That one should have been really easy. The event which made the metahumans shouldn’t have cared about the moral stance of the people it was affecting, and thus should have produced both heroes and villains.
Apparently the White Event (which had to do with the Starbrand blowing off steam or something) only affected really boring* people.
*DP7 excluded 'cause it was cool and Starbrand excepted cause he was an asshole.
I didn’t know about two lines! The only one I’m familiar with is the characters and storylines set up at the Unity (“Time Is Not Absolute”) event.
I know that after a year or so Shooter was kicked out of Valiant and he established another comics line called Defiant, which quickly failed. Is that when Valiant was rebooted?
Damn, Fenris. It’s posts like yours, answering questions I didn’t even know I wanted to know the answers to and providing trivia I scramble toward my collections to re-read, why I think you’re the cooolest comic book guy on the board.
Chronos Case in point (of not knowing what to do with the characters): I just grabbed a random issue of STARBRAND–the issue after Shooter was kicked out as it turns out-someone I’ve never heard of wrote it
The premise of the issue:
Starbrand sez
"It’s stoopid that Superman was shown fusing coal into diamonds. It only crumbles when I do it. My mentally handicapped girlfriend (“Quack!”) was hurt when I used my power on her. I feel bad about that, but not so bad that I won’t get lucky! Wahh-haa-haa-hooeeey! (“QUACK!!”).
My friend, the brainy, very vaguely offensive Jewish smart-nerd stereotype who just might be gay (not that there’s anything wrong with that) just called to let me someon in Russia is blowing up nukes are BAAAAD. I’ll go see what’s up and maybe destroy some–just like in Superman IV and with as much artistic success. Wait! There’s some guy who looks like a naked grey version of the Radioactive Man–he’s got the power to keep his crotch in shadow at all times! He’s an evil American who just killed a bunch of Rooskies! I can’t let him do that! We’ll fight*! Hmmm…He’s tough! Guess I’ll kill him… But how? I know! I’ll throw him into the sun! Wheeee! I fly fast. Look! Even a couple of thousand miles from the sun with his entire body facing the sun, his crotch is STILL in shadow! What a cool power. Oh-wait. I can’t kill him. Who am I to decide who lives and dies? O the angst. I know. I’ll throw him into deep space-he can’t fly so he’ll never come back. That’s a MUCH more humane solution. I’ll fly home and then sit in a darkened room and think angst-y thoughts some more until John Byrne completely fucks up my life next issue."
This just might be in the top-100 bad comics of all time.
Fenris
*Yeah, this doesn’t support my premise. But by the time I figured that out, I’d typed too much to stop, given how much fun I was having. Plus, I think it was the first time he’d ever fought anyone (other than the guy who gave him the starbrand in the first place).
On Preview–Fiver, Acclaim was backed by…hell, what’s the word for people who are in it for quick profits? Speculators? Venture capital speculators? Something-or-other investors? Whatever. Anyway, as soon as they made a predetrmined amount of money, they bailed and sold the line to Acclaim comics for about twice what it was valued at…just as the big “VARIENT COVERS WILL MAKE US ALL RICH” boom died. Oops.
What’s sad is that the rebooted Valient A) made some apparently cool video games (apparently the Turok Son of Stone game was really good–I never saw it, but I heard good things about it) and B) had a hell of a lot of talent–Mark Waid on X-O MANOWAR, Kurt Busiek on the wonderful NINJAK, Garth Ennis on SHADOWMAN or NIGHTMAN or whatever their Dr. Strange type was called. (The other standout post-reboot title was QUANTUM AND WOODY. Plus there was one called TRINITY ANGELS that had very nice art and astounding boob-age.) You can probably pick up NINJAK for pennies–I’d recommemend it highly (the post-boot Busiek run. The preboot one was a fairly bland spy-type. The Busiek one had a Captain Marvel (the SHAZAM! variety) feel about a kid who could become a super-hero and fought monsters out of video games.)
On preview again (you guys are fast!) –Asika, thanks! You made my day! 
Cite?
I’m not one to defend Jim Shooter. I’m with the intelligencia and Gary Groth when he called him “Our Nixon”. But this sounds like a loony conspiracy theory. For one thing, Kirby never sued Marvel. Force Works and Thunderstrike came much later, post-shooter I believe. And I think you meant X-Factor, not X-Force.
It’s well known in comic book circles that Jack “King” Kirby was embroiled in a long lawsuit over the return of his artwork done for Marvel right up until his death in 1996 – part of his woes were fictionally recounted in the series Box Office Poison. The whole New Universe imprint and the bizarre changes in late 80s-early 90s Marvel makes perfect sense as a contingency failsafe against a disasterous loss in a lawsuit – because it was such a disasterous creative idea in execution. Even if there’s no cite for it, it’s damned convincing conspiracy theory to me. Even though some changes came post-Shooter, it only means that the decision to alter established Marvel characters secret IDs and appearances to something other than their classic iconic looks was merely continued after Shooter left. That would go a hell of a long way to explaining the whole Clone Saga fiasco and why popular non-Kirby creations like The Punisher and Wolverine were so overexposed…
from http://www.povonline.com/JackFaq2.htm
That was written by Mark Evanier, a writer who worked as an assistant to Kirby in the 70s and was a confidant of Kirby’s up until his death.
(Slack jawed, open-mouthed shock)
(Closed-mouthed humility)
Well, Gamaliel. (Ahem.) Score one for fighting ignorance.
Still— and I’m playing devil’s advocate here (pun almost intended), if Kirby talked to attorneys and fan press, THAT’S how the myth got started and the misunderstanding spread around. The fact that Kirby never actually filed a lawsuit is almost irrelevant if the folks you want sue respond (proactively) as if you did.
Damn. I rather liked the idea of Marvel screwing up all those characters out of a half-baked legal contingency plan. If it’s not true, that just leaves the fact they screwed them all up out of sheer creative incompetence.
Sure, but just a couple of quick ones for now, it’s late–
A) I thought he actually sued, but perhaps Kirby only threatened to sue-- In any case, Marvel was terrified that he’d gain ownership of the characters. Some good background here. Note that this interview was in 1986. New Universe? StarBrand #12 was 1988, so the New Universe started in late 1986 or early 1987.
Another sorta-cite from Comic writer Mark Evanier who talks about how Marvel was trying to get Kirby to “sign a paper that said everything he had created for Marvel in the last fifty years was their property and everything he would ever create in the future would be theirs” or he wouldn’t get his original artwork back. I’m fairly certain that hethreatend to sue to get his original art back before Marvel caved and gave him a stripped down version of the contract to sign. I also recall benefit books to help pay for a possible Kirby vs Marvel lawsuit.
B) This all took place from 1983(?) ( the article about the ongoing situation was published in 1985)-1987
Alien Costume? 1984.
Tony retires? Roughly #186 give or take, 1984.
You’re right about Thunderstrike–Thor’s replacement was to be Beta-Ray Bill. Who was introduced around 1984.
Revised FF lineup? roughly FF 304 or so, 1987.
Steve Rodgers becomes The Captain? roughly #334, 1987.
I did mean X-Factor, which debuted 1986.
There were more of these–IIRC, the Hulk had something happen to him, but these are the ones that stand out.
During this period, things got so hairy that Shooter wrote a semi-hysterical editorial for Bullpen Bulletins (no cite. I’m not digging back through 4 years of Marvel comics looking for one editorial! ) trying to convince fans that Marvel was in the right. In it, he talked about his experiences writing for Legion in Adventure Comics and saying how he did it as a minor and could now sue DC but that wasn’t how one behaved. One took one’s lumps and stuck by the deal you made even if it wasn’t fair. It was really pathetic and if Marvel didn’t think the situation was serious (if only with fan reaction), I can’t imagine why A) he’d write it or B) they’d let him publish it (DC was not amused, and I think Paul Levitz wrote a rebuttal)
As your own cite from Evanier says “I think the problem was that Marvel’s lawyers always overreacted.” I’ll concede that I was wrong when I said that Kirby sued, but I’ll stand by the statement that A) all those characters were replaced or had emergency back-ups created as a contingency plans, just in case and B) the New Universe was another continency plan.
Thanks Askia, I always enjoy causing open-mouthed shock. 
Guys, I’m not saying this scenario isn’t possible, I just don’t see any evidence for it. Surely someone would have mouthed off who worked for Marvel editorial during those years and no longer has a stake, like Al Milgrom or Christopher Priest or Ann Nocenti.
There’s a suspicious number of Big Changes clustered together in the mid 80s, true, but comics companies always use Big Changes to increase sales, and you could probably construct a similar list for any arbitrary set of years.
Many of these changes were reversed, some fairly quickly, and a number of them I doubt were intended to be permanent anyway. The Captain was Captain America again by issue 350 (and it seems pretty clear that Mark Gruenwald intended it that way all along, IMHO), Spidey was back in red by issue 300, Beta Ray Bill “replaced” Thor for a few issues at most. Some of these changes, like the gray Hulk and X-Factor, made them closer to the original versions. X-Factor reunited the original 5 X-Men - one was dead, the others spread out in three different super teams. They were put in identical costumes, just like the originals, Jean Grey was resurrected, the Beast lost his blue fur. These changes could have hardly been made with a Kirby suit in mind when they made them as close to the original Lee/Kirby versions as 30 years of continuity would allow.
Or Doug Moench. He described in great detail (COMIC BOOK ARTIST circa #6) how he got off on the wrong foot with Shooter (whom he regarded as a “proofreader”) and how shooter wanted the writers to kill off all the Marvel characters and replace them with similar characters (A new stockbroker Captain America, a Ninja Master of Kung Fu, etc.). There was even that cover of MARVEL AGE that showed all the major Marvel characters in their new, de-Kirbyfied costumes. It’s really beyond dispute that Marvel was at one point planning for a future without the availability of Kirby-designed characters.
There were a handful of popular Marvel characters Kirby hadn’t designed, like the Punisher, Wolverine (Both of these were designed by John Romita Sr.) and Ghost Rider (Mike Ploog) and these could carry their own popular books, but not a whole Marvel-sized line. There were also some licensed characters like Conan, but Marvel’s profit margin on these was pretty slim by 1985.
Most of the New Universe books were written and drawn by second-stringers with no extraordinary achievements behind them, and nearly all the books had something seriously wrong with them.
KICKERS, INC was about a football team that received super powers during the “White Event” and fought crime on its off-hours. Aside from the incredibly unsporting concept of a football team with super powers playing against other teams without them (Remember Pa Kent telling Clark he wasn’t put on this Earth to score field goals?), the book was hamstrung by bad art, and by the fact that comics fans aren’t football fans. We read comics BECAUSE we don’t like football. Sorry, it’s a fact. Anybody remember NFL SUPERPRO?
PSI-FORCE had two problems: It was a superhero team where everyone had the same power, and the characters didn’t wear interesting costumes. The idea, of course, was to have them dress the way contemporary kids dressed, but the artist (Paul Ryan?) was pretty tone deaf to youth culture and fashion. The DC comic it most closely resembled was FOREVER PEOPLE, FWIW.
STAR BRAND was written by Shooter and drawn by John Romita Jr. Romita became a skilled and popular draughtsman at some point, but not during his tenure on this awful, awful-looking book. John Byrne took over the writing and art towards the end of its run, but it was too little, too late.
JUSTICE: I remember nothing about this book, except that Steve Englehart started writing it right before it got cancelled. The main character was a cipher with a grey ponytail.
DP-7 was a fun little book. Mark Gruenwald wrote it, I think maybe Paul Ryan drew it. It wasn’t great, but it was kinda cool in an understated way. These characters, along with Star Brand, turned up in a Marvel Universe title, QUASAR, also written by Gruenwald.
MERC had nothing to do with the “White Event” superheroics of the rest of the line. It could easily have fit into the regular Marvel Universe, and probably should have. Peter David wrote it, and it remained interesting for exactly as long as Gray Morrow kept drawing it.
NIGHTMASK was the best of the books; Archie Goodwin, the line’s best writer, scripted it and Tony Salmons (a truly amazing artist) drew it. Both of them drifted away from the title, which likely killed it. This was the most straightforwardly superhero book they did, costume and all. The teenaged protagonist turned up in some other title as a military officer, which didn’t really fit his characterization very well.
All in all, New Universe was a bad idea unevenly executed. None of the writers had a track record for creating new titles out of whole cloth, most of the writers were undistinguished assistant editors, and with the exceptions of John Byrne and Gray Morrow, the artists were decidedly B-listers (Salmons was a newcomer to comics and left the industry shortly after this). The things that weren’t bad could and should be shoehorned into the Marvel Universe proper.
I don’t think you can–not that many key players, all by one creator (note that Daredevil didn’t have any replacements or costume changes, and Spidey’s only change was the Kirby costume) and in that short of a length of time. We’re only talking a 4 year period or so. There were just too many replacement characters and costume changes in that period (note also that Simonson gave Thor that nifty non-Kirby armored costume (and grew him a beard) during that period). I believe that every major Kirby character (major=holds own book) excluding the Hulk (and I think the Hulk got one too–didn’t Rick Jones (who apparently was purely a Lee creation) become the Hulk briefly, just before Peter David took over? It would have been around Hulk 325 or so, roughly 1986…) got a backup created in that range. The only exceptions are Mr. and Mrs. Fantastic who got written out of the book for a year or two.
Look at, ohh…let’s say1978-1982, the period right before. Spidey? No costume/identity changes. Iron Man? Other than the normal armor revisions, no real changes to the costume or the secret-identity. Thor? Nuthin’. FF? Um…I think there was a line-up change briefly…but that’d been done before. Going back 4 more years, 1973-1977, we got the All New, Alll Different X-Men, but X-Men had laid fallow other than a few guest shots since the early '70s. Captain Mar-Vell changed his costume from the space-ranger version to the Gil Kane(?) red/blue one, and, IIRC, Doc Strange lost the mask over his face but those were the only costume changes I can think of and one was a reversion. FF had a few momentary line-up switches but none lasted.
I can’t think of any time in DC or Marvel history (excluding the early DC Silver Age revisions which doesn’t count–the original characters had been gone for years–they weren’t yanked out of books that were selling well) where so many characters, all by one creator got replacement characters and/or different costumes in such a short amount of time.
This one is no problem to explain–the changes were all in preparation for a potential loss of the characters. Once you’ve established the Black costume, introduced Beta-Ray Bill, set up “The Captain”, it’s no problem to bring them back if needed and it would be easier than trying to create them on the fly, should the unthinkable happen.
I swear I read about all this right before the Captain America change–but I can’t remember where I read it (maybe CBG?) and I can’t find a cite. It’s not just my own theory, but I’ll concede that I got no proof other than circumstantial evidence.
:eek:
Um.
Hm…
Erm. I could quibble and point out that Angel became Archangel a little way into the run and Beast becane blue and furry again…but there’s still Iceman, Marvel Girl and Cyclops and, well…
Ok. Count that as two open-mouthed shocks today. I surrender X-Factor part of it!
Fenris
Not sure if there are any Usenet buffs here, but here is a thread from four years ago where I argued with both Roger Stern and Kurt Busiek about whether or not the New Universe was part of a de-Kirbyfication of Marvel Comics.
They were pretty sure it wasn’t, but I’m still not totally convinced.
Don’t have much to add to this retrospective on the New Universe (the only title I recall reading was Spitfire, and that was merely because I’m a minor-league mech junkie), but I vaguely recall hearing that the Starbrand character was based on Jim Shooter himself – tall, blonde, egotistical, hails from Pittsburgh, deems himself a god…
…any truth to that?
Well, except for the blonde part…
I don’t want to dump on Shooter. Left to his own devices, he writes a pretty decent comic book.
I don’t know why I remember so much about this awful title, but I’m pretty sure that Jack, the leader, was the only one who got powers, and he got them when he underwent treatment in this wacky machine created by this sports doctor. The machine was only supposed to provide a mild enhancement, a slight edge – and, in fact, when his teammates were treated by the machine, the effect was just that – but he was affected differently. Jack wasn’t in the machine during the “White Event,” was he?
Yup, except for the blonde part, which is why it was so funny when Byrne drew him into Legends. All he did was change the hair color.
IIRC, he also said, in an early STARBRAND lettercol that “Duck” was based on a real woman he knew.
Thank you for posting this. After reading the Moench anecdote, I had one of those jaw-dropping moments :eek: and was ready to concede. That is, until I read that Moench was actually talking about Master of Kung Fu, a title that Jack Kirby probably never even heard of.
I’m going to have to side against you and with Roger Stern and Kurt Buisek in that debate. They are, after all, in a better position than we to have known what was going on at the time, but that’s not the only reason.
What we do know is this:
*Marvel thought Kirby might sue over ownership of key characters
*There were drastic changes to the looks of many key characters during Shooter’s reign.
The key question is this: Did one cause the other?
I don’t see any convincing evidence that the 1980s changes can be attributed to anything beyond a desire to boost sales and put a “Shooter stamp” on the Marvel line. Are these changes really any more drastic than some of the things that happened before and after? In the 1980s, Captain America gave up his costume and roamed the country under the name of The Captain. In the 1970s, Captain America gave up his costume and roamed the country under the name of Nomad.
There were a lot of changes to Kirby designed characters, but consider this: with the exception of Doctor Strange, Iron Man, and Spider-Man, Kirby initially drew damn near every important Marvel character. If you want to make drastic changes to the Marvel line, you can’t help but make a drastic change to something Kirby had a hand in creating.
(As an aside, Kirby is often thought to have designed Spider-Man’s costume, and I personally don’t think that’s true. Here’s Mark Evanier’s take: http://www.povonline.com/2002/News060102.htm#060602a)
I think you may have misread that thread. Per both people who read the Comic Artist Interview, while Moench himself was only working on MASTER OF KUNG-FU, both people said that in that interview Moench said that Shooter ordered him and others, to kill off their characters and replace them with new Shooter-approved versions, until apparently Stan got wind of it and put the kibosh on it.
For what it’s worth, he only gave up his ID for about 4 issues, if that, in the '70s and didn’t generate a “backup”. The '80s changes lasted more than a year each in most cases and in all cases generated a backup character. .
And Daredevil. And Vision (who’s probably Marvel’s strongest “Doesn’t have his own book but everyone knows him” character) And Sub-Mariner (who’s a close second behind Vision).
True, but Dr. Strange didn’t change his look/costume (IIRC) during that period. Neither did Daredevil. Or Vision. Spider-Man only changed his costume (and the original Kirby cover-art for Amazing Fantasy #15 can be seen republished in an issue of Marvel Tales–I think it was #137) and nothing else and, at most, Kirby designed Spider-Man’s costume and nothing else. Interesting link, btw! I rarely disagree with Evanier regarding Kirby, but in this one case I have to. Besides seeing the proto-cover, one other piece of circumstantial evidence exists–Ditko, Lee and everyone else didn’t blow a gasket when Kirby claimed designer credit.)
If you’re making sweeping changes to the line, wouldn’t you start with your most popular character? DC did with Superman after Crisis. Why create substitutes/replacments/backups for every Kirby character, but skip your single most popular character?
It even affected the second banana characters to a degree: Note that Hank Pym (Kirby) was purged from the Avengers (by Shooter), but Wasp (Dick Ayers) wasn’t? Granted the fact that Hank Pym is frankly a kinda dull character and the Wasp isn’t probably has something to do with it too.
The main X-Books were de-Kirbified, the main characters given their own book.
Why did the original X-Men get their own book when they were Kirby and the Surfer too? The following is wild-ass speculation, of course, but perhaps they were given their own book (and so was Silver Surfer) as a way of “milking” the characters until/unless they lost the characters–note that the characters were more-or-less ghetto-ized. (Yeah, there were crossovers, but if X-Factor was cancelled, it wouldn’t hurt the sales of Uncanny, say).
I also remember the “Kill 'em all” comment that Krokodil referred to and I swear that there was an interview (in Amazing Heroes, maybe?) with someone from Marvel before the Captain America replacement where the interviewee specifically stated that the Cap change was coming and boy would it be exciting! but it was prompted by a fear of a Kirby lawsuit.
Possibly the truth is somewhere in-between:
-
Shooter, full of himself, dismisses Kirby’s importance several times and in at least one interview says the “Kill 'em all” comment.
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After the brief flurry of publicity, Shooter comes up with the idea of “replacing” the Kirby characters: first, it’ll put his “stamp” on the line, and second, it’ll (he thinks) protect them from a lawsuit that Marvel’s (admittedly overreactive) lawyers keep talking about. He discusses it with some of the creators and someone shoots his mouth off in an interview, probably in 1985? about de-Kirbifying Marvel.
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He finds out that it might not protect them from a lawsuit (good point in the Usenet discussion from Busiek) and drops that tactic, but pushes forward with the changes anyway 'cause it’ll ‘shake things up’
Fenris