I have been living in the late '80s recently (actually I have been commuting back and forth), and it occured to me that I have read almost the entire First Comics series Crossroads over the course of various discussions. I read issues #1-2 as part of my Sable discussion, #4 as part of Grimjack, and #5 as part of Dreadstar. It struck me that #3 is the only one I have left to read and that I might as well go for it. Then I got to thinking about one of my boxes labled "Miscellaneous New Universes" and that I might as well dip into that as well. My thesis will be that, in the '90s, one of the problems with the comic book field is that publishers were no longer content merely to publish good comic books, they wanted to launch entire universes. I think I have pin-pointed where this trend began, and I will identify it when I get to it. First, though, on to Crossroads.
Crossroads was a series of "done-in-one" stories in which characters from various First series met for the first time. ("Across infinite space and time, parallel lives meet at the Crossroads.") The beauty of this series is that each issue was entirely self-contained; one need not buy any issue of the connecting series nor even the entire crossover series itself in order to get a complete story. Each issue was done by a different writer/artist team, and Steve Rude provided the covers for all five. One character from each issue would carry over into the next, then "hand off" the series to the next character, and so on. For example, Jon Sable was the common character in issues #1 and #2. In issue #1 he met Whisper, and in #2 he met Badger. Of the three, Sable was the character most based in reality. Whisper wore a costume, but was still "realistic"; the Badger could be.
The Badger carried over from #2 to #3, where he met the comic relief character from American Flagg!, Luther Ironheart. In #4, Judah Macabbee met Grimjack (the "Luther" connection is there, but its tenuous), and in #5 Grimjack met both Dreadstar and Nexus. As I have written elsewhere, #4 and #5 blend seemlessly with Grimjack and Nexus and Dreadstar, but it is not necessary to have read the regular series to follow Crossroads or vice versa.
NEXT: Total Eclipse
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Welcome to the discussion, Kelvin. I'm glad you're here!
I remember John Byrne discussing "Legend" in the pages of "Next Men". He emphasized how it was an initiative meant to transcend any specific publishers.
GORILLA COMICS:
"Gorilla" was an imprint of Image Comics launched in 2000. I was still deep in the throes of NUF, but I nevertheless gave it more of a chance than I had Crossgen. I bought one issue each of the following...
Given that display of talent, it's plain to see how sick I was of new "universe" and new "lines." Years later, I saw a tpb of Section Zero solicited and, having completely forgotten I bought the first issue, preordered it and wondered why I had never heard of it. The only series I collected in its entirely (six issues) was...
Shock Rockets had a one-shot spin-off, Superstar, and I bought that, too.
Gorilla may perhaps be best understood as a good example of the transition of business models that was happening at the time.
In a way, it strikes me as a sort of reverse (early?) Valiant. Where Valiant had a fairly centralized vision and ended up sacrificing much of it due to financial concerns and decisions, leading to a lengthy period of creative turmoil and uncertainty, Gorilla turned out to be... rather inconsequential, in a very boring, non-dramatic way.
It also reminds me of John Byrne's vision for the Legend imprint; it, too, was meant to be a safeguard of sorts that put creators up and front, empowered to make their decisions without avoidable worry about publishing companies.
According to this CBR article and other evidence, Gorilla did not fail as much as it sort of fizzled away. The initial plans were essentially a publicity initiative that hoped to launch a website domain (eHero.com) and acquire some financing to launch a handful of titles, but there just wasn't a lot of advancement nor commitment on either front.
That seems to have resulted in little more besides the creative teams just turning elsewhere, in some cases launching crowdfunding campaigns of their own. The term "crowdfunding" turned up in 2006, IndieGoGo was launched in 2008, Kickstarter was launched in 2009. The initial Gorilla Comics announcement was in late 1999.
Had the creative teams met and discussed their plans just a few years later, odds are that they would just decide to go on with BackerKit or Kickstarters of their own and wish each other luck. Their mutual arrangement was just way too non-obstrusive to make much conflict of interests possible.
But what about eHero.com? I looked up as much as I could. The ICANN lookup tool tells me that the contact information is with a certain major domain company, which won't readily tell anything further. The domain is currently (and recently) reserved up until late 2025. It is operational, but does not have much in the way of real content.
My best guess is that either the domain farm itself or someone who uses its services is simply tabling that domain name in case someone turns up with interest and some money.
https://web.archive.org/web/20120603115341/http://www.comicbookreso...
Gorilla may perhaps be best understood as a good example of the transition of business models that was happening at the time. In a way, it strikes me as a sort of reverse (early?) Valiant.
That is an excellent segue into the next "new universe" on my list...
FUTURE COMICS:
I specifically remember that Future Comics was the first new universe I was drawn to after recovering from NUF, and I was drawn by their business plan. Future Comics has an interesting story behind it, HERE. It was founded by Bob Layton along with Dick Giordano and David Michelinie. Ultimately they published only 18 issues of three titles.
I was very enthusiastic about the prospect of this new company. The decade leading up to Future Comics pretty much sucked for comics (although there were, admittedly, some highlights), and I was feeling nostalgic for the '80s and the early days of Valiant. These series were pretty much everything I had hoped for, yet others on this board at the time didn't care for them. Their objection was that we had seen it all before, but that is exactly the aspect that appealed to me. I will admit, however, in comparison to Valiant, reading Bob Layton's Future Comcis or Jim Shooter's Defiant or Broadway Comics was like listening to a solo album by John Lennon or Paul McCartney rather than listening to a Beatles album. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.
VH2 & VH3:
I have spoken some about what happened after I succumbed to NUF, but not about what led to it. I had followed Valiant since the very begining, but dropped out toward the end. When my LCS at the time opened up its nigh-legendary "back room" for a quarter sale, I filled all my holes and now own virtually every Valiant comic every printed, although I have yet to read many of them. (I am still missing Magnus Robot Fighter #0, however, so if you can help me out with that let me know.) When Valiant reoganized as Acclaim, I was there. the variant covers of their first ten series fit together as a giant poster, which I thought was pretty neat. I didn't care as much for the rebooted series as I did for the new ones (Quantum & Woody, Trinity Angels, Tomorrow Man... but not Troublemakers so much, which was aimed at a younger audience). But my "completist mentality" was in play, so I continued to buy every issue until I had filled a short box, then the whole enterprise folded. when it re-emerged as VH3 a couple of years later, I didn't even give it a look. By that time, the "fool me once/fool me twice" mentality was in play.
Back in the '90s I remember someone wrote a letter to "Oh, So?" (the letters column of the Comics Buyers' Guide) speculating about what it must have been like for fans in 1961 to see the first issue of Fantastic Four on the stands. Don Thompson (who was there and remembered) relpied that there was nothing particularly special about it because no one knew at the time what Marvel Comics would become. But I think I am familiar with the kind of anticipation that that letter writer speculated about, because I once experienced it myself. On day in late 1974, I walked into Ahmann's Newsstand to find a spinner rack filled with the first issues of new titles I had never seen before. They were spread across multiple genres and I honestly thought I was getting in at the beginning of the next "Marvel Comics." I didn't generally buy [what I would later come to call] "genre comics" at the time (barbarian, war, western, etc.), but I bought every single issue of this new company's output that I could find... except Vicki. (I didn't buy "those" kind of comics... not that there's anything wrong with that.)
The company was Atlas/Seaboard and it untimately didn't quite live up to my expectations... at least not in terms of longevity... although I would still put any Atlas comic up against any concurrent title published by Marvel or DC (especially DC). For decades I maintained a sort of fantasy about resurrecting the Atlas/Seaboard line. Then one day in 2011, someone did.
ATLAS ORIGINAL:
The three solo titles lasted six issues each and the crossover two (although some of them had "zero" issues), but I didn't buy any more than those initial three. Some of them rolled addition characters (such as Lomax and Iron Jaw) into the mix, overall what a disappointment! And I still have a fantasy about bringing the real Atlas/Seaboard line back.
Somebody is reviving Atlas/Seaboard ... just not in comics.
Atlas Comics Owner Plans Films, Products Based on IP
In relaunching Atlas/Seaboard Comics, movie producer Steven Paul knows exactly what he wants for the brand.
And it isn’t comic books.
“There is not a lot of money in publishing,” Paul said at his office in Westwood. “It’s an entree in.”
Read more at the Los Angeles Business Journal
Huh.
Rather than saying what I really think, I'll say nothing at all.
Whatever rotten thing you're thinking, I'll probably agree with. I've been watching Blackadder, and I'm feeling all Rowan Atkinson at the moment.
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