Isaac P. wants to know
“I’m fascinated by the ‘every publisher launches a superhero universe’ era of the 90’s that brought us the Ultraverse, Comics Greatest World, & the like. Is there one of these that you, as a reader, wish had been a success? Alternatively, are there any particular memories of this era that stick out to you from the sales side of things?”
I will tell you the one big memory I have of this particular period in the comics industry history. It’s probably one I’ve mentioned before, but it’s well worth repeating.
I very strongly recall getting in the new copy of the Diamond Previews catalog, which features Dark Horse’s “Comics’ Greatest World” on the cover, ballyhooing the arrival of A New Superhero Universe™!
Courtesy the folks over at the Longbox Heroes podcast, here is a scan of that Previews cover from April 1993:
And as you may be able to see, there’s a split down the center, where you could swing open those parts of the cover and reveal the Comics’ Greatest World gang lurking within:
Which is all well and good, but 30+ years later, I can still remember the thoughts I had upon seeing this cover. I thought about all the other Superhero Universes and such that were coming into existence around this time, and I thought of Dark Horse’s entry into that already-burgeoning playing field, and I wondered “how do they expect comic readers to pay for all these New Universes?”
And that was the real problem. Here’s Valiant, here’s Ultraverse, here’s Comics’ Greatest World, here’s…I don’t know, Triumphant, here’s that other shared superhero universe Malibu was doing aside from Ultraverse, and then there’s DC and Marvel of course, and probably more I’m not thinking of at the moment.
It was just too much…new comic readers weren’t suddenly going to appear from nowhere to read all these comics, especially during a market downturn. The fans that already comprised comic book readership were either going to have to cough up more money to buy additional books, or they’d have to drop other books to make room for some of these new titles. It wasn’t a huge growth move for the industry, it was more a lateral move.
You know how there was a huge push to make shared universe movies after Marvel’s success with that strategy, only for several studios to find out that it wasn’t quite as easy as all that? (And that even Marvel isn’t finding it so easy lately?) What’s going on in the comic book industry about this time is sort of similar to that, except 1) publishers had a slightly better hit rate, and 2) there was a whole lot less money at stake.
The rise and fall of the Superhero Universe in comics was enough of a thing for the Overstreet Price Guide to release a side-guide a few years back, the Overstreet Price Guide to Lost Universes. And as you can see at the link, it doesn’t just concern itself with ’90s efforts, as it includes the ’70s Seaboard/Atlas books…though, were they in a shared universe? I can’t recall any crossovers there. Anyway, I think I actually grabbed a copy of this for myself, so I’m going to try to dig that out and give it a once-through before I continue here.
Yes indeedy, this is going to be a two-parter, at least. I kinda want to spend some time with some of these departed Universes and not rush through ’em at the end of this post, so I hope you forgive the cliffhanger.
