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Leaving an Imprint: 10 Defunct MARVEL Publishing Lines
Earlier this week, we took a trip down memory lane to recall 10 imprints that didn't last at DC Comics, but the House that Superman Built is far from the only publisher to have a back room filled with sub-lines that didn't exactly set the world on fire.
Take Marvel Comics, for example, which has the following imprints that are currently as much of an ongoing proposition as Peter Parker himself.
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10. STAR COMICS
One of Marvel's attempts to diversify its output in the 1980s, the Star Comics line was aimed at younger readers and mixed books based on cartoons and toys with all-original properties like Planet Terry, Wally The Wizard and, of course, Peter Porker, The Spectacular Spider-Ham. Whether or not that makes up for licensed titles The Get-Along Gang and Care Bears, is another question.
Signature Book: Spider-Ham was the greatest of the original titles, but quasi-Garfield Heathcliff was the longest-lived book of the line, surprisingly.
Lasting Legacy: It's tempting to speculate that the only book not to fill the dollar bins are the two Star Wars titles, Droids and Ewoks, but we're still holding out for a Royal Roy revival.
9. RAZORLINE
The result of a pairing that saw horror novelist Clive Barker create an entire superhero line for the publisher, with the output being something that brought a little Vertigo flavor to Marvel, complete with magical heroes and art that bucked the trends of the time. Launched as the 1990s sales bubble was beginning to burst, the line lasted less than a year, with an entire second wave of titles written but never released.
Signature Book: Ectokid featured a future all-star creative team, with Steve Skroce illustrating scripts by James Robinson and then Larry Wachowski, who'd go on to co-create The Matrix.
Lasting Legacy: The line faded into obscurity, but Barker stole the name of one of the series, Saint Sinner, for a later project, saying that the series was "a waste of a good title."
8. MC2
The little imprint that could, MC2 started out as a one-off What If? that proved popular enough to carry not just one title (Spider-Girl), but a whole raft of books offering the look at a possible future Marvel Universe. Even when the line faded, Spider-Girl lived on in various incarnations for some time -- as well as in many fans' hearts to this day.
Signature Book: There's no competition: Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz' Spider-Girl, all the way.
Lasting Legacy: Spider-Girl's continued success was a testimony to fan activism, with the title simply refusing to die on more than one occasion thanks to the outpouring of support the book enjoyed. While the title may be off the shelves currently, the example it provided of a publisher listening to its fan base will live on for some time...
7. MARVEL MANGAVERSE
An ill-advised attempt at bandwagon jumping, the Mangaverse was Marvel's attempt to lure manga fans to its characters by... drawing them differently...?
That's unfair; the line offered alternate versions of signature characters like Spider-Man, the Punisher and the X-Men, recreated with backstories that, it was hoped, would resonate with manga readers. Any lessons about the importance of format and price point to the appeal of manga were ignored, however, and the line faded away after two years, only to enjoy a short-lived revival three years later.
Signature Book: I'm going to go with Marvel Mangaverse: The Punisher, which turned the gun-toting Frank Castle into a BDSM-themed heroine named Hashi Brown (yes, really) who spanked and tickled her way through crime. Fan service, anyone?
Lasting Legacy: The Spider-Man: Legends of The Spider-Clan mini-series brought both Kaare Andrews and Skottie Young to a wider audience.
6. TSUNAMI
Another attempt from Marvel to draw in manga readers, the Tsunami line was a mixed bag from the get-go, with books ranging from the mostly all-ages Runaways and Sentinel to the darker Venom and Mystique. That confusion seemed to doom the line, which ended within 18 months, although a couple of titles survived its shuttering.
Signature Book: Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona's Runaways, which gave the line (and the publisher) a book with the kind of critical appeal that many wouldn't have expected.
Lasting Legacy: Runaways could be argued to be the last great original Marvel concept and characters, despite their current absence from the Marvel Universe outside of a couple characters in current series Avengers Arena.
5. ULTRAVERSE
Less a Marvel imprint as an entirely separate publisher that ended up swallowed whole by Marvel thanks to a buy-out, the Ultraverse started life as the premiere line of indie Malibu Comics with such characters as Prime, Hardcase and Rune quickly becoming fan-favorites.
That success -- and Malibu's state-of-the-art computer coloring set-up -- drew Marvel's attention and, one corporate takeover later, the Ultraverse characters were mixing things up with the X-Men, Avengers and the Marvel Universe as a whole -- well, at least until sales fell and the line was forever filed away, with mysterious legal reasons apparently meaning it shall never be seen again.
Signature Book: Gerard Jones and Norm Breyfogle's Prime was a really enjoyable update on the Captain Marvel/Shazam! idea, and the lack of any collected editions is one of the great losses of the 1990s comics world.
Lasting Legacy: Outside of digital comics coloring, there is none: Marvel's desire to keep the Ultraverse locked away has effectively removed any legacy the line had outside of in fans' memories.
4. 2099
What would the Marvel Universe look like 107 years in the future? An odd number, sure, but that was apparently the thinking behind the 1992 line that took a peek into Marvel's world of tomorrow, mixing sci-fi with the traditional super heroics. Born out of a failed concept by Stan Lee and John Byrne (one actually titled The Marvel World of Tomorrow), the line lasted six years, and has since undergone a couple of revivals and reappearances in other titles.
Signature Book: Undoubtedly Peter David and Rick Leonardi's Spider-Man 2099, the launch book of the line and the one that outlasted almost everything else published as part of the imprint.
Lasting Legacy: Spider-Man 2099 has shown up in various comics since the line's cancellation, including a stint as one of the Exiles, and at one point was Dan Slott's red herring to replace Peter Parker as the Superior Spider-Man -- with the writer later hinting that Miguel O'Hara will indeed have an unspecified role in the series.
3. EPIC COMICS
One of the most important and well-remembered Marvel imprints, Epic was Vertigo years before Karen Berger got the go-ahead from the powers that be at DC; offering creator-owned and mature reader titles shepherded by one of comics' most well-respected editors, Archie Goodwin.
Epic lasted from 1982 through 1994, before being revived for about two seconds in 2003 as an imprint to bring new talent to the publisher that never quite gelled.
Signature Book: There are so many to choose from, from Jim Starlin's Dreadstar (the first Epic series) through Marshall Law, Elektra Assassin or the first American editions of Akira or The Airtight Garage. One of the strengths of Epic was that it didn't have one core title.
Lasting Legacy: Epic provided a model for countless other publishers of how to do this kind of thing right. There might have been a Vertigo without Epic, but it might not have been the same without this model to look to.
2. MARVEL KNIGHTS
An oddity on this list, Marvel Knights was an imprint that outlived its usefulness when essentially the entire Marvel line became a Marvel Knights book. Started as a boutique line headed up by Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti to attract top creators to lesser-known properties by offering reduced continuity and increased production quality, the success of the line led to Quesada being offered the editor-in-chief position of the entire publisher... A move that revitalized Marvel as a whole, but left the Knights line without much of an identity.
The line still exists in theory, but nothing has been done with it since 2010's Spider-Man: Fever.
Signature Book: Daredevil, which brought Brian Michael Bendis to Marvel and arguably built his reputation into what it is today.
Lasting Legacy: Have you seen Marvel Comics in the last few years?!?
1. NEW UNIVERSE
Marvel's much-heralded 25th birthday present to itself, the New Universe was intended to be an all-new line -- and an all-new fictional universe -- updating Stan Lee's original concept of fantastic adventures set in "the world outside your window" for the then-modern day, headed up by editor-in-chief Jim Shooter's Star Brand, showcasing what he believed was a more complex style of superhero storytelling.
Unfortunately hampered by low budget, low concept and low sales, the line staggered to a close within just three years.
Signature Book: Star Brand, Shooter's reinvention of the Green Lantern concept, was intended to be the line's lead book, but sadly The Pitt -- an upscale, if somewhat desperate, one-shot intended to bring attention to the line by nuking Pittsburgh -- is probably a more honest way of remembering the line as a whole.
Lasting Legacy: Mark Gruenwald brought the New Universe into Marvel continuity in 1994's Starblast event, and Jonathan Hickman's Avengers run is rumored to be continuing in that vein before too long. An attempt to relaunch the concept as new universal under the pen of Warren Ellis was abandoned after low sales and a computer crash that destroyed months of work on the series.
2099, Ultraverse, and MC2 should all come back.
Even the Mangaverse would be nice to see again.
