the part.
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archive.is
>all of Marvel's top guys (and Jim Valentino)
h-hey
no bully
Huh, i learned something new and Family Guy wasn't bullshitting once.
I can't find a single actual source for that story. Does anyone have one? Or is it apocryphal?
The only place I can find that referenced it is Gawker, and we all know first hand how trustworthy that site can be.
that was early 90s. Mid 90s marvel was still going strong.
Liefeld was literally a child. If he had creative control of his books, it's because editorial gave it to him, and because they were tired of Claremont.
Also, Marvel Knights WAS good. And resetting continuity worked, as the Ultimate line proved.
>Johnny hadn't been regressed into a manchild yet
It's true he hadn't completely regressed into a manchild like in the 00's/10's but he kinda had signs of regression during Byrne's run. But even Byrne's version felt like an adult.
What are you doing on the internet, Other Jim? My car's not gonna wash itself. Don't forget, two coats of wax.
Are Wolverine's claws made out of hardened jizz or something?
that's his bone claws. i think they took that slightly weird shape after someone broke them, and they got put back together or something
...
90's comics are best comics.
they didn't try to be movies or novels. they were COMICS. in-your-face, fun, single-issue stories with a fast pace. they were unique instead of bad copies of films (few, wide panels for no reason) and novels (over-written BS by failed novelists).
one of the first US comics I bought. Thought it looked super-painful
Ike's a piece of shit, but what he's been doing to the FF and x-books lately isn't about the comics but sticking it to fox.
lmao
He really was the odd man out. You had two ASM/Hulk artists with followings, and foir X-Artists also with followings- and Valentino. His GoTG is enjoyable, but his art was always a little awkward and he just sucked at character design.
PAD's writing is kind of grating in retrospect.
Todd's bubblegum faces too.
My facorite window into the world of 90's comics is probably the letters pages in Savage Dragon. Larsen would print pretty mich anything. Dude has a big mouth, but his love for comics is clear.
How so?
Strong argument there tripfag.
What does he keep in all of those pouches?
I recently began reading 1999 Amazing and 1998 Iron Man both from #1
Spidey is shit pretty much until JMS and JRJR step in
Iron Man I'm less than 10 issues in but its just OK. No interesting villains yet and Tony having a secret identity isn't used rather interestingly, just the usual "time to become the other guy no one knows I am iron man" type thing comics do a lot
Valentino was the guy who had been in comics long before all of them and actually self-published comics back in the 70's, so he had experience in this sort of thing. The only other person who had something close to self-publishing experience was Erik Larsen (he and some friends published a fanzine)
On top of that Image really got started when Valentino, Erik Larsen, and Rob Liefeld had dinner with Dave Olbrich, EIC of Malibu.
Spare ammo
Medical supplies
Assorted futuristic devices
Biscuits
Crackers
Water
Spare pouches
That actually makes sense.
>Wtf happened
This has been told in that one Marvel book. The execs took over, fired Shooter, and brought in people who had no idea what they were doing.
>Spidey is shit pretty much until JMS and JRJR step in
Yeah late 90's to right before JMS came on board was a pretty bad period for ASM. The only saving grace is that Spider-Man isn't as big a manchild as he is in late 00's/current Marvel.
>So was marvel really creatively bankrupt back then?
>>back then
you think they've been creative lately?
nigga, you stupid
Thunderbolts was pretty damn good traditional cape comic stuff.
hello i am a character and i am snarky
which pad hulk character does this describe
all of them
Onslaught was good; the issue with OZT being the downward spiral moment, comes from the fact that it was the moment when Bob Harras and Mark Powers decided editorial would be writing the book, not the actual writers.
Harras, after shilling vanilla goody goody Magneto under the name of Joseph, decided out of the blue that Joseph would turn out to be an imposture and that Magneto had been in hiding since 1995. He also declared UXM would not take part in OZT save a one-off issue, forced Lobdell to put Marrow (a character NO ONE but Harras liked) onto the team, and basically decided OZT would be Iceman, Sabra (another Harras waifu), Dr Reyes, and Marrow versus Bastion.
Harras refused to let Lobdell reveal who Bastian was (the reveal ended up happening in a Machine Man one-off no one read) and vetoed Lobdell's attempt to make Magneto's return make sense in that Magneto kills Bastian, Nick Fury, and basically EVERYONE in Nick's Helicarrier after SHIELD arrested Bastian in X-Men #69.
Lobdell rage quit and furthermore, so did Joe Kelly and Steve Seagle, who replaced him and the X-Books basically hit the point of no return once Harras ordered Excalibur canceled and the X-Men roster reset to the early 80s roster, with Marrow in place of Rachel Summers.
What have you been smoking? Mid 90s Marvel went bankrupt and had to sell all their movie rights to not die - from which they STILL haven't recovered.
And now he has variant covers from Hentai Foundry artists.
I should note that what got Quesada the job as EIC was that when Ultimate Marvel was announced, Harras basically wanted to treat it like Marvel later treated the all-age Jeff Parker Marvel books of the late 00s. IE d-list writers and little to no promotion.
IIRC, Harras even told Jemas point blank, that he was giving Ultimate X-Men to Terry fucking Kavanaugh while giving Howard Mackie Ultimate Spider-Man to write as an "I'm sorry" apologia gift for having to take him off of Amazing Spider-Man.
Quesada point blank said to Jemas, that those were bullshit moves and that if he was in charge, he'd give Bendis Ultimate Spider-Man and head hunt Mark fucking Millar to write Ultimate X-Men, paying him whatever he wanted, then give the books a huge push to sell them to people who wanted a continuity-light version of X-Men/Spider-Man to sell to the newbies who saw the Spidey/X-Men movies that were just now coming out.
Actually, it's a great run for Ben (and Sue) with Johnny and Reed being the ones that got shitted on.
Remember, very first thing DeFalco did was kill Byrne's reviled Johnny/Alicia coupling and went as far as saying she was a Skrull, to explain away why Byrne turned Alicia into a worthless whore.
Johnny gets shitted on with a good amount of much needed karma for being a royal shit for the first time EVER and Reed was "killed off" so Sue could finally shine as the leader of the team.
Liefeld got control over New Mutants because sales were in the toilet and even Simonson admits she had reached a huge point of writers block and basically the only idea she had for revitalizing the book was to literally introduce a Poochie on the team: a second werewolf mutant named Cougar who would become the focus of the series.
But Liefeld got away with what he did mainly because Bob Harras is outright gay for Liefeld. Pure Liefeldsexual in that he has a HUGE mancrush on Rob that leads him to constantly giving Rob second chance after second chance.
That's kind of why I think it's a good run for Johnny. That Johnny/Alicia shit was fucking repugnant (and Byrne's FF is my favorite run) and Johnny needed some comeuppance for it. And I think he came out the better for it only for Onslaught and Heroes Reborn to come along and hit his reset button.
Disagree. Byrne's Johnny cucked his best friend and drove him from the team and even the issue where one of his fans killed himself emulating him, had to be rewritten to make Johnny less glib about it.
And?
Well, you can't expect a beautiful woman to be with an ugly man, can you? That wouldn't be logical!
The kids of today should defend themselves against the nineties.
Well memed.
Come on, look what they did to us!
Are they really creatively bankrupt now?
Yes. Yes they are.
Sampson, most of the Pantheon members, The Leader, Abomination, Gravage Hulk and Sabra don't have the snarky personality.
BEHOLD!
Peter David! A guy who at first manages to make you believe his characters are well developed... until you realize that all of them are David himself, that he does with them whatever he wants, and that all of them are totally retarded.
Peter David! A guy who, when he doesn’t know what to tell, fills the comics with his opinions about politics, movies, TV, and books. Thus you read a comic and a blog at the same time. And if there’s still space left in the book, he tells a good joke, no matter if off-topic.
Peter David! A guy who seems to be building up an AWESOME story but then, after 50 issues you find that his plots are going nowhere at all.
Peter David! The writer who has been doing nothing for decades while laughing at readers.
Peter "I gas gyps with my farts" David!
are you fucking mental
all of them do except abomination, sabra and gravage hulk during the very end, characters that barely appear during the 90s run
how the hell do you say samson and leader and pad's secret organization of donut steals do not have snarky personalities. all of the pantheon guys are snarky in some way except the retard
It isn't bad, but needs some brushing up. Could lose the giant hammer chain and useless leg-straps. Colors need to be balanced, too.
Man, I wish Deodato still drew like this instead of contracting out favela dwellers to trace Power models.
Copypasta is till stale
>how the hell do you say samson and leader and pad's secret organization of donut steals do not have snarky personalities. all of the pantheon guys are snarky in some way except the retard
Sampson was never snarky. He was used as the straight man and the fucking voice of reason the whole time! And as you said the retard wasn't snarky nor where Hector, Achilles, Agamemnon, Delphi, Jason, and Prometheus. I will give you though that Ulysses and the other chick got most of the spotlight most of the time though. There was also Brian Banner, And General Ross.
History repeating itself, right now.
>Are there any good marvel stories during the 90s?
Yes, plenty. Marvels was in the '90s. Thunderbolts was great, most of the ancillary X-Men books were pretty good, some of the 2099 stuff (Spider-Man, X-Men, maybe Punisher if you like the idea of an over the top satire of badass anti-heroes). Kelly and Priests Deadpool runs.
You should take that book with a massive grain of salt. The writer has a very clear agenda and thus sanctifies some people (Gerber especially, bringing him up in ways that have little to anything to do with the overall narrative) and demonize others (Lee and Shooter); basically anyone or anything that he felt was a force against creator's rights is evil while Jack Kirby was a poor man who just wanted his art.
Good, Kiss fucking sucks and if you like them you're probably going through a mid-life crisis or are white trash.
>Pym swatted away his superhero wife
>villified to this day
>Peter went full Eddie Kingston on his un-powered normal human wife
>it's an obscure scene to this day
Fun fact: MJ was pregnant at the time.
Another fun fact: Pete (accidentally) backhanded a woman to death in a cemetery because he thought she was Wolverine.
And yet another fun fact: Reed smacked Sue in the face and told her to shut up.
But truly, Hank Pym is history's greatest villain.
That was the only time Pym hit his wife right? Or were other instances retconned in?
The reason I saw suggested for why Pym carries the stigma of being a wife-beater and Peter doesn't(even though what Peter did was more severe) is that Pym didn't really have as many defining characteristics/didn't really stand out as much as a character, so "wife-beater" unfortunately became one of his defining things
who wrote the book?
Shooter's blog is the same way. He did great stuff, but Roy Thomas saved Marvel by taking on Star Wars.
>X-Men was still doing well until after Operation: Zero Tolerance ended. Then crippling mediocrity until Morrison's New X-Men run gave the franchise a shot in the arm.
Financially, sure. But the book was in a creative rut during the 90s.
Second time really. But no one cares about the first one because it was a "This situation is dangerous! I'll knock her out to keep her safe!" thing that happened years earlier. And I can name like half a dozen old movies that had that.
The second time is the damning one because it was treated as damning despite Hank's personal circumstances. This is also why Reed and Pete get a pass.
Reed's actions were treated as necessary and were thus excusable.
Pete, like Hank, was in a highly volatile emotional state, but unlike Hank, his actions were treated with understanding.
Hank Pym just got thrown under the bus.
built like a slice of cake