The Corner Box S1Ep31 - A New Universe is Born: DOA?

[00:00] Intro: Welcome to The Corner Box, where we talk about comics as an industry and an art form. You never know where the discussion will go or who will show up to join host David Hedgecock and John Barber. Between them, they've spent decades writing, drawing, lettering, coloring, editing, editor-in-chiefing, and publishing comics. If you want to know the behind-the-scenes secrets, the highs and lows, the ins and outs of the best artistic medium in the world, then listen in and join us on The Corner Box.

[00:30] John Barber: Hello, and welcome back to The Corner Box. I'm John Barber, one of your hosts, and with me, as always

[00:36] David Hedgecock: David Hedgecock.

[00:37] John: Good to be back with you, David.

[00:39] David: Good to be here, John.

[00:40] John: Feels like it's been a whole week, and we're joined once again by our, I don't know, favorite guest? Favorite person to have on? Dave Baker. Eisner Award nominated, magnum opus creating, Dave Baker.

[00:55] Dave Baker: Thank you both for having me.

[00:59] David: Yeah, I think before we start, we should say congrats on the launch of the new book, Dave.

[01:03] Dave: Thank you.

[01:04] David: We talked about it already on the podcast, but it's been nice, I'm sure, for you, and it's been nice to see all the great reviews you've been getting. So, congrats.

[01:11] Dave: Thank you. I'm going to have to spend the next 10 years in therapy attempting to internalize this and shed the skin of self-doubt and the permanent vista of existential failure that has shrouded my vision ever since I was a child.

[01:29] David: Hurray for comics.

[01:30] Dave: Look, man, I'm just saying. I'm very excited. That was mostly a bit, but also, as we were talking about briefly before we started recording, what do you do when someone says you've created a masterpiece? I don't know. I don't fucking know.

[01:43] John: I've never had a problem.

[01:45] Dave: What does that mean? In comics, it doesn't mean anything. “It's a masterpiece.” Oh, thanks. My life is exactly the same, and I don't mean to be ungrateful. Genuinely, I read that review on comicbook.com a couple days ago, and I just sat there stunned for 20 minutes. I don't know what you do.

[02:08] John: On a smaller scale, it is one of those things of, “I feel really good that a comic came out. People liked it. Feeling good. I still have to go take out the garbage. I still have to go do the regular stuff.” It is weird the way that can hit you at different times in the day. This is two days after that book comes out and you're on our podcast. How have you sunk so far so fast?

[02:32] David: That's got to be the fastest rise and fall of a creative talent.

[02:36] Dave: The largest sophomore slump that's ever been recorded. Frank Miller got cornered by DC. They said you can do whatever you want. They gave him Ronan. It didn't do so hot, and they were like, “I guess we'll just do Dark Knight Returns.” That book comes out, hailed as a masterpiece, and then I'm here with you to yahoos talking about the New Universe.

[02:54] David: Yeah. So, you're saying your career trajectory is already better than Frank Miller's?

[03:04] Dave: Shots fired.

[03:06] David: Dave let the cat out of the bag, John.

[03:09] John: What’s that? We’re fired?

[03:13] David: What we're talking about today. I'm super excited to talk about this stuff. I made the joke the other day on the podcast that I want to do an in-depth discussion on Marvel's New Universe, and that joke turned into a reality, thanks to my pestering and prodding. So, here we are. We're going to talk about the New Universe. I don't know if we should focus on anything specifically, but I've got a bunch of fun little tidbits for us, and John, I know that you had a front row seat to the 20-year anniversary of the New Universe, the New Universal stuff. I'm anxious to hear a little bit about that.

[03:52] John: Yeah. There's some funny stuff there. I'm all in favor. I mean, I was there for the debut of the original, too. I was one of those people. I mean, I saw those ads, the lightning bolt ads coming. I mean, as a fan.

[04:04] David: You were working at seven years old?

[04:07] John: Remember? Yeah, Blake Kobashigawa at IDW, at one point, saw my name in a Demon Bear trade paperback. He's like, “you edited Demon Bear?” I'm like, “Dude, I was in fourth grade, how old do you think I am? I edited an edition of X Force that had a Demon Bear cover. No offense to people that did work on that. I don't mean to say you're old, but this is somebody I knew and was working with every day, and anyway, go ahead.

[04:33] David: I don't know where to start, but I think I'm going to try to start at the beginning here, John. I think, universally, it's acknowledged that the New Universe stuff was largely a failure, but if you look back on it, there's some decent stuff that came out of that. So, the New Universe started, it was supposed to be the 25th anniversary event for Marvel. So, Marvel was about to have its 25-year anniversary, and Jim Shooter goes to the powers-that-be above him, and they start to talk about “what are we going to do for this big 25th anniversary?” And I think the impression that it gives that Jim Shooter’s first idea was, “let's restart the Marvel Universe,” which they're going to restart everything with a new number one and basically reset the whole universe, which at that time, this is around 84/85/86. Marvel's doing quite well. Top of their game, and that probably wasn't going to be a good idea. So, that was canned.

[05:31] John: I think I find that one fascinating in a number of ways, because I was trying to remember all the hearsay that I've heard about this, the stuff that isn't out there. The two things I remember being big things, around that time, I think there was an interest at Marvel, I don't know if it was Shooter or if it was other people, in having comics progressing in real-time, the way they did in the early days of the Marvel Universe, or the way Savage Dragon does now. In the Marvel Universe, when you go through the first six years, about six years passed, they'll refer back to events from a few years ago. Reed and Sue get married, they have a kid, and when they have the kid, time stops. They're not going to age that kid in real time, and that's where you're going to lose all this stuff, and some of that's really weird when you go back and read it now. When Captain America was unfrozen, it wasn't that all of his friends from World War Two are dead. It was that all of his friends were in their 40s. It just wasn't that long ago. Nick Fury served with Reed Richards in World War Two. All this stuff that eventually they have to throw out, that manifested itself in The ‘Nam and Strikeforce: Moritori, around the same time as the New Universe.

So, I seem to remember there being that idea of that being a piece of what they wanted to do with the Marvel Universe, was start setting it in real-time again, and again, I don't know, this is hearsay, and I don't remember who told me this or where I heard it, so this might not be accurate, but I think there were two versions of it, of doing an ultimate version of the Marvel Universe, where every Peter Parker gets bit by the spider in 1986, and he hadn't been before, and then also doing one that was eventually what DeFalco would do, what was it called? Marvel 2 or something, where it was Mayday Parker. You just age the characters really fast and have Peter being an old man, and it would be like Batman Beyond, where somebody else comes in and becomes the new Spider Man and the new Iron Man, but like you said, this is Marvel after, I mean, I think maybe their biggest financial success with Secret Wars. Certainly, Shooter’s biggest success, which I think factors into this a whole lot. This is Shooter coming off of the biggest thing he did, the culmination of all of that. I don't know. This is something I think that you see in comics a lot, where somebody has a number of successes, and then their next plan is going to definitely be just as brilliant as those other successes, and it isn't.

[07:48] David: Yeah, that's how I thought it was, too, but reading at least some of the stuff that I was reading was directly from Jim Shooter’s recollections of things. So, take it with a grain of salt, but you read about how this thing got started, and it's fascinating in that, yes, Marvel's enjoying great success. Jim Shooter, as editor-in-chief, seems to be enjoying great success, but reading between the lines, man, I think there's some stuff, business-wise, going on, because Marvel is privately-owned at this point, and the owner is looking to sell. So, initially, the New Universe gets approved. The budget from the New Universe gets approved, and I believe, this is just the development budget, and maybe, budget to get things rolling. It's $120,000, which, in ‘86 or whatever, was probably a decent chunk of change.

[08:44] John: For a development budget for a comic book series? Yeah, it's about $120,000 more than I've ever had.

[08:52] David: Well, it was 8 comic books, but still, yes, I think it was.

[08:57] John: 0 divided by 8 is still 0.

[09:02] David: I hate comics so much. So, anyway, Shooter gets the budget approved, $120,000, by the owner. It's pretty clear that it's the owner that's proving this, so there are strings attached to everything, is my impression, and Jim gives the project over to Tom DeFalco, who asks for it, and I guess, DeFalco, at this point, is Shooter’s right-hand man, and then DeFalco strangely sits on it for a year, and nothing really happens and nothing really gets developed. So, this $120,000 budget has not even been touched, and it's been 12 months, and here's my wild conspiracy theory, reading between the lines, and this is completely me just reading the stuff that I’ve read in the last week. I really wonder if DeFalco was purposely sabotaging this stuff, because it was going to put him somehow higher up on the ladder. “If Jim fails, I'm the next guy up.” I don't think that's right, but man, it's hard not to think that.

[10:08] John: Yeah, I would be done if DeFalco were that Machiavellian about something. I mean, based on my interactions. I mean, I don't know.

[10:19] David: He's not that political? Okay.

[10:22] John: I also think this was a thing where maybe this idea was so great to the person who came up with it that no physical manifestation of this brilliant idea matched the brilliance of the idea itself. Thus, nothing was workable. You know what I mean?

[10:37] David: Yeah, that was the other version that I was thinking, but if you've got $120,000 budget, and that budget has been untouched, how much work has actually been done? So, I don't know. It's hard to know for sure, but it's interesting either way, that this thing was basically, nothing was happening with this thing for a while.

[10:55] John: What is really for sure is that nothing was getting done. Not that nothing was happening, but nothing was getting done. That part is totally clear. I don't know that nothing was actually happening, and I'd heard stories of them, they're doing these ideas of crazy over the top, “what if we got Isaac Asimov to write it?” That kind of thing, and it just being not workable from certain from people's point of view. I mean, I'm sure the truth is somewhere in between. I don't mean to come off as super anti-Jim Shooter on this, because I do think that the stuff, to that point, was I don't think you would have had a Marvel Cinematic Universe if you hadn't had Jim Shooter coming in and resetting Marvel editorial to be a DC-style editorial structure. There's no way to get from where the company was in the 70s to what it became without that happening, but my understanding was, at some point, editors were sending in joke suggestions, like dead people to write them, and those are getting approved. “I'd be great to get Edgar Rice Burroughs to write one of these.” That sort of thing. I don't think that was one of the names.

[12:02] Dave: The dude who wrote Conan. What the hell's his name? Robert E. Howard. Somebody jokingly pitched Robert E. Howard.

[12:10] John: There you go. That jives with the story I was told. I don't want to say who told me that story. That one I do remember.

[12:19] David: All right. Well, over the course of this thing, for whatever reasons, things aren't happening. The budget, then over the course of the year, gets cut, and then gets cut again, and then gets cut again. So, by the time they're actually trying to finally either allowed or actually are doing full development on this thing, there's no budget left, not because they've spent it, but because it's been basically hacked out, according to what I've read.

[12:44] John: If I'm reading this document that you sent us, it got hacked down to $40,000, which again.

[12:49] David: It's 80, and then 40, and then next day, it gets down to 20, and then it's gone.

[12:57] John: Okay, I'm sorry. It's cutting off the end of that. 

[13:01] David: By the time it was all said and done, they had spent about $20,000 on development, and then the note was, “okay, don't spend any more money,” and they hadn't produced a single book yet. So, what ends up happening is a bunch of editors and assistant editors basically have to all get into a room and get this thing going, just based on whatever they're pulling out of their butts. I find that fascinating, because this thing starts off with this huge event, with a big budget, and by the time it's launching, it's still being treated like it's a big thing. John, you remember the lightning bolt ad, and so do I. That thing loomed large all over the place in Marvel, and the New Universe was a major event, or was supposed to be a major event. It felt like one and it just didn't have any juice behind it. There was no big talent behind that thing at all. It's hard to do a good business when you're just dealing with assistant editors writing and layman artists, and rightfully so, because if there's no big page rate behind this launch, why would anybody leave X Men or Amazing Spider Man to work on it? Because of the royalties on those books, you're not going to leave that money. I wouldn't. You’ve got to pay me a lot more than my page rate in order to help you get this thing rolling.

[14:32] Dave: Was there ever a middle stage? Because I've heard the story that John was telling before, too, of the pie in the sky dream scenario, and then what it ended up becoming, but do you know if they ever had reached out to named people that were in comics? Not Isaac Asimov. Was there a plan? What was the “big budget” version with comic book people? That's what I've always been curious about.

[14:57] David: I don't know. I didn't see anything that actually got to that point. Wait, by the time they've got the stuff figured out, it's the editors in the room that are doing all the major lifting, doing all the character creation, that are building out. I think Shooter, in particular, is probably leading a lot of it. He wrote the first seven issues of Star Brand, which was the flagship title of the New Universe, and probably one of the better received books as well. I think he's the one that conceived of the White Event. I think a lot of this was Shooter-driven, in terms of just “we're going to have it science-based. Everything's going to be happening in real time,” which John, I think, jives with what you were saying, John, because that was definitely a big thing, and it's funny, because I don't remember that about the New Universe at all, that it was supposed to be happening in real time.

[15:42] John: That vaguely tracks. It didn't last long enough for that to be a real factor. You know what I mean? It was a year later, what, everybody's age is a year? They don’t even have the same artists. You're not going to be able to tell that. The thing is, for me, with this, I have been involved in so many projects where somebody has had this idea that we can throw a bunch of money at it and get the greatest of everything to come in and do this, and the premise is maybe a tie-in to a product, or a tie-in to a media event, or something. I don't want to get real specific. There's some things that I've done like that, that have been very good, but sometimes people have this pie in the sky version of what something is, and there is no plan B. I was on a call with a candy company. They were looking for someone to draw their candy, and they're like, “you know who’s a good artist? Brian Hitch,” and I said, “Well, okay, but why would he?” You can't go in and say that, but like you said, he's got the royalties on the thing he's working on, but he's also got the thing he's working on. It's a thing he's working on, you know what I mean? It isn’t like it’s an interchangeable thing with a product.

I think, anybody that would look at that and see this tornado of ego that is at the center of this thing would not want to be there. When you go back, and even Secret Wars, which I love. I love Secret Wars. I mean, that was the comic that got me reading Marvel Comics, The Secret Wars #3. You go back, and you see how that stuff developed, and it's a bunch of, “Mike Zeck go back and redraw, this as a mid-shot, so you can see the character’s full body in the shot.” There's a lot of that going on at this point, and I don't know, it just seems like every warning bell you could possibly have, if you were a higher to mid-tier creator looking at this thing, would be going off and you would not be doing that. The other thing that I've always wondered, though, is who are the top-tier creators that they would have put on there? No offense to Marvel in ‘86, but Frank Miller was gone, Simonson was still on Thor, I think, but I don't know if he's drawing it. He was back shortly. He was doing X Factor shortly after that. It’s not like he was gone. Barry Windsor Smith wasn't there anymore.

[18:04] David: Byrne would have been.

[18:06] John: On Fantastic Four.

[18:08] David: I mean, they pull Byrne in.

[18:11] John: He didn’t get along with Jim Shooter and they pulled him in. We'll get to that later, I guess. 

[18:17] Dave: This is me choking back.

[18:24] John: But it was the system editors writing everything?

[18:29] Dave: Steve Gerber's Star Brand. Because he's a bigger 70s guy. He was around in the 80s, but he never reached that A level. I love him, but I don't know that many people had the Howard the Duck fever the way I do.

[18:47] David: I mean, I guess, you look at whatever the top-tier books are in that moment, and those would be the guys that you would be attaching to this, somehow. It's going to be probably John Romita, Jr, and then Sienkiewicz and Simonson and Claremont, and you're laughing because here's no way they would do that, but if you throw enough money at them and said, “Hey, this is the thing. Let's get excited,” then potentially, yes, they would do that, but maybe you're right, John. Maybe it was not so much about the finance piece as much as it is about the, “I don't want to have to deal with that.” I think you're right. At this point in the process, Jim’s halfway out the door, and he doesn't have any friends.

[19:35] John: I mean, I would imagine, if he would have come to some of those people with, “Hey, let's create a universe together,” but I don't think that was the tone this was coming. It was like, “here's the universe coming at you. Do you want to do it?” Maybe I'm wrong. I wasn't there, again. I continued to have been 8 or whatever when this came out.

[19:57] David: So, the atmosphere is that, I think. According to some, it's a little underfunded. It definitely doesn't have the heavy-hitting creative talent, and so it probably is launching at a deficit, right out of the gate. So, it's hard to get things rolling, and then I think some of the other things that do hold it back is that it was promoted as “the world outside your window.” So, that's a pretty heavy lift for the average comic book fan. I'm not reading comic books, Marvel and DC comic books, specifically, I'm not reading those comic books because I'm looking for the world outside my window. I'm reading because I want the Incredible Hulk to smash the hell out of the Abomination, and I want to see that fight. I want to see guys flying. I don't want to see anybody walking. I don’t want to see them running. I want to see them flying, and I want to see them doing superhero stuff, and I want to see good guys, and I want to see bad guys, and I want to see cool costume designs, and none of that is happening in the New Universe.

Absolutely none of it is happening in the New Universe, which is, as a general concept could be cool and interesting. That could be a cool, interesting, but that's a very heavy lift. That's a very big gap between what the existing Marvel reader’s used to and what you're asking them to give a shot at, and so I think the idea, the concept is not outrageous. A science-based universe, where one singular event transforms every 2 out of 1 million people, they all genetically transformed to have powers of some sort. That's cool. Anybody can have powers. Any man on the street. Me. No matter what age or what sex, gender, race, nationality, doesn’t matter. If I'm one of those two in a million, I could have superpowers. That's cool. I can relate to that. I can understand that, and that puts me into this world, makes it feel possible, and that's the only thing, at least in the initial concept, that was the only suspension of belief that people were asked, that the creators were asking you to do is, “just believe that this White Event happened, and that genetically transformed every 2 out of a million people, and then everything else is the world outside your window.” Oh, that's cool.

That sounds neat, and then, and then also, “hey, all these stories are developing in real time. If a month goes by in your world, it's a month in the other world.” So, yeah, that can be fun. There's a lot of really cool, interesting concepts, but when they're all mashed together, and then you have this, mandate or not, “hey, it's still the world outside your window the whole time.” No, I’ve got enough for the world outside my window, just looking outside my window. I want to see, if that's where we started, great, but let's use that as the launchpad to get off the rails, man. Let's get crazy, and it just never does, until it's too late. We finally do get to the Pit, where things do get crazy, but by then I think it's too late, and also, what a weird way to get crazy.

[23:14] Dave: Yeah, just listening to you describing, if this is how it was sold, if this is how it was positioned, it sounds not like a Marvel Comics initiative. It sounds like an IP farm for a company now. It 100% is a “well, we've got Steve Aoki and Michael Bay, and they're bringing us the New Universe. Check it out. We've got video games and a soda endorsement, and we've got one third-tier Marvel artist doing covers, and we don't have diamond distribution yet, but we’ve got a bleeding cool announcement, and it's going to be great.”

[23:55] John: The reality of it, though, is did you ever go to Disney's California Adventure theme park during the first year or two that it came out? Where you go there and you're like, “Oh, I could go to this theme park or I could turn around and right behind me is the best theme park, and I could go to that instead.” That's the decision. “I could read DP 7 or X Men.”

[24:22] David: Hey, man, DP 7 was my favorite.

[24:27] Dave: The DP 7 jokes.

[24:32] David: Displaced Paranormal. That's what DP stands for.

[24:35] Dave: The thing that's so interesting too, is, okay, we know the Marvel universe grew organically out of arguably two of the most important figures in comics, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's creative collaboration. We're going to replicate that by not embracing any of that shared creative DNA at all and have a purely editorial cynical top-down, one guy's like, ‘these are the marching orders.’ It's so interesting to me that that manifested in that way.

[25:09] John: How many times did you see that happen later. Once Image happened, you saw that happening hundreds of times. When the MCU happened, you saw that happening 1000s of times, and it's never worked. The times you can maybe say that it worked was Valium.

[25:23] David: I was going to say, well, the time that it worked, Jim actually is the guy that made it work, and it worked to a degree with Defiant and Broadway as well, but Valiant was a legitimate success. Jim took the mistakes, I think he learned from what he did with New Universe, and applied the lessons that he learned to Valiant and really made Valiant sing. Did you know that Jim Shooter put together a purchasing group to buy Marvel? I didn’t know that. So, when Marvel was up on the auction block, Jim Shooter had grabbed a bunch of people to buy it.

[26:04] Dave: It's him, he went to Frank Miller and Chris Claremont and John Byrne, and then some extra comics investors. Is this that version or is that a different version? Because I've also heard that, or maybe he wasn't involved in it, but I've heard at one point, Claremont, Byrne, and Miller were all in a discussion to go buy Marvel, and one of them, I can't remember which one it was, ended up pulling out, and it's something crazy now. They only needed 2 million more dollars and because Byrne or Claremont, or whoever it was, didn't want to kick in that extra $2 million, the deal fell through. Again, who knows if I'm remembering this all accurately, but my memory is that it was those three guys and maybe some other investors, but one of them pulled out, and I want to say it was John Byrne.

[26:53] David: All I know is that I want to live in the world where Frank Miller owns Marvel Comics. Oh, my god. I think this one, Shooter’s buying group was basically the guys that bought Valiant, as far as I could suss out. They came close. It seems like they were the second highest bid, basically. So, when they originally launched, I've got this somewhere in my notes.

[27:21] John: Star Brand was a guy who had a symbol in his hand, wore what looks like a straight jacket, but it was brown and could do stuff.

[27:33] David: Well, one of the funny things about the launch is that it was supposed to be the world outside your window, and everybody with powers was supposed to have been a regular Joe, and then, the White Event happens and they get powers, but as it turns out, three of the titles, one guy was a space alien, there was a super high tech suit of armor Iron Man. So out of the gate, the concept gets corrupted and they go back and try to fix it later. Out of the gate, DP 7, Displaced Paranormal 7, was by written by Mark Gruenwald, and art by Paul Ryan.

[28:17] John: Gruenwald, he wasn't nobody. He was writing Captain America.

[28:22] David: At that point, I think so. I think Mark is fully an editor, and I think Displaced Paranormal 7 was probably one of the more well received titles, and certainly was my favorite. It focused on a group of seven paranormals on the run from a sinister medical facility that was created to deal with the booming paranormal population. The next one was Justice, created by Archie Goodwin. That one ran for 32 issues. The titular hero is an alien knight, exiled to earth by his enemies. With no way to return to his home dimension, he metes out justice to evildoers everywhere. So, DP 7, just interestingly, Mark Gruenwald does a run later on Quasar, and Paul Ryan is actually drawing Quasar, and they bring a bunch of Displaced Paranormal 7 guys back, along with some other New Universe concepts. So, we do actually eventually get the Displaced Paranormals in the regular Marvel U, along with some others, and Peter David brings back Justice in Spider Man 2099, of all places.

[29:23] John: Peter David, I think at the time, was working in Marvel sales department, started writing Justice, at one point. He wasn't the original writer. I remember that getting good right around then, too. I remember reading some of those issues and enjoying them a couple years into the run or a year into the run, or something.

[29:38] David: I mean, it was one of the one of the few titles that lasted more than 12 issues, so I think it was one of the more well received. I read something interestingly that said that all the titles were actually profitable right up to the end. So, they did kill it before it was actually losing money, which I guess, that's how most things are. They kill it before it's completely done, but I got the impression, in one of the articles that I was reading, that some of the titles probably could have kept going, but it was, “well, why are we going to put more energy and resources into this thing? The New Universe itself is not going to stick around.” So, I think the cynical version would have been for them to take the bestselling titles and drop them into the regular Marvel U, somehow, and then keep them going there, but they didn't choose to do that, which, I don't know. I guess there's some honor in that. The next one was one of my favorites, Kickers, Inc. Tom DeFalco, and Ron Frenz. We talked about this early on in one of the podcasts, that this was actually proposed as a Marvel Universe title. Oh, no, that's not what it was. This was the replacement. Did I get this right, John? Kickers Incorporate. So, originally, Tom DeFalco wanted to put Speedball in the New Universe, but it was decided that the concept was too Marvel Universe centric. It felt too much like a Marvel book. So, Speedball got yanked, and Kickers, Inc is the thing that replaced it. So, Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz replaced it and basically Kickers, Inc, a group of Heroes for Hire, all former pro football players, led by Jack Magniconte, which is the best quarterback football name, but who gains superhuman strength, speed, and invulnerability after the White Event, at the cost of his brother's life.

[31:25] John: DeFalco and Frenz, that's your Amazing Spider Man black costume team. This wasn't nobody at Marvel. This was doing Marvel Comics.

[31:34] Dave: So, why is the Kicker of all positions in football, the one that is the titular role? Linebackers Incorporated? Quarterbacks Incorporated?

[31:47] David: Well, Jack Magniconte is a quarterback. He's not a kicker. So, I don't know why it's called Kickers, Inc.

[31:53] Dave: Kickers, Inc. It's a soccer team. That's Kickers, Inc.

[31:58] David: I mean, it's comic book nerds. They don't know anything about football, do they?

[32:04] John: Really, it’s genuinely possible that that's the level that this was operating in.

[32:09] Dave: Which honestly, now that we're talking about it, that sounds really cool to me. In modern day time Marvel, if we were doing a sports comic, like a Shaolin Soccer style sports comic, set in the Marvel Universe, I would love that. Kickers, Inc. I cannot say that I do love.

[32:30] David: I would like to see a Marvel style Shaolin Soccer book. That'd be pretty awesome. Okay, anyway. Mark Hazzard: Merc, created by Archie Goodwin. That one went 12 issues plus an annual. Mark Hazzard as a Vietnam veteran turned Soldier of Fortune, whose mercenary lifestyles cost him the love of his family.

[32:49] John: John Barber, personal reminiscence part here. This is also the golden age of parody comics because this coincided with Ninja Turtles coming out in the black and white boom. So, there were parody comics of everything, and I remember, and I've not read this since, I don't know, 1987, a comic called, super clever title, Failed Universe. The lightning bolt hitting somebody in the butt or something on the cover, but I still remember, and still think it's funny, their Mark Hazzard parody was Mark Lizard: Jerk.

[33:27] Dave: Do you remember, there was a series of porn parody comics. Do you remember? There was Wolvabroad. Do you remember those? There was a black and white porn parody one. I have a bunch of them. They’re so good.

[33:43] David: Revealing a little more than you probably should be right no2.

[33:47] Dave: I have no shame.

[33:51] David: John, Failed Universe was published by Blackthorne.

[33:56] John: First employer of my current employer, John Nee.

[33:59] David: Really? Oh, wow. I did not know that. That's funny. All right, the next non-porn parody is Nightmask, created by Archie Goodwin. That one went 12 issues, orphaned Keith Remsen is a counselor, aided by a sister, Teddy, who uses his newfound ability to enter people's dreams to help them recover from trauma and mental illness. The concept behind Nightmask is really cool, and in fact, he's one of the few characters in the New Universe that actually has a costume, and he's the most pathetic, weak-kneed character that has ever been created. Such a waste of a good costume. That character is so annoying. By the time you get to the draft in the war, this character is just the most annoying. I just can't stand him. Anyway, moving on. Psi-Force, also created by Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson. This one with 32 issues plus an annual. Psi-Force is a group of paranormals on the run from a government that seeks to control them, and I think there's three of them and they can meld their abilities into a powerful psionic being called The Psi-Hawk, which is bad ass. Psi-Hawk is a great name. I also love that concept. They're combining together mentally to create one. It's like Voltron, but with psionics.

[35:27] John: It's like Captain Planet.

[35:29] Dave: It’s almost a swingers allegory or something. No, it's not?

[35:36] John: It's money, baby. Oh, different swingers? Goodwin and Simonson didn't actually do the comic, though, did they?

[35:49] David: I actually don't know. Let's see if I've got it. I didn't write it down.

[35:52] John: I will throw it there once more in the history of comics, Archie Goodwin and Walter Simonson working together on a character is as good as you can get. Manhunter is flat out Top 10 comic of all time for me. Their Alien adaptation is brilliant.  Archie Goodwin's a tremendous writer. Great editor. Walter Simonson remains one of the best pencilers around.

[36:18] David: It's one of the books that lasted much longer. This is one of the ones that lasted right up to the end, when they they cancelled it. So, I think that does speak a little bit to the pedigree, but I don't think they were working on the book. If Simonson was doing Psi-Force, I feel like I would remember that.

[36:33] John: Yeah, exactly, but it does point to, what was the made-up thing that Shooter didn't get? Who did he not get when was getting Archie Goodwin and Walter Simonson?

[36:43] Dave: Can we talk briefly about the thing that Archie Goodwin doesn't get any credit for, and doesn't get enough credit for? The fact that he basically created Vampirella. Yes, I know that Vampirella existed previous to him, but she was a joke character, and him and Tom Sutton took the character and made her actually a cool horror paranormal investigator alien girl. I genuinely love those Warren Vampirella comics that he and Tom Sutton did, and then later, Gonzalez and all those guys. That era of spooky, weird, they're superhero comics, because that's what Archie Goodwin is interested in, but also there's just people living on a planet where blood runs through the streets, and it's super strange and Silver Age.

[37:28] David: This is where John chimes in saying he was just reading a Vampirella. I knew it. I frickin’ knew it. Look at this. For people on the podcast, he's literally pulling up the stuff that's off the top of his reading stack, and it's Vampirella. I'm not even kidding, people. This is John’s superpower. John is always doing the thing that we think about.

[37:52] John: Dynamite put out a reprint of the first Vampirella magazine. I read that but weirdly, I've been reading some of the old, around maybe Halloween of last year, I started reading some of the Warren stuff, which I'd never really read before, and totally, I don't know the history of Vampirella, but seeing Archie Goodwin writing all of the stories for all the people in those magazines, I mean, I don't know. The hits just keep coming. He's such a good writer for people like that. I think we were talking about that when Scott was on.

[38:20] Dave: Yeah, I mean, the rough history of the character is she was just supposed to be a host, and then ultimately, Forry Ackerman, in the last second, they pulled him over to create a “comic book character,” and have a story about the host. It's terrible. Hugely pivotal person in the history of pop culture of America, but his comic book writing skills are terrible. She's an alien on a world called Draculon. Human astronauts land there, and then she eats them while making puns about Earth stuff, but she doesn't know anything about Earth, and there's no explanation for how she knows what a smorgasbord is.

[39:00] David: You're saying this as if it's a bad thing. This is the bad writing? Come on, man. This is amazing.

[39:05] Dave: It's basically that for two issues, and then they pivot it and James Warren yanked it and gave it to Archie Goodwin, and he's the one who reshaped the magazine, figured out what it was, because originally it was just the host and that painting that Frank Frazetta did of her in the red bikini thing, and that was the idea. “We'll just have her be a blonde creepy girl host. Actually, we’ll make her a brunette. Okay, brunette. Now, let's do black hair and a red bikini thing. Get on it, Frank.” All right. We'll make that a fucking comic.

[39:41] David: I need to do a deep dive on Archie Goodwin. I have not done that yet. There's a gap in my reading.

[39:47] John: He’s very good. I highly recommend Manhunter, the series that he did.

[39:50] David: I know that I've read the Simonson/Goodwin Manhunter stuff, but I haven't read it in so long that I just don't remember it, and I think when I read it the first time, I didn't have a full appreciation of what I was actually looking at.

[40:03] Dave: John, do you remember if Goodwin wrote Secret Agent X-9 when Al Williamson was drawing it?

[40:07] John: Yes, he did. I actually asked Scott Dunbier, during a time when I needed to clear out some space and also get some cash, should I be keeping these books? Are they really good? He was like, “Yeah, they're really good,” and I got rid of them anyway.

[40:27] Dave: I had one of those for a couple years, and then I did the same thing where I was like, “I've owned this for two years. I've never opened this thing.” I know the pages are gorgeous, and I flipped through it, and I keep telling myself, I'm going to read it, and I never did.

[40:43] David: Hey, everybody, we ran a little long talking about 1949 Chevy hubcaps. So, we are going to break this one up. We will be back in just couple days, with part two of this fascinating and thorough exploration of Marvel's New Universe. Thanks. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you real soon.

Thanks for joining us, and please subscribe, tell your friends about us, leave a review and comments. Check out www.cornerbox.club for updates, and come back and join us next week for another episode of The Corner Box with John and David.