The late 90s were a dark era for Marvel. Desperate for any kind of financial spark it could muster after filing for bankruptcy protection, Marvel did the unthinkable in 1996: it killed off many of its most popular properties such as the Avengers, the Fantastic Four and Doctor Doom, during the crossover event, Onslaught: Marvel Universe. Marvel then outsourced the Avengers, Fantastic Four, Captain America and Iron Man series to early 90s artists who had defected to Image Comics a few years earlier: Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld. The duo illustrated these new books, which would be modern retellings of classic origin stories, under the Heroes Reborn banner. It was a 100 percent, sales-driven initiative for Marvel that had mixed results. In some cases, sales actually went down with the new creative teams. A year later, Marvel ditched Lee and Liefield, and brought the production of the Fantastic Four, Avengers, Captain America and Iron Man series back in-house. To explain away the past year of comics, the Heroes Return miniseries shows that Franklin Richards, the son of Fantastic Four member Reed Richards, created a pocket universe where all of the heroes who were assumed dead existed until they were brought back from limbo into the mainstream Marvel Universe. So, for all you Community fans out there, pocket universe is the original gas leak season.
Mark is a professional writer living in Brooklyn and is the founder of the Chasing Amazing Blog, which documents his quest to collect every issue of Amazing Spider-Man, and the Superior Spider-Talk podcast. He also pens the "Gimmick or Good?" column at Comics Should Be Good blog.
