The Real Story Behind When DC Characters Appeared In Monthly Marvel Comics

While nearly everyone knows the story of the Image Exodus, what is less well known is what happened to Marvel in the aftermath. While speculators, cool kids and disillusioned readers abandoned the house Jack and Stan built, Marvel struggled to move on. They hired artists who could mimic the style used by their newest competitors while continuing to try and make sense of the bizarre and incomplete plot lines the likes of Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld had left in their creative vacuum.

With bankruptcy looming and anything that didn't feature a mutant or an anti-hero seeing its sales dwindling, the powers that be undertook a policy of "throwing everything against the wall and seeing what would stick". New titles rose and fell. Once beloved heroes were killed, cloned, de-aged or outright replaced, but nothing was the game-changer that Marvel so desperately sought out.

Marvel reached out to Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld in what remains an unprecedented move and offered to hire their studios to relaunch the Avengers, Captain America, Iron-Man and the Fantastic Four. Their answer was yes.