So after completing the my read-through of the Jim Shooter era of Valiant, I'm ready to give some of my attention to other books in my massive "to read" library. I'm not totally giving up on Valiant — I've moved on to some of the Valiant comics I've picked up in quarter / dollar bins that I haven't read yet and have read through Bloodshot #1-7 and HARD Corps #1, with a Ninjak HC on my nightstand that has some super sweet Joe Quesada art.

I've also mostly completed a run of Dale Keown's PITT via eBay (like the Platt Prophet comics, these seem to have become more and more scarce in the local $1 bins I've been able to look through), so that will probably be on the list soon. I also pulled together StormWatch #0-#12 from the bins and have Walt Simonson's X-Factor and Fantastic Four runs from the 90s completed and unread (except for the "first appearance" of Archangel, I think). And writing that, I'm reminded that I still have most of the Alan Davis' Excalibur run sitting unread (I think I got through about 8 issues before forgetting about it). So plenty of 90s reading to go!

And within the piles of cheap 90s junk I've acquired sits a big batch of Ultraverse comics. I bought and read a chunk of these books a couple years back but didn't really stick with a dedicated re-read -- it was more of a casual curiosity -- but I was mostly impressed with it as a launch of a superhero comics line, all things considered.

For those who don't know the backstory -- Malibu Comics was an indie publisher in the 80s who put out fun but mostly unremarkable superhero / adventure genre comics Probably the most notable books they published prior to 1992 were Ex-Mutants (notable for early Ron Lim art), the acquired Aircel line (notable for early Dale Keown art), and their mini-line of public domain superheroes (most famously used in The Protectors).



But in 1992, owner Dave Olbrich had dinner with Rob Liefeld, who brought along two of his best friends in the business, Erik Larsen and Jim Valentino. You can probably guess where this is going -- the founding of Image Comics. In their original deal, Malibu got 10% of the profits for publishing the Image books. After a year, the Image fellas realized 10% of the revenue they were generating was quite a large chunk of change and Image became a fully independent publisher. The golden goose was gone, but Malibu now had a ton of money in their coffers that allowed them to finance their way into becoming a much bigger player in the comics business.

The result of that was the Ultraverse.




Its inception is interesting -- from what I'm reading online, they built the line by offering writers with name recognition a chance to pitch any comic they wanted and if it was accepted, they'd have some creative control and profit participation for their creations. So not quite Image Comics, where you own everything but you also pay for everything, but much better than most Marvel and DC deals, where they own it outright and you're lucky if they toss you some table scraps. The writers involved were --

James D. Hudnall, former writer on Marvel's Alpha Flight and Strikeforce: Morituri created Hardcase and the Solution.
Steve Englehart, classic Marvel writers on titles like Avengers and Silver Surfer created the Strangers and the Night Man.
Steve Gerber, legendary writer/creator behind Howard the Duck and others created Sludge.
Mike W. Barr, writer of the Outsiders and Camelot 3000 created Mantra.
Len Strazsewksi, writer on JSA, Starman and others created Prototype.
James Robinson, writer of Starman and The Golden Age, created Firearm.
Super-Creep Gerard Jones, previously writer on Green Lantern, JLI and other titles created Prime, the Freex and Solitaire.

(List take from this page, which provides a fantastic, in-depth look at the Ultraverse.)

What's interesting about this line, IMHO, is that it sort of follows the Jim Shooter model of a cohesive, writer-led superhero universe where the characters' origins and powers are more tied into each other. But unlike the New Universe and Valiant, there was an eye toward making it more visually appealing and playing to the tropes that kids and fans alike want (like superhero costumes and such). They didn't have too many superstar artists, but they did allow artists to use more modern compositions and storytelling styles instead of the strict "three tier grids and medium shots" system that Shooter usually required.

Not to say they didn't have any artistic star power - Norm Breyfogle was doing their most popular and seemingly flagship title, Prime. They stole Barry Smith away from Valiant to do Rune. And they even got George Perez to do the Break Thru event (their "Unity", so to speak) and launch UltraForce (their JLA). And they had some talented young guys as well -- they had a young Terry Dodson on Mantra and I always thought Kevin Hotz's work on Nightman was sorely underrated.

But anyway, yeah. Gonna try giving this a read-through. Not sure if I'll be reviewing storylines and such as I get through them, but I'll probably check in at some point. Anyone else collect this line?

I never even heard of them until just now. I vaguely remember Breyfogle on Prime, but at the time I was only buying Batman and Spider-Man books, so no matter who was writing/drawing, if it didn't have one of them in it, I wasn't interested. This was right around the time he was a regular artist on the Bat-books, so that's why I even recognized the name back then.

Some of the bigger stars they got to do covers / content for the line --

It's not Kevin Hotz, it's Kyle Hotz.

The artist who really fits the tone of the line while giving it some shine is George Perez. He makes them all look like A-listers while still facilitating the writers telling the stories they want.

Ah, I meant to double-check that and forgot. Thanks for the assist! Anyway, his Nightman stuff is just awesome. Feels like Graham Nolan and Joe Quesada had a baby --

And young Terry Dodson on Mantra (might even be his first assignment) -- his interiors had a long way to go but his covers looked good from the jump.

I remember meeting Len Strazsewksi at a Con in Minneapolis at the time.
He fully admitted that Prototype was based on Iron Man, but with what was then, a modern retelling.
His enthusiasm for the project was pretty high, and made me buy the book.
I don't remember much about it though.

That makes sense -- Marvel bought them out and some weird legal situation has made it so they don't even want to reprint the material. I've never seen this happen.

If I remember correctly, Image originally used Malibu's infrastructure to publish their books, but their success was so great right from the jump that they quickly set up their own publishing. Malibu had tasted some of that early Image success and thought they might be able to tap into that by luring some of the better creators from Marvel and DC by offering them partial ownership and royalties. I think the first few issues of most of the Ultraverse books sold quite well, but dropped quickly.
Then Marvel bought Malibu (including the Ultraverse books, along with the obligations to the creators) solely for the computer colouring department.

I would say that you are remembering correctly, especially with the reason Marvel bought Malibu.

He's a super creep! Super creep! He's super creepay, yow!

This reminds me that there's a great blog where someone reads every single Epic comic - including Heavy Hitters - that Marvel was pumping out in response to Image Comics. It's almost all pure trash.

https://totally-epic.kwakk.info/

I've heard this wasn't true and doesn't make sense upon a deeper look. Marvel has deep pockets, so it would be easier to do what the Image partners did with Steve Oliff's Olyoptics -- hire away the colorists themselves, who can tell you what sort of computers and software needed, which is far cheaper than buying the entire company.

Maybe so, but what does make sense? Why would Marvel purchase it? Malibu had no value otherwise. They didn't own any valuable intellectual properties.

Basically a response to DC buying Wildstorm. There was a race for independent superhero comics companies and Marvel was desperate.

I've heard that one before, but it makes less sense to me than the computer colouring story. Particularly since DC bought Wildstorm in 1998, Marvel bought Malibu in 1994.

If it wasn't a race, and it wasn't the coloring then ... why? Bad management that was buying up anything and everything in sight?

From UPI.

This is what I heard as well. Reading that retrospective article I linked to in the first post of this thread, it really seems like marvel made an earnest effort to integrate the Ultraverse into the main marvel universe and continue some of the titles. But they erased too much of the original characters and the whole thing out water down until it limped to its death.

I remember liking Prime. I was reading it for a while but I gave up on comics before the whole Ultraverse thing went away.