On all kinds of sites and magazines I read little references made to the "awful 90's" concerning comic books. I don't understand this. Exactly what was it that made so many people hate comics then? I know that there were tons of variant covers and stuff like that, but what else? Were the stories bad, and why? Also, is this comics in general or just Marvel?
Thank you, this has bothered me for a long time.
There is a number of reasons why the 90's have such a bad rap.
Then came a certain artist named Rob Liefeld. He was barely out of high school, no art training, (barely any skill) and there he was, drawing the New Mutants. He drew huge superhero guys with enormous muscles, "hot sexy babes," barely any background, "dynamic poses," lots of action, splash pages and giganormous guns. His stuff was just very different from the traditional Jack Kirbiest style. For some reason that still eludes me, it stuck a cord with the fans and his stuff became inmensely popular. Then along came other "sensational" artist stars, such as Jim Lee, Mark Silvestri, Erik Larsen, Jim Valentino and Todd McFarlane. All distinguished by sexy babes, bulky guys, dynamic poses, splash pages... but their stuff was very unpolished and amateurish, lots of anatomy errors and weird composition. The fans loved the art so much, the house became more and more focused on the art, and the story (which had been declining in quality for some time as it was) got shunt to the background. People wanted shock and action, and storytelling was almost forgotten.
Soon Marvel gave much more importance to its superstar artists, they started to give them plotting and writting priviledges as well. This was clearly a mistake, because these were mostly young people with no storytelling experience... or skill! This was the time were X-Force and the new X-Men series were launched, selling literally millions of copies.
Also, in the late 80's the first inter-house cross-overs were created. Crisis on Infinite Earths (DC) and Secret Wars (Marvel) were a huge success. So both companies started doing cross-overs like crazy. Again, it was all about the hype and sales, the stories themselves were usually jumbled and pointless, just an excuse to have a bunch of characters jumping around. Lots of people who just didn't have enough skill got involved in the creation of comics.
Additionally, 1991-1995 was witness to the boom and decline of comics. Around that time, the distributors made it quite easy for someone to open a comic shop. Also, collectors were starting to realize how old key comics from the 30's-60's were quite hard to find in good condition, and the prices of these comics went up to thousands of dollars. So people discovered: comics can be worth money. People would buy new comics 10 and 50 copies at the time. Shops would order hundreds of comics. A new company, founded by the Marvel superstar artists, called Image was founded, as well as Valiant and other independent publisher. Everyone thought all the new comics coming out would be gold. But soon people realized that their "investments" were printed in the hundreds of thousands, and they were so common, they couldn't even sell them for half cover price! Suddenly shops were stuck with tons of unsold copies, and most went quickly out of business.
Comics just went through a rough time. Marvel made a lot of bad moves, but they drove the market at the time and whatever they did, DC copied. Marvel went throught a lot of ownership changes, each trying to make a quick buck and not worry about the product itself. Thus came hologram, foil, glow in the dark, bagged, fancy covers, because fans dug them and bought the comic... but the inside was never something to write home about. Lots of crappy new series were started to have volume and increase sales... bunch of them aren't worth the paper they are printed in today.
Another terrible decision by Marvel was to do its own distribution. Comics are usually distributed by a third party distributor. Marvel decided to conduct its own distribution duties, and it was disastrous. First of all, they couldn't handled it and comics started to arrive late. Then, the other distributors were so affected (they had just lost the business of distributing half of their product, which was Marvel), they folded one by one, until there was only two left... and then only one.
Of course, not everything published in the 90's is junk. There are still many good comics to be had in that time period. But if you compare it with the great stories that came before, it pales in comparison.
Fortunately, comic companies have improved very much since then. I think the comics that are being produced today are thirty times superior than the 90's ones.
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For comic book shop owners and employees!! question about Diamond distribution?
Hey i have a question. I just recently heard that marvel had sent limited variants along with certain issues of a title and when i got that old Marvel Previews issue, it didn't say anything about you getting a limited/variant copy for each five regular issues you purchase. So my question is do the owners know this or do they just get surprised with the variant/limited cover.
Example: Ironman 444 is coming out and Marvel got word out that for everytime you get five copies of Ironman 444 the fifth one will be a different/variant cover. But when you buy the Marvel Previews issue (say 34) it just shows the regular 444 cover and it doesn't mention anything or show the alternate picture.
help just curious how that works
The subscription service that I use always lists ALL of the variant covers and what not for sale 2 months before each issue is released, so they definitely get told somehow although I don't really know where that info comes from.
EDIT: I just found a website that says that the variant covers have to be ordered so comic shop owners probably find out about variant covers when they receive their order forms or go to fill them out. The website say "Retailers will be permitted to order one copy of each variant for every 10 copies of the regular edition ordered."
