The Big Picture: Comics in The 90s: What Happened?

[Darth_Payn]

Welcome to March is 90's month,
where bad comics burn.
MovieBob's gonna teach you all
a lesson you won't learn.
Liefeld, you're not the smartest.
Image, needs more than artists.
Any artists who had a comic published,
fame gave them a turn.
Movie Bob
Dark Age! Merch! Making blood go splat!
Movie Bob!
Speculator boom! Gotta purchase that!
Linkara!
Egos, bankruptcy, scarceness disappeared!
Movie Bob!
COMICS. ARE, WEIRD!
MOVIE BOB!

Can I hug you now? Like, genuine, huge, I LOVE YOU hug?

What's the tune to sing that to?

 

[Darth_Payn]

Pretty good summary, Bob. I feel like a proper understanding of what happened with 90s comics would require going into the history of the direct market and Diamond, and the subculture they created. E.g., the direct market took superhero books out of the drugstores and supermarkets where most kids discovered them, and put them in specialty shops which the parents of young children weren't likely to enter, skewing the age of comic buyers into their teens and early 20s. However, this also provided an environment where Big Two books could explore the lessened restrictions of the Comics Code Authority [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Age_of_Comic_Books], and where new smaller indie publishers could float edgier new material like Cerebus and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Those are the roots of your four pillars. But covering the Bronze Age of Comics would need its own episode, and frankly it deserves it: it's a long-neglected but extremely foundational era of North American comics.

Wasn't all bad. The '90s was the decade that saw the rise of Vertigo, which has published a lot of the best and most influential comic books of all time, in my opinion. In terms of the medium growing up and becoming actually mature rather than superficially mature - as most superhero books of the time were - the importance of Vertigo can't be overstated.

And while Image admittedly isn't a powerhouse on the level of Marvel or DC, these days it looks likely to surpass Vertigo as the place to go for interesting, original, creator-owned comic books. The Walking Dead is the obvious big name, but you also have great stuff like Saga and Age of Bronze (a personal favourite), which probably wouldn't be published by the Big Two because they don't really fit with the rest of their properties.

Seconded. Vertigo and Image gave most of the British Invasion guys (Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis, and some of their artist buddies) their first real breaks in North American comics, which eventually led to the replacement of the Superstar Artist with the Superstar Writer. Around 75% of all the comics I've ever bought came from these two imprints.

Excuse me, but you forgot someone: Grant Morrison. His issues of Animal Man, Doom Patrol, and JLA are legendary. Not to mention his original creations under Vertigo.

 

[Lono Shrugged]

Just out of interest, is it possible that Bob could talk about non-American comics? Where's the love for 2000AD? What about Judge Dredd? Possibly the only character to run for about 30 years in the same continuity?

Might as well try and get him to talk about European cinema. But Dredd deserves more love generally. I am sick of explaining how it has remained one of the best and most subtle satirical comics ever made.

There is a great moment in the Total War arc where he talks about democratic terrorists (democracy being treated like an extremist religion in the Dredd universe) and their levels of commitment. He lists through the slacktavists etc. until he talks about the true believers who he says: "Will stop at nothing to achieve their goals." Next panel he says he will "take them out no matter the cost" (Or words to that effect)

I will try and get a scan. it's an amazing piece and if you didn't get that Dredd was a satire or not have a sense of irony you would totally miss it. Anyone who watched the amazing film closely last year will understand. Especially about certain ways he metes out 'Justice'

 

[Kenjitsuka]

90's comics ruled, as I am from very late 1982.
And boy, did those Image and TopCow comics like Witchblade and The Darkness rock my world!
Even Tombraider was pretty swell.

No clue Marvel and DC mucked the market up so much tho.
Just knew them from those AWESOME Batman and X-MEN cartoons ;-)

 

[Scorpid]

Bob I really wish you would just stretch these out in full 15-30 minute webisodes. 5-7 minutes for a show just isn't enough time for you to shove in all the ideas you want to talk about. This episode in particular is suffering for it. For me 5-7 minutes only works if what the person is showing is a single idea "This game is good" "This movie sucks", that sort of thing. Talking about the rise and downfall of 90's comics can't be done in 5 minutes without missing HUGE chunks of vital information, and when you miss the vital information you're presenting, bad, incomplete information.

 

[saintdane05]

Welcome to March is 90's month,
where bad comics burn.
MovieBob's gonna teach you all
a lesson you won't learn.
Liefeld, you're not the smartest.
Image, needs more than artists.
Any artists who had a comic published,
fame gave them a turn.
Movie Bob
Dark Age! Merch! Making blood go splat!
Movie Bob!
Speculator boom! Gotta purchase that!
Linkara!
Egos, bankruptcy, scarceness disappeared!
Movie Bob!
COMICS. ARE, WEIRD!
MOVIE BOB!

Can I hug you now? Like, genuine, huge, I LOVE YOU hug?

What's the tune to sing that to?

Sing it to the tune of Linkara's THeme.

 

[Verlander]

Totally disagree.

My knowledge of DC in the 90's is very limited, but in and amongst the shite Marvel pumped out there was some complete quality. And while crossovers and newer characters were made for the wrong reason, they took the possibilities of comic book story writing to new levels. You can't really say that is a bad thing. The same, stagnant characters and ridiculous story lines in the 60's/70's/early 80's were a bad thing, and those were what inspired writers like Alan Moore to make dark satire out of the medium.

Similarly, while McFarlane/Liefield and even Sivestri get a lot of stick for their art (totally unfounded in my opinion), it's a style that defined the decade in comic art. Flares are stupid too, but I can't make the generalisation that trousers in the 70's sucked. They were of their time.

As a kid in the 90's (and a teen into the 00's) the 80's where what sucked. Glam rock? Yeesh. Transformers? Lame. Walkmans? Give me a break. NOW, however, I can look back on the 80's and appreciate what it was, and the hidden qualities in it. Sounds like a cop out man, but maybe you're too close to the 90's to see it? The rise of independent comic publishing as a genuine business model that is still self supporting, even after the speculator bubble broke? Sounds like a pretty fine decade to me.

 

[twm1709]

Just 2 days ago I was watching a documentary on youtube about the history of the comic book industry until recently which mentioned this among other things. here's the link for anyone interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKT0LLPgSnA

 

[liveslowdiefast]

Oh hell no, he did not just call friends bad television.

 

[ninjaRiv]

Wasn't all bad. The '90s was the decade that saw the rise of Vertigo, which has published a lot of the best and most influential comic books of all time, in my opinion. In terms of the medium growing up and becoming actually mature rather than superficially mature - as most superhero books of the time were - the importance of Vertigo can't be overstated.

And while Image admittedly isn't a powerhouse on the level of Marvel or DC, these days it looks likely to surpass Vertigo as the place to go for interesting, original, creator-owned comic books. The Walking Dead is the obvious big name, but you also have great stuff like Saga and Age of Bronze (a personal favourite), which probably wouldn't be published by the Big Two because they don't really fit with the rest of their properties.

I was pretty disappointed by the lack of Vertigo mentioned here. There was more than Watchmen.

And yeah, Image has become very influential. The 90s were pretty important overall to the creator owned comics we celebrate now.

 

[plugav]

I've pretty much known most of this story, but I'd be interested in hearing about how Image became the hit factory that it is today.

Also:

Hey, SANDMAN and Hellblazer both did fine during the 90's.

Yeah, not all of the nineties sucked - Vertigo definitely deserves some recognition. Maybe next March, eh?

 

[RandV80]

Bob's description of why the speculator bubble burst (old comics were valuable because not many survived, as opposed to everyone stockpiling new titles they hoped would be worth money some day) is the exact same reasoning I give my friend as to why modern toys will never carry the kind of secondary market price tag as their past versions.

A mint-in-sealed-box Transformers G1 Grimlock is never going to go down in value because in the 80's no one had the foresight to predict people would still be crazy about these toys nearly 30 years later, so very few of them exist. On the other hand, whenever something is labeled "collector edition" or "limited," people snatch up as many as they can, assuring there will be a surplus down the road, effectively shooting themselves in the foot.

Another factor that nearly sunk the comic book industry is with everyone buying 2 or 3 copies of these 'special editions' assuming they'd be huge collectors items down the road (I remember me and my brothers buying some fancy covered new Spiderman series with that in mind) it greatly increased comic sales and the publishers started spending to increased their production capacity to match. Naturally when people started realizing these new comics weren't going to be worth anything they stopped buying and the publishers were caught with their pants down.

I forget who did it, maybe A&E or something, but there's a great 1 hour documentary that covers the history of comic books available on youtube that covers pretty much everything in depth.

 

[gorfias]

How dumb was the speculator boom? Even Calvin and Hobbes, whose creator likely knew jack-all about comic books, made fun of it [http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1995/03/01].

At 4 bucks a piece, they're already to rich for my blood new! Thank G-d youtube has some people keep me up to date with things like, the progress of Superior Spiderman. I just can't afford to buy them myself. And if the story is carried into a crossover series? Time to mortgage my home.

 

[KillaBC]

-snip-

Don't forget the massive sci-fi boom that dominated the Nineties like Trek, Babylon 5, Farscape etc. Shame we don't have that level of sci-fi now.

 

[FEichinger]

Hey, SANDMAN and Hellblazer both did fine during the 90's.

Seriously, why no Big Picture for Sandman? I'd argue it's one of the most important comics of all time.

I assume he's waiting for Neil Gaiman's new Sandman series [http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/07/13/comic-con-neil-gaiman-announces-new-sandman-series] to be released, or at least fully announced.

 

[Tim Chuma]

What hasn't been mentioned is that something can be rare and still not worth anything as there is no demand for it.

I do have some Australian comics that there does not seem to be much information about online, but I keep them as I enjoyed them when they first came out. They were also published during the 90s. I even remember doing two comic book inspired artworks in my senior year art class at high school as I enjoyed them so much.

Can't really get into manga or anime. I did start buying the Akira issues, but stopped after #2 as they started getting expensive from then on.

I do enjoy buying zines from local shops as a lot of the time the content never appears online and I kick myself when I go back and it is not there.

I do like buying old books/annuals with cartoons in them as you find a lot of good stuff that way. Seems to be more of an English thing as the popular shows used to have a "Big book of" each year.

Some things that you think would never be worth anything have a habit of appreciating in value if you approach them with a different viewpoint. One example would be vintage stores selling old Playboy magazines to match the month you were born in. Might take a while for some of you, but the 70's ones are kickin!

 

[Redd the Sock]

Looking back at the speculator boom, it wasn't all bad in concept. Oh, financially it was stupid, but it produced something most people crave for today: creativity. All those number 1s and new characters had to come from somewhere, which lead to new creations, nostalgic revisits, and second stringers getting a fair amount of page time. Compare that to today where so much of Marvel has a tie to either the Avengers or the X-Men, or DC with the JLA. Yes, very few ideas stuck, even for the short term, but it was nice to see the juices flowing without it having to be an out of continuity crossover or needing a total reboot to pull off, and before the tug of war between new ideas and nostalgia killed the ability to see any changes as only short term.

 

[Big_Boss_Mantis]

Wasn't all bad. The '90s was the decade that saw the rise of Vertigo, which has published a lot of the best and most influential comic books of all time, in my opinion. In terms of the medium growing up and becoming actually mature rather than superficially mature - as most superhero books of the time were - the importance of Vertigo can't be overstated.

And while Image admittedly isn't a powerhouse on the level of Marvel or DC, these days it looks likely to surpass Vertigo as the place to go for interesting, original, creator-owned comic books. The Walking Dead is the obvious big name, but you also have great stuff like Saga and Age of Bronze (a personal favourite), which probably wouldn't be published by the Big Two because they don't really fit with the rest of their properties.

Damn these Ninjas!

I came here exactly to sing praises for Vertigo!

There was so much right from Vertigo. It was born from Alan Moore's Swamp Thing and Neil Gaiman's Sandman, two masterpieces that transcended its medium. Then it brought us Preacher by Garth Ennis, Hellblazer, and a lot of great standalone miniseries!
Vertigo was "Comics for adults" done right!

And, despite the bad phase in comics, other notable works were produced, like Kingdom Come, Frank Miller's Sin City (by Dark Horse IIRC), Kurt Busiek's Astro City, Hellboy... And that is just from the top of my head.

All of those were very relevant, and some of the most creative work the industry produced in a very long time! Really worth mentioning...

 

[LadyRhian]

I was into 2000 AD Comics like Strontium Dog and Judge Dredd back in the late 80's/Early 90's.I also read comics from Eclipse in the 90's. Original Grendel, Mage and so on. I think my favorite Indy Comics were the Southern Knights and the DNAgents.