DC was at a very high quality at this time, problem was the market was in a slump and lots of good books didn’t last because of it (Creeper, Chase, Scare Tactics, Young Heroes In Love, Chronos etc)

Yeah, that’s something that really strikes me about the Marvels of this era – how *ugly* they are, in all-around art direction just as much as the actual story art.

This period had quite a lot of worthwhile stuff from DC and other publishers, but was a all-time low point for my Marvel reading. I believe the only books I was reading were “Captain America” and “Untold Tales of Spider-Man.”

A low point not again reached… until today’s “Civil War” era, where I find my Marvel list is basically, um… “Captain America” and “Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.”

The other readable Cable run is the final, by Darko Macan and Igor Kordey.

Best,
Hunter (Pedro Bouça)

Alright, but you were warned.
Just remember to put it in context and realise that books like Starman, Preacher were also being published.
There were good books at the time, and so it’s badness stuck out.
That said, my choice at the shop that day was Maverick or a Men In Black tie in from Marvel. Ahh, the Harras/Bankrupt Marvel days, good times.

I avoided the X-books — waaaay too many of them, and dauntingly inaccessible even for an OHOTMU geek like me — but got sucked right in to three of the worst runs on superhero comics ever, the 90s FF, the tail-end of Michelinie’s run on Amazing Spider-Man that led into the dark Spidey and Clone Saga periods, and the miserably awful Avengers stuff when Harras started to decline and then they did…the Crossing.

The comics that saved me were Mark Waid’s Flash and Busiek’s Untold Tales of Spider-Man, which have their own faults but were at least attempting to try out good ideas and present proper plots. That, and a love of back issues that taught me all about good old comics.

It sounds like that thrift store either bought into the early 90′s “investment” craze or bought those comics off someone who did. Sometime around X-Men #1, the Death Of Superman, and Spawn #1, it felt like all creativity dropped out of mainstream comics and this was the resultant crap being put out. In my opinion, it’s only been in the last 4-5 years that DC & Marvel have started putting out a decent amount of readable comics. I remained a reader in the 90′s only by discovering Vertigo, Waid’s Flash, and indy books like Bone and SiP.

I know that there was good stuff then (Chase, lots of Vertigo, all of Milestone, Kesel’s Superboy, Waid’s Flash…) and I know there’s dreck now. But I just keep getting drawn to comparisons like these:

Cable and X-Force and Bastion and Stryfe and the Acolytes and Onslaught and Bony Wolverine and… vs. Morrison’s NXM or Whedon’s AXM

The Avengers being so bad that they effectively got sold off to Image, vs. Busiek’s run. And, hell, the first year and a half of New Avengers was still better than Heroes Reborn and the years of Avengers comics that preceded it.

Extreme Justice vs Morrison’s JLA

Genesis vs. 52/ OYL

Amalgam vs. JLA/ Avengers

Over the last x years– where x might be the DiDio/ Quesada years or might date the way back to 97 when the Avengers and JLA relaunches finally seemed to remember what flagship titles should be, and also explicitly embraced the Silver-Age-nostalgia-chic of Kingdom Come that’s been so central to the aesthetic since then– it’s always at least seemed like the Big 2 were *trying*. Even misfires (Identity Crisis, Civil War) seem like someone’s putting thought in the right direction. During the preceding Image-and-mylar-age, it seemed like good stuff that happened to get published was accidental and prone to immediate cancellation. The era of Busiek, Morrison, and Johns is so, so very much better than the era when the defining talents were the Image artists.

Compare this, too: Chase got dropped like a hot potato. Manhunter keeps getting saved from the axe. Different times!

You’re right about the art, Greg, but it’s not absolutely offensive and painful to look at, like some books I’ve read in this series. It’s a bit difficult to figure out why everyone looks similar, but you’re never really at a loss as to what’s going on. It’s just bland, like the rest of the book.

As I mentioned in the comment section of that post, the character was really a trainwreck in the 90′s. I’m of the mind that almost all of Marvel was a trainwreck in the 90′s, but the expanded X-verse was particularly odorous.

Don’t let that discourage you from trying Nicieza’s current CABLE AND DEADPOOL series. It has a dedicated cult following…notice that it’s pretty much the only X-Men spinoff book (ie: not a core monthly) to survive past 10 issues in recent memory. It’s a great book.

It’s a ye olde swear word, that nobody ever actually said.
I’ve actually heard people say ‘Bloody Oath’, or with a different rude word in front of it.
I think ‘Oath’, on it’s lonesome, was just how writers used to swear in books before they were allowed to (so you got to add which ever expletive you felt like in front of it).

A guy in my highschool said “oath” as a swearword once or twice, but we all told him to stop it. And he did.

man, that’s…..dumb.

With that cover I’m surprised you didn’t just put it back in.

I hated that time in Marvel comics (I think I’d stopped reading x-men at that point), where they’d discovered photo shop but didn’t really know how to use it.
Take that 3D ‘X’ in the corner box for instance – was that supposed to be cool?

A word of advice – if you ever pull out Maverick #1 just put it back and walk away.
I may have mentioned it’s badness before, but really, just walk away.
It’s the only comic that’s given me a headache – not made it worse, but given me one.
I started reading I was fine, by the end I had a headache and felt bad for the rest of the day.

Now I’m wondering what the hell I WAS buying in the 90′s. Looking at the longboxes I see… not much. Waid/Garney Cap. Some Superman. Some Bat stuff. Vertigo. Slim pickings.

The hell of it is, that story actually sounds like baseline-good as far as new readers would be concerned. It sounds about comparable, in terms of the effort to catch up, to MY first Marvel books by guys other than Stan Lee — Steve Englehart’s Avengers, say, or Marv Wolfman on Daredevil. Those were rough going at first, especially Englehart, but I managed. Because the art was so basic and clear.

But this art is so awful… I really think you should give it a little more credit for putting people off. It looks like the book would be really hard to read. Look how many guys have wedge-shaped faces and white hair. Even now, at forty-five, I had to look twice a couple of times to figure out who was which character. (I’m assuming there’s no real REASON for Bastion to look like a skinnier Cable, or for the other guy to look like Bastion with a mustache.) When I was eleven or twelve and just starting to branch out into trying new comics, this would have confused the hell out of me. You shouldn’t have to STUDY the art in a comic to tell who’s who.