Marvel comics Highlights #5: 1989-2005

The third generation of X-men and Marvel in general went really sour in the 90s. The reasons for why that happened are complicated, so just be content with what I show you here. It can be summed up as people losing interest in comics and Marvel refusing to cut its published series down to essentials. The 90s in general was a decade that didn’t have an identity because there was no clear objective anymore. The space exploration era wasn’t going anywhere and the coming of the new millennia was more scary than motivating.

• The rise of home consoles: People cared more about the interactivity of videogames and less about reading
• Overbearing material: There was far too much material amassed throughout the decades which was making it very intimidating for newer readers to be invested
• Oversaturation of titles: Marvel and DC were publishing way too many titles that people didn’t care about and yet were forced to read as means to have the full picture in major crossover events. Image came along to publish its own titles, making things worse.
• Stories and characters were not as good: Newer writers and cartoonists sucked
• The collapse of the Soviet Union and of the Japanese economy: America had no major threat to seek escapism in comics anymore

The characters were also getting more and more depressing, which is not why most were reading comics for. For example, 1989 can be summed up as the destruction of happiness for Wanda and Vision. The robot was dismantled by an evil consortium and when Henry Pym, the guy nobody liked, tried to reassemble him, he needed the brain waves of Wonder-Man in order to retain his personality. Wonder-Man refused since he always considered Vision to be his copy and didn’t want him around. As a result, the reassembled Vision was an emotionless machine, and totally not what Wanda fell in love with. The same year, she lost her imaginary children too, which began to drive her insane. Destroying the happiness of couples was something Marvel did many times in the past, but an emotionless Vision and a crazy Scarlet Witch were not more tragic in the way Spiderman was. They were just depressing.

Newer heroes that were introduced in the 90s were also not that interesting. The most famous of the bunch was Jubilee, which as I said became known only thanks to the cartoon version, when is otherwise a minor comic relief with a very bad sense of fashion. Cable and Bishop were your more than typical super muscular, trigger happy, mullet action heroes. They have very interesting backdrops and are amazing if you see them simply as dudes who shoot people and blow up stuff. But everything they do is about time travel and time resets and it becomes very convoluted when you try to explain it. Stryfe seemed to be interesting for awhile because he was a super powerful mutant with a mysterious past, but even he got boring as soon as it’s revealed he was a clone. This was ridiculous; by now every character had at least a dozen clones and counterparts from alternative dimensions. This was not making them more interesting, it was making them gimmicky and convoluted.

In 1992 we had the all famous, all hyped by the movies Infinity War. I have no idea what they will do to make the movies interesting but the event in the comic was bullshit. It was just Adam Warlock being Jesus and trolling everybody with time travel before immediately splitting the Infinity Gems everybody was trying to bring together for 2 decades. It was all so pointless.

The next major event was the Age of Apocalypse in 1995, which is a less interesting Days of Future Past. Xavier’s son killed his father in the past, which made it way easier for Apocalypse to take over the world. Bishop who was not from this timeline revealed the change and the X-men went back in time to stop the change from ever happening. Yes, time reset once again, and yes it’s another timeline that was also not erased and kept interacting with the main timeline. This event was basically being grimdark for the sake of grimdark. The world building was very cool as an what if scenario, but that is all it was. It doesn’t matter in the longrun; it was a minor side story.

In 1996 we had the Onslaught Saga which was another soft reboot. It was used not for killing off a lot of heroes as it seemed at first but for relaunching several heroes in a way that would make sense for newer readers. It would be a smart move if it was used for removing all the minor characters nobody cared about and was showing a summarized origin story for the rest. Instead of that they made this convoluted updated origin story which was very confusing and contradictory with what was actually going on. It made things worse and left the comic book industry in ruins. The other publishing houses didn’t do any better and essentially evaporated most of the interest people had in comics. Fuck you Image for your garbage, and fuck you DC for killing Superman only to revive him again which made half the readers to ragequit.

In 1999 we have a closed loop in time concerning three major characters of this decade. Yes, it’s about time travel but at least it makes sense as a closed loop. I found it interesting enough to mention, so here is how things go when you see them as a whole.

1. Apocalypse gains powers from Celestial technology
2. Apocalypse gives powers to Mr. Sinister
3. Mr. Sinister manipulates the birth of Nathan Summers so he can kill Apocalypse with him
4. Stryfe spreads the Legacy Virus he brought from the 40th century
5. Apocalypse finds out about Mr. Sinister’s plan and infects Nathan with the Legacy Virus
6. Nathan is taken to the 40th century to be cured by the virus
7. A clone of Nathan is raised by Apocalypse and becomes Stryfe
8. Nathan grows up and is renamed Cable
9. Cable goes to Ancient Egypt in an attempt to kill Apocalypse with the Legacy Virus. Instead of that, it helps him gain access to celestial technology.
10. Stryfe comes back from the 40th century
11. Cable comes back from Ancient Egypt and begins a guerilla warfare against Stryfe

And that was pretty much all that mattered from the 90s. Not many interesting things happened and everything here on feels very inconsequential to the most part. In 2000 for example there was this mindfuck going on with a new hero called the Sentry. The story was constantly not making it clear if he was a normal man who was thinking he was a superhero or a superhero who was somehow forgotten by everybody. The tension and psychological pressure was amazing. And then the mystery is revealed, it was all about amnesia and he became just another background character.

In 2002 there was the Kang War which in a way tried to redeem Ms. Marvel. Remember that mess with the rape? Well, a different version of the same villain appears and tries to take over the world. Ms. Marvel, now looking the same but having a different name because everybody hates the older one, actually manages to make this version of Marcus to fall in love with her, which leads to the downfall of the bad guy. Very fun event and too bad it doesn’t mean anything in the longrun.

In 2003 the real Jean Grey dies by some guy who thought he was Magneto. There was no emotional impact this time, the death was cheap and Scott finds a new waifu very fast soon afterwards. The only change is that the Phoenix Force becomes good for some silly reason.

In 2005, Scarlet Witch completely loses it and remakes reality. In this new dimension everybody gets what he always wanted and mutants rule the world. This didn’t last much though, as slowly everybody remembers how reality was at first. Scarlet Witch eventually undoes the whole thing with a slight difference. Most mutants lose their powers. And this was done only because the producers thought there were too many of them by now to the point they were no longer a minority and the whole racism theme made no sense. So yeah, it was again a lazy what-if scenario which got a reset and retconed anything the creators didn’t like.

As soon as that is over, the supposed dead Bucky returns alive and well, as a brainwashed assassin of Hydra. I have accepted the fact that nobody stays permanently dead in Marvel comics but what was the point of rewriting his character? He was originally a boy scout and a silly comic relief. Now they made it seem like he was always a cold-blooded killer. This shitty retcon really pissed me off.