10 Comic Book News Stories That Shocked The World‏

5. Marvel Enters Bankruptcy

Considering Marvel's current standing - owned by Disney, the originators and undeniable champions of the modern comic book movie, creators of some of the most enduring and popular superheroes going - it's almost impossible to imagine them being in anything but a perpetual economic and creative upswing. Nary twenty years ago, though, it was quite the opposite. Whilst the early nineties saw something of a boom in the comic industry's popularity, helped by the "speculator market" of fans and non-fans alike snapping up glossy variant covers and first issues in the belief that they'd be worth something one day, by the middle of the decade things had slowed down considerably and settled into an uncomfortable slump. For Marvel this was especially disastrous, as they had put almost all their metaphorical stock in the variant cover and collectable trading cards, and because their owner Ronald Perelman had saddled the company with a bunch of junk bonds that saw their literal stock plummet. By 1996, the company were in such financial dire straits that they filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. When you saw Marvel Comics characters everywhere at the start of the decade, it was testament to the company's reach and revitalised popularity. When the likes of Marvel vs Capcom, the unreleased Fantastic Four film and the wave of Marvel cartoons began to appear, it's because the company were licencing their properties to anybody who asked, in the desperate hope of turning something resembling a profit. Eventually the publisher managed to claw itself back to the privileged position it occupies now, but at the time the news that the makers of Spider-Man, The Hulk and the like was a saddening surprise to everybody.