Comic Book Resources

Fascinating. Lots of meat there, but the then-state of DC is almost shocking.

Wow, it's like a trip down memory lane. Some of those things just blow my mind, but you're right, it's funny how it was easy to dismiss the insanity of the early 90s if you were a comic reader at that time.

Wasn't there some kind of shady deal between Shamus and Valiant where Shamus had cases of Valiant stuff he was going to sell at inflated prices and that's why Wizard pushed Valiant so hard?

Or I could be confusing that with some other shady Wizard deal.

I, of course, also owned Wizard #14 at some point (and it probably spurred me to go pick up Bone, now that I think about it), but I recycled all of my Wizards a few years ago--the only magazines I still have back issues of are Amazing Heroes and Comics Journal. Those suckers are essential reference items. Oh, yeah, and a couple copies of various Comics Interview issues.

Art ThibertHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

DC didn't really come into their 90's era of chart topping sales stunts until the Death of Superman, which happened at the tail end of 1992. Neal Adams' notion that they would somehow fold up was actually pretty commonplace prior to that. I can remember a number of Image letter columns in particular that liked to declare that DC was dead in the water.

What's really funny is the full page ad that would run about a year or two later which declared DC the strongest publisher thanks to Knightquest and Reign of the Supermen.

Eclipso ran 20 issues, counting the two Darkness Within annuals.

As a series, it had its moments, I thought. Others may will, I'm sure, disagree.

Yeah, the Eclipso series was pretty good. Although I HATED the issue where they killed off a bunch of minor heroes (although the execution - no pun intended - of the issue was done well). That seemed so hackish.

I unfortunately got every issue from 16 up through 109 or so. (I picked up 14 & 15 later at a dealer show). Man, I loved Bishop so bad back then. I wanted issue 8 because it had a kick-ass cover with Bishop and the wizard cape. REMEMBER THE WIZARD CAPE?

Anyways, I finally became disillusioned enough to tell people to stop renewing the subscription. I had been reading Wizard only because I had stopped buying comics but I was still interested in them, but I finally got tired of Wizard's bizarre choice of coverage; their excessive focus on trying to make money off of buying and selling, and their trying to sell me whatever they had in stock.

That's the reason Valiant and Image got so much coverage early on: Shamus' family's store had a special deal with them, and they could sell a lot more of the comics that way.

I bought Wizard #1 a few years ago (gotta love ebay!). I bought one of the most recent issues of Wizard a few weeks ago (from a quarter bin). It is AMAZING how much the magazine has changed. Definitely not for the better. In the pre-internet days Wizard was the only place for comic news. Now? Well, now it is just a waste of space and trees.

Man, whatever happened to that whole Sandman and Vertigo thing? I knew that was a recipe for disaster the minute I heard about it. ^_~

I got X-Force #1 packaged with an x-men t-shirt my mum got me one Christmas when I was 12.

And I didn't like the art!

I read a recent study that showed that the average Wizard reader is a child molester.

I think that's a little off.

Oh god, I think I had this issue too! It certainly brings back painful memories of my 15-year old self in the early 90's giving in and buying all the chromium, holographic, 3-D, multifold, foldout, diamond-studded covers because I was SO SURE they would be worth something...*shudder*

I also remember how low sales had gotten at DC too. I think the first Robin mini-series was their only Top 20 hit the year before. Because most of their artists weren't doing everything they could to mimic Lee and Liefeld (at least not at the time), DC couldn't seem to buy a hit. There was even a round table discussion article in an issue of Wizard where a group of teenage boys talked about why they preferred Marvel over DC. Summary of their comments: Hawkworld didn't feature enough stuff blowing up, Punisher War Journal did...*sigh*

Those Valiant/early Image days were dark indeed...

On the plus side, I'm pretty sure I also discovered Bone through Wizard...heh...

I have a pile of Wizards I'm about to go through and possibly ebay, so I'm doing the same thing. I was running shop then, and it is amazing how low DC was at the time. JLA was awful, all of the major charaters except Superman and Batman were in the tank, sales-wise. There was some good creative stuff, but it still wasn't selling.

Valiant had legit heat, they were making a huge push but losing Shooter and turning into another collectible company killed them (along with the lack of decent opponents for their characters).

And Marvel ruled everything, which is unintentionally hilarious if you try and unload any of their books from that time frame now.

I laughed. I cried. Don't make me go back there again.

Ah, early '90s Wizard. At least then I had an excuse for buying it (still being in elementary school).

I'm pretty sure that Wizard has since proclaimed Doom Patrol (this would be the Morrison period, yes?) and Shade to be some of the greatest comics the world has ever known. After all, Milligan and Morrison eventually wrote X-Books, so they MUST be good!

If I recall, one of the major ongoing debates in the letters page at this time was whether or not Iron Man could beat all of the X-Men in a fight. (This was largely due to the letters page writer, Doug Goldstein, being a really big Iron Man fan).

Oh, and yes, Tim, there was a bit of payola going down between Shamus and Valiant.

It's interesting to see a snapshot of the comic world 15 years ago (even if it's a distorted one, through the hype-azine... i mean magazine's lense; at least that has remained the same since then ).

For some reason the '90s (that specific period from the late '80s to the late '90s, to be precise) & the changes that came to comicdom is a subject i find fascinating for some reason (even though i now mostly dislike for what they yielded, both comic-wise & industry-wise). Probably because though they were the times i read comics (with a big & healthy dose of earlier stuff, through Greek translation), while growing-up, the image that reached me was very different from what i later discovered was going on, due to to me being a kid & in Greece (heck, not even 'in the scene' locally).

Anyway, enough with that. Lets have a look at the hilarity of the old 'Wizard'.

The thing that mostly strikes me is how hot Image, Valiant, etc. were (& how in your face their promotion), while DC was way, waaay back (and people say that DC is lagging nowadays). The bit about the movies is fun, as is the advice about the artwork (with palpable irony, to boot), but what floors me is the Vertigo comment. *snicker*

And, i'm still having trouble processing the 'put the artist 1st & the writer 2nd, if at all" frame of mind. It seems alien! (not that kid-Yo! had any clue about either artists or writers back then...). Ditto for the speculation, but at least the letter column sounds saner (and with answers from almost another magazine).

I hope this keeps up as a regular column.

I don't know that the Image creators forced Marvel to reconsider their business practices. Let's not forget, when these guys left Marvel, they'd already started a brand new X-Men series for Jim Lee, a brand new Spider-Man series for Todd McFarlane, canceled and relaunched 'New Mutants' to be more in line with Rob Liefeld's sensibilities, and Larsen and Portacio were both headlining two of Marvel's other top sellers. And these guys were getting royalties, great page rates, et cetera, et cetera. They weren't getting the shaft by any means.

If anything, Marvel almost took away the opposite lesson from the Image debacle. There were a lot of people at the company at the time saying, "If we give these guys tons of money, tons of credit, promote them to be superstars, and they reward us by leaving and forming their own company, maybe we should be promoting our talent less and our characters more?"

Michael: You are correct - there was a big debate in the letters about whether Iron Man could beat the X-Men! It never ends, apparently ...

That's an interesting point, John. It seems like Marvel treats their talent a bit better these days, but that might not have stemmed from the Image defection.

Sorry, BDaly - I have a bunch of Wizards, and I'm going to check them out eventually!

Greg, I'm ashamed you bought one copy of X-Force #1 too

I can't speak – I did the same (only one copy as well); although I never bought an issue of Wizard magazine ...

Wow. Nostalgia...
I remember being a Wizard subscriber for years. How exciting it was when a new issue came in the mail!
I got pretty fed up with it when it stopped being a magazine about comics and started being a magazine about comics movies, and what comics should be movies.

For some reason, I remember this issue pretty vividly. I think I started reading with issue 8 or so.

I was 13! Lay off!

In 1992 I was 22 and still a wee bit influenced by the Wizard-mentality hype machine. Fortunately, the mag quickly broke me of it. In their proce guides, they had Wetworks #1 listed at somewhere between $5 & $10, and #2+ at $3-$4. #1 hadn't seen print yet due to major delays, but there it was, along with #2+. That was it for me - no more Wizard.

I have a great X-Force story. I was one of those gullible fools who bought multiple copies of X-Force #1 with all 5 variants. I was young & naive. At a local mini-con a couple of years back, I cut a deal for some books. After terms were agreed on, I put in one last rider: "You have to take X-Force 1-5 with all the variants. I don't want anything back, I just can't throw them away." He immediately called the deal off. I can't even GIVE them away. They're a complete deal-breaker. DANG!!!

...I like H.A.R.D. Corps. I get them in grab bags every now and then. They're more fun that the old Image stuff the I get now and again.

And those grab bags? Every 5th one has a copy of X-Force #1.

I think Wizard hit its stride about two or three years or so after that, somewhere near the mid-90s. After they stopped being quite so shamelessly a hype machine (it was still there, but at least they gave attention to small-press stuff, ragged on the obvious dogs like the Clone Saga, and seemed to keep a sense of humor about most things) and before the internet made them redundant.

About three years ago or so I started a new subscription to them after having a little extra money in my pocket and a bit too much nostalgia. It was... not so great.

What a blast from the past! I just started reading comics in 1992, and though I didn't own said issue, I recall all the hype over Valiant and Image in Wizard's pages back then. Wizard was a good source for news back then, but with the advent of the Internet and comic-related websites, its far from required reading. I recall comics being very art-oriented in the early and mid 1990's and how "loud" books were in those days (wasn't there a Deathlok issue that touted itself as the loudest issue of the month?). I think I still have a few old issues, but most were recycled last year after one last look. I kind of hated to get rid of them, but with a premium on space, it was time to say goodbye (kept just a few for nostalgia's sake).

"If I recall, one of the major ongoing debates in the letters page at this time was whether or not Iron Man could beat all of the X-Men in a fight. (This was largely due to the letters page writer, Doug Goldstein, being a really big Iron Man fan)."

About 10 years later, I was working for a company that was advertising in Wizard. I had a business lunch with Doug, and I brought up the whole Iron Man vs. X-Men debate. IIRC, he seemed a little regretful to have been involved in the whole thing. In think he may have even said he was probably wrong to think that Iron Man would beat the X-Men.

Brilliant idea, Greg - spooky how much of this crap I remember. Was there a Palmer's Picks column in that issue?

Wow. About a month ago I took three boxloads of Wizard (and the companion mag ToyFare) to the recycler. I had spent about ten minutes after finding them glancing thru .. up to where I realised that they had no impact on my past comics buying and all they were doing was taking up space. Misspent youth, indeed.

It's easy to look back with 15 years of hindsight and snicker at the Vertigo comments, but it makes more sense if you look at it in the context of the time:

1) DC, as already noted, wasn't competing well in the market.

2) Their previous attempt at a line aimed at older readers, Piranha Press, had produced a few critical successes but hadn't done well financially.

3) As Neil Gaiman has noted on his weblog recently, even Sandman wasn't really doing that well in terms of sales of monthlies at the time, and it was by far the best-known and most promoted title in their mature line.

4) The business model that's made Vertigo successful since then (monthlies as a loss leader to create interest in the collections, which become the ongoing source of revenue) was just starting to come into existence with Sandman. (Some of the Hellblazer issues that came out around this time are just now being collected, in fact.)

In other words, to all appearances DC was addressing its loss of market share by expanding its less financially successful range of titles and targeting a market it had already failed at targeting once. Looked at that way, it doesn't really sound like a recipe for financial success. (And, as noted, it wasn't Vertigo that allowed DC to recapture their market share.)

A few other points on the creative end:

There's a tendency, looking back, to blur different periods of titles together and just focus on the best runs. Looking at their launch titles, one might be tempted to think: Animal Man! Doom Patrol! Grant Morrison! Swamp Thing! Alan More and Rick Veitch! And so forth.

However, at the time Vertigo started a number of their titles were under writers who weren't nearly as well-received. Doom Patrol was under Rachel Pollack, whose style of weirdness was very different from Morrison's and didn't engage as many readers. Delano's Animal Man was in a similar position. Swamp Thing was under Nancy Collins, who was actively turning off many long-time readers by the major shifts she imposed on the personalities of the supporting casts. Black Orchid and Kid Eternity weren't being handled by the big-name creators who'd done the miniseries they spun off from.

Shade the Changing Man was three years into its run at this point, and without the previous issues available as collections it wasn't very new reader friendly. (Sandman was the only ongoing mature title with easy access at this point, in fact.) Finally, while it may seem odd now, Garth Ennis' run on Hellblazer was drawing criticism from those who felt it was just being used as a venue for scenes of extreme violence, which wasn't the direction of the title when it first appeared. (Yes, that's what made Preacher the imprint's next big success, but at the time some long-time readers found it to be a turnoff.)

In short, most of the launch titles weren't automatic creative successes, either. And how was their long-term success?

Kid Eternity: cancelled with #16 (Sep 1994)
Doom Patrol: cancelled with #87 (Feb 1995)
Black Orchid: cancelled with #22 (Jun 1995)
Animal Man: cancelled with #89 (Nov 1995)
Shade the Changing Man: cancelled with #70 (Apr 1996)
Swamp Thing: picked up for a while under Morrison and Millar, but cancelled with #171 (Oct 1996)

Sandman came to its natural end in 1996 as well. In other words, even with the added exposure and cohesion of the Vertigo line, two-thirds of its launch titles were cancelled in under four years. (Only Hellblazer and Sandman Mystery Theatre continued past 1996.)

It's easy to look back and see this as a "Dewey Beats Truman" sort of statement. At the time, though, there really were enough hits against the concept from both a financial and creative perspective to warrant some skepticism. That it's succeeded has been a tribute to its editors, but it wasn't a given at the time. And with the number of imprints that have failed since then (Helix, anyone?), it wouldn't hurt for publishers to remember that Vertigo was the exception, not the rule.

Layne - Palmer did his column on Alan Moore!

Doug - those are excellent points about Vertigo, and I wasn't trying to be too snarky about the success and the fact that Wizard didn't see it coming. I just was amused by the fact that Wizard is taking them to task (it seems) because they weren't aping Image. They were trying something different, and just because it wasn't flashy didn't mean Wizard had to be so dismissive of it. But you're right - it was a huge gamble for DC.

Yeah, I wasn't arguing with your point so much as trying to put it in perspective for everyone. I was very active on the Usenet rec.arts.comics groups during this period (giving me the dubious distinction of being the first person to make a factual rather than speculative Usenet post about Image, and one of the first to make a joke about "Substance Comics"), so my memories of fan reactions during this era are particularly strong.

(I was also part of the target audience for Vertigo, being a college student who'd gotten into Sandman with the first trade paperback, and I don't remember it changing my buying habits any--I still bought Sandman and didn't buy any of the others, although budget was a factor there. I did read a friend's copies of SMT, though.)

I dunno, Doug. On the one hand, just the other week, I was making an argument here on the blog echoing a lot of your same points (basically that the "Golden Age" of Vertigo really isn't that different from the CURRENT Age of Vertigo, based on the fact that some books sold well and some did not - it wasn't like Vertigo was filled with hugely popular books back in 1992 or anything like that), but on the other hand, I would disagree that the launch of Vertigo was risky. As opposed to launching a new imprint (which IS risky, totally agreed), Vertigo was just creating a place to put books they ALREADY were publishing. That's FAR less risky than launching a new line of comics.

Yes, it was a bit surprising that the brand "Vertigo" became as popular as it did, but I don't think there was much risk for DC of their Mature Readers comics falling apart simply by putting them all into one specific imprint.

I agree that "risky" isn't the term I'd use to describe the creation of Vertigo, because it implies that DC stood to directly lose more if it failed than is actually the case. Just creating the label by itself probably didn't cost them any readers and almost certainly gained them at least a few. (The three new ongoings were more of a risk but probably not a very large one.) The worst that could have happened is that some titles that weren't their best sellers would be cancelled, and having the label in place allowed them to develop new properties under it that kept it going when most of the original titles went away (Books of Magic, Preacher, etc.).

I think what Wizard was sort of getting at, though, is that there was an opportunity cost involved in promoting and expanding their mature line rather than putting the same resources into their superhero line. That wouldn't necessarily have meant copying Image; putting more effort into the Impact! line (such as getting it more distribution beyond the direct market), for example, could also have gained them new readers and grown their market share, but in a different segment of the market. These tradeoffs always exist, of course, but while Vertigo probably wouldn't have left them worse off it wasn't a sure thing that it would improve their position, either. At that point DC had lost ground just by standing still, so it was something to be concerned about.

(It's somewhat off-topic, but an examination of different attempts at creating new imprints at the big publishers would definitely be instructive. The pattern for success seems to involve working with and around existing properties (Vertigo, Marvel Knights) and/or expanding from an initial success (Ultimate Marvel, Marvel Adventures, and there's certainly a case for Swamp Thing being the seed for Vertigo--no pun intended.)

I think what Wizard was sort of getting at, though, is that there was an opportunity cost involved in promoting and expanding their mature line rather than putting the same resources into their superhero line.

That said, they did already have several of the books going, and so with them in a line, you can just advertise them all at once as the vertigo books, as opposed to separate ads for each book.
(This being back in the time when companies actually put ads in their books for other books they sold.)

Great piece.

I too kept a stack of Wizards until I moved house a few years ago and no longer had room for them. I started with #23 which featured a triple-gatefold Deathmate cover by Bart Sears.

(I think the 90s gets hated on way too much.)

As for the Image exodus from Marvel, and Marvel's relationships with creators changing as a result - while Lee, Liefeld and McFarlane may have been on astronomical page rates, and been carrying enough clout to warrant new X/Spidey titles, I think a major concern was a lack of ownership or consultation in regards to the treatment of characters they'd created. At this point, Marvel were pumping out Cable and Venom (for example) books, appearances and merchandise - Liefeld and Toddy Mac had no say in this.

Why not create their own Cable and Venom elsewhere, where they can control the characters every appearance, merch, etc?

Excepting that as many have pointed out, Todd McFarlane's claim to have created Venom is dubious at best, and pretty much everything we think of as being part of Cable (his origin, backstory, powers, weaknesses) was created by other people after Liefeld left Marvel.

(I'll go into a bit more detail, here, since it's significant. Todd McFarlane claimed to have created Venom, but he didn't come up with the black costume design--that was pre-existing from Secret Wars. He didn't come up with the symbiote, either, that was also Secret Wars. He didn't come up with the idea of the symbiote bonding to another host and it giving the host Spider-Man's powers; that was Michelinie. Michelinie also created Eddie Brock, his backstory and origin and reason for hating Peter Parker. In short, Todd McFarlane's claim to "creating" Venom rests on him altering the black costume slightly to give it big fangs and a slobbery tongue.)

(Likewise, when Rob Liefeld created Cable, he was just a cyborg commando. The whole thing about being Cyclops' son, the techno-virus, the connection between him and Stryfe, all of it was decided after Liefeld left when the X-book editors realized that they needed to have some answers in place to the questions fans were already asking. It wasn't that Liefeld had a different backstory for Cable--he had none at all, any more than Len Wein did for Wolverine when he first popped up.)

And to quote Peter David, who wrote often on this at the time: "More ownership, royalties, merchandising? All that boils down to 'more money'. We're giving them unprecedented amounts of money right now and they're still not happy."

Wow, misty, water-colored...something...

Yeah, I subscribed to Wizard during this period (a little after this, actually; Andrew, that is so weird that you started with #23...so did I!), and my mom didn't care for it specifically because of covers like this (and a few other things...remember "Hunk & Babe"??).

A few years ago (a little after I started college), I condensed over 100 issues of this magazine into 3 or 4 manila file folders with everything that I found even remotely interesting. One is full of the big interviews and features (and there were some good ones: Jeff Smith, Frazetta, several on Alan Moore, Frank Miller, list goes on). Another is full of "Brutes & Babes", "Krash Kourse w/ Greg Capullo" and "Basic Training" (this one is in the care of my youngest brother now...he's occasionally an aspiring artist). My favorite, that I still read through fairly often, is full of all the reviews or blurbs about books that I wanted to hunt down (and have done an almost halfway semi-decent job at, thank you). Those were always my favorite parts of the magazine. Palmer's Picks has already been mentioned, Good 'n' Cheap usually had something interesting, and I really enjoyed the "Good Readin'" bits that were sprinkled throughout the price guide. I was disappointed to see them phased out (I don't think they even do Book of the Month or Secret Stash anymore, do they?)

Anyway, yeah, I used to really enjoy this magazine. What the hell happened?

Cable was super popular long before his connection to the Summers clan was revealed. His popularity, I would suggest, had to do with his appearance and his all around "bad-ass"ery.

And Rob claims he did have a whole bunch of stories planned for the character, as well as a completely different origin/backstory.

Many bad memories. What was good in 92' well I was heavily (or maybe blindly) following Image and would once in a while get into Valiant. Marvel was out of the picture because of my blind devotion to McFarlane, Lee, and Liefeld (yes Liefeld). But now I know better (at least I think I do). At least none of these guys traced drawings. Just bad proportions (Todd and Rob) or a strict asian bias in the drawings (Jim).

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