Thread by @Comrade_Bullski

Kept ya waiting, huh?

Let's continue our journey through the many, MANY titles of Malibu comics with part two.

This time! The superheroes are here! Genesis! And the US comics market changes forever as we go back in time to 1992...

First off let me start with this: In the previous thread I received some INVALUABLE corrections on the ins and outs of early Malibu from people who WERE THERE, so a huge thanks to all of you including David Lawrence, Roland Mann and many others!

I have further subdivided the remainder of these threads because my original write-up of the years 1992-1994 was unreadable gibberish. Instead I will cover one side of Malibu's publishing at once, with nods to what else was going on at the same time. hopefully it will read better

To quickly recap the previous thread: Up until 1992 Malibu had mostly published a very diverse crop of black and white indie comics under a bevy of different imprints such as Eternity, Adventure and Aircel. In the early 90s plunging sales were putting pressure on

...black-and-white comics, coupled with Marvel gobbling up an increasingly huge market share. Malibu would have to evolve with the times to survive, and luckily that next step of evolution came quickly.

I think everyone knows the history of Image Comics by now. Suffice to say that this new publishing venture created by Marvel's most popular artists at the time hit the market with hurricane force and changed the landscape of the comic book market in the US almost overnight

Of course, the Image titles were initially distributed by Malibu, though there was no indication of this except in the indicia. This partnership was also immensely beneficial to Malibu, propelling their market share up to a shocking 9.73%!

Starting in spring 1992, this was a period during which Malibu was everywhere, even if only as a distributor. However, this partnership was never designed to be lasting, as the Image founders wanted true independence, and the Malibu staff knew this.

The heads of Malibu sat down and formed a plan for what they would do when Image finally stepped away. How could they capitalize on the immense hype and the burgeoning market? The answers seemed to be fairly clear - full color... and superheroes.

Now Malibu had of course already dabbled in superheroes before - both import titles such as Cat Claw and books such as Cat & Mouse (more on them later) had strayed into that area, and the Malibu staff had discussed a super-team of their own to capitalize on the X-Men for a while.

First off, however, Malibu decided to look back and give a couple of their previous title new life. Tom Mason's Dinosaurs for Hire thus saw a return.

The irreverent dinosaur hitmen were back in full color and with even more overt jokes about the market... this is the first page of the first issue of the relaunch and it continues in this style!

As previously recounted (by David Lawrence himself), Ex-Mutants creators Lawrence, David Campiti and Ron Lim had lost the rights to their creation after a long and messy legal battle, and Malibu had claimed the brand as their own. As such in 1992 the series was relaunched.

The new series carried NO mention of Lawrence, Campiti or Lim and writing was handled by Malibu's own Tom Mason, Chris Ulm and Dave Olbrich, with art by Paul Pelletier.

Apart from the color, the new series was essentially a reboot of the original, with new characters roughly filling the roles of the old ones.

To compare, here is the "de-mutation scene" from the original Ex-Mutants #1 (1986)...

...and here is the same scene from Ex-Mutants #1 (1992) with the new characters and new creative team.

Before we continue let me double back to Cat & Mouse. The previous thread failed to acknowledge the contribution of Silverline Comics and I shall attempt to make things at least somewhat right here.

Silverline was a small family of titles created by Roland Mann, Steven Butler and Mitch Byrd which had previously been published briefly by a company called EF Graphics before ending up with Malibu, where they released a couple of titles.

Apart from Cat & Mouse other Silverline books included Silverstorm, the Mantus Files and Demon's Tails which also came out in 1992.

Silverline are still in business today as a true independent, check them out at silverlinecomics.com

With the impending loss of the Image titles, Malibu decided to turn to one of their long established creators (though other plans were also already afoot - more later): R.A Jones.

Jones had written a huge amount of titles for Malibu starting with 1987's Dark Wolf (a rare title sporting the Malibu trade dress rather than any of its imprints). Jones had a background as an editor for Elite Comics and was a solid contributor to Malibu.

Among many other ideas, Jones' concept of taking a number of public domain heroes from the long defunct publisher Centaur Publications and update them to fit the 90s won out.

And so the Protectors were born! The team consisted of both reimagined public domain heroes such as Man of War, Airman and Amazing Man as well as new characters like Arc and Aura. Some characters received new names like the Fantom of the Fair who became Gravestone.

Inspired by the Image titles, Protectors #1 launched the readers straight into the action by introducing the whole team at once and filling in their background gradually. With Jones writing the art was initially by Thomas Derenick with inks by future superstar Mike Deodato.

The universe of the Protectors was one where super-beings had existed since the golden age but were having a massive resurgence in the then-present, resulting in a team of them banding together to fight powerful menaces. It also introduced a rookie legacy character in Nightmask.

Given the times it was also no surprise the Protectors had an angry, feral loner as part of the team in the form of the Ferret, who received a spin-off one-shot in 1992 and then a brief ongoing in 1993.

The Protectors was a somewhat more conservative superhero title than the Image ones had been, with heroes more tradtionally in line with those at Marvel or DC. That didn't stop them from doing some odd marketing stunts like this one for toy guns...

The opening arc of the story featured the team struggling against the megalomaniacal conqueror Mr Monday who would become their arch-enemy.

Issue 5 (cover-dated Jan 1993) featured a gimmick that has since become infamous... the bullet hole. In this issue the aforementioned rookie hero Nightmask is shot to death by Mr Monday and the bullet hole is actually cut through the entire comic, going from the cover...

...to the shocker final page.

Okay so the hole doesn't actually go through Nightmask in the story.

In issue #7 Nightmask's sister Marcia takes over the costumed role and... she kinda... just wears the costume like that.

In fact, following the death of Nightmask the title becomes a little more violent and definitely more gratuitous, as the team receive costume make-overs for PR reasons which apparently includes shrinking Aura's costume down to practically nothing.

Along the way, as mentioned, Protectors had released a few spin-off titles and specials featuring various team members, and more were advertised for 1993, but none really managed to stick around with Ferret's second title lasting the longest.

Two quick asides before we leave 1992 entirely: Malibu released three mini-series based on Tarzan in this year all of which had pretty damn cool art.

Seriously, the Teddy Kristiansen / Peter Snejberg art in Tarzan: Love, lies and the Lost City is quite spectacular.

Also in late 1992, Malibu merged with video game developer Acme Interactive to form Malibu Interactive, intent on also breaking into the burgeoning 16-bit video game boom. They eventually released games based on Ex-Mutants (v2)...

...and Dinosaurs for Hire, though the video game deal turned out to be costly and not pay off very well.

Continuing into 1993, the Protectors continued on their merry way fighting such menaces as the distinctly Joker-like Wisecrack.

The team also saw a crossover with a previous Malibu title as they clashed with Miss Fury and her evil double the Black Fury.

Yep, this is the legacy hero to Tarpe Mills' golden age crimefighter. She had a title of her own earlier.

With another deal already in the works at Malibu in 1993, the decision was taken to consolidate the existing titles that Malibu owned fully into their own loose universe. Enter Genesis. Yes Marvel UK also called their 1992 relaunch Genesis. It was a year of Geneses.

In a story spanning Dinosaurs for Hire, Ex-Mutants, Protectors and Protectors spin-offs Gravestone, Ferret and Man of War a villain called Extreme (was this a reference to Image?) caused carnage.

If you're wondering "Wait, how can a post-apocalyptic story, a story with talking sarcastic dinosaurs and a traditional superhero universe overlap?" well the answer is that Extreme was a time-and-dimensions traveler in the proud tradition of all such villains.

The Genesis story didn't have a huge effect overall, mostly amounting to some characters cameoing in each other's books afterwards.

The aformentioned clown, by the way, was Dead Clown, a humor-horror title written by Chris Ulm with art by Joel Thomas and Phil Gosier which was ostensibly part of the Genesis lineup but only had 3 issues of... some... quality? Look it was a product of a Lobo-loving decade, okay?

As 1993 came to a close the Genesis family of titles were not doing well. Dinosaurs for Hire ended with issue #8 with this sardonic page...

...while Ex-Mutants vol 2 became increasingly Marvel/Image-styled and ended in early 1994, admittedly with a good ending for the team.

Going back to Protectors, the Genesis crossover in issue #14 ended with the VERY Image-looking Chalice arriving and declaring himself the new leader of the team.

It was clear that the title was struggling against Malibu's newer, hotter, more promoted universe... more on that in the next part. As a result, the title continued its slide into trying to be an Image-lite book.

By early 1994 the writing was on the wall. In issue #19, the full roster of the Protectors and their various allies and even enemies assembled one final time to meet a mysterious new threat... (spoilers ahead)

Mister Monday arrived to quickly kill Airman, signalling that things were getting desperate indeed.

Monday proved to not be the ultimate threat, however as the mysterious Great Question revealed himself to be after ultimate power at any cost.

The following issue saw the heroes and villains of the Protectors universe die left and right, either killing each other or being summarily slain by the monstrous Question.

Even worse, the death of the villain proved to be the final blow...

...as heroes and villains alike were powerless to do anything but say their final goodbyes as planet Earth violently exploded, torn apart by the Question's death.

And so the Protectors, their world and the entire Genesis line died.

I feel like this final story comes a little bit out of nowhere and has a very nihilistic, apprehensive aura about it, which along with the somewhat sombre final words of the creative team on the letter page give me the impression there was more to this story.

Indeed, the fact that the death of a whole family of characters and their entire world is bookended with an advertisement to go read the Ultraverse titles may have left a bad taste in the mouths of the readership.

So as not to end this thread on a total downer, let's take a quick look at three non-Ultraverse 1993 titles before we close off.

Malibu managed to snag the comics rights to Star Trek Deep Space Nine (ONLY DS9) and that series ran a respectable 32 issues!

Malibu also published three issues of the utterly bizarre title Raver, created by Star Trek's own Walter Koenig (who also wrote it) with art by Dan and David Day.

Raver is a BIZARRE title about a regular joe who when confronted by mundane problems in the real world imagines himself as a fantastically powered superhero taking on surreal threats and journeying to weird worlds (all in his head).

Malibu also managed the extremely impressive feat of landing the comics license for the red-hot Street Fighter game series which was at that point one of the great phenomenons of gaming. But uh. Uhm. How do I put this.

Despite the fact that the comic did feature Zangief piledriving a bear which is a VERY important factor in any Street Fighter story, well...

Basically Capcom received their copies of the comic, looked at it and immediately with drew the license, as explained in the letter column of the third and final issue. And they're quite open about it too.

Alas, we shall never see their all-new character Nida in a Street Fighter game I fear.

But we learned something from this, didn't we? It's not like Malibu's going to go right ahead and get the license for another hit fighting game series, right? And if they do, they will do their absolute best to make sure it's the best possible comic, right?

Anyway, this concludes our nostalgic romp for today.
Next time: The one you've all been waiting for!

Was this too confusing? I hope not. Let me know either way, as well as any feedback or corrections.

Until then, thanks for reading!