The Iron Age of Comics

Artist Mike Mignola made his first foray into creator-owned work with Hellboy: Seed of Destruction , a 1994 miniseries for Dark Horse’s Legend imprint. In time, Mignola would be responsible for every aspect of Hellboy’s adventures, turning him and the B.R.P.D into a miniature comic book industry, but for this initial story, Mignola turned to Iron Age stalwart John Byrne to help with the scripting....

When up-and-coming writer Joe Kelly got the keys to Deadpool’s first solo series, he subverted fan expectations by downplaying the character’s connections to the larger X-franchise. Similarly, he decided to fulfill the constant requests for the Merc with a Mouth to team-up with Spider-Man in a way nobody expected. We take a look at the innovative, Forrest Gump -inspired techniques used to insert a...

Forget whatever you think you know about Hawkman! Tim Truman’s 1989 prestige format miniseries Hawkworld drew from inspirations including cop shows, Vietnam War movies, and The Count of Monte Cristo to update the winged warrior’s Silver Age origin for a grittier, more grounded era. The result is a science fiction adventure offering a critique of imperialism and class inequality that resonates just...

Riding the wave of comics’ “British Invasion” of the 1980s, Grant Morrison made their mark on U.S. superhero comics with the unlikely reinvention of an obscure DC Comics do-gooder. In time, Morrison and penciller Chas Truog would elevate Animal Man’s consciousness to a state of awareness about his own fictional nature, but in the early part of their run, the book is mostly concerned with a middle-...

As popular as the X-Men were in the comics industry during the Iron Age, the 1992 Saturday-morning cartoon adaptation found its way into more homes than the source material ever did, and it continues to be a nostalgic favorite for many X-fans. We invited our first-ever guest, Cameron Kunzelman (co-host of Just King Things, Shelved By Genre, and other shows on the Ranged Touch podcast network) to o...

With the Avengers and Fantastic Four temporarily outsourced to Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee in 1997, Marvel touted the ostensibly brand-new heroes of the Thunderbolts as the next big thing to a somewhat skeptical comics readership. The legendary twist ending to the first issue made the book into an overnight success but sometimes overshadows the work Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley did on the rest of the s...

The first issue of the web-slinger's quarterly fifth-week title kicked off the 1993 14-part crossover "Maximum Carnage," but Spider-Man Unlimited #1's supersized page count left room for two whole backup stories as well. We talk plenty about the main feature's giant fang monsters and unconvincing serial killers, but also dig into the very nature of the anthology superhero com...

Before they were a multimillion-dollar media and licensing franchise, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were just a funny idea that two young artists in Western Massachusetts introduced in a black-and-white book with a 3,000-copy print run. For one of your hosts, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s original series is a longtime favorite by a pair of hometown heroes; the other is coming in fresh, having...

At a time in the mid-1990s when the Avengers franchise struggled for attention against the industry-defining X-Men and Image titles, Mark Waid and Ron Garney somehow pulled off one of the most celebrated Captain America runs of all time…until it was cut short to make way for Rob Liefeld’s “Heroes Reborn” revamp. We look at this creative team’s opening arc, “Operation Rebirth,” which used propulsiv...

Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz, at the height of their powers and industry clout, took advantage of the creative freedom offered by Marvel’s Epic imprint to produce the highly experimental (and somewhat improvisational) eight-issue miniseries, Elektra: Assassin , a dark comedy taking aim at politics, spycraft, ninjas, and the media. We'll discuss whether its cutting-edge approach to satire...

Thirty years ago, Dwayne McDuffie, Denys Cowan, Derek Dingle, and Michael Davis founded Milestone Media to try to encourage diversity both on the comics page and in the talent pool. Static (minus the “Shock” at this point) was deliberately conceived of as a youthful Spider-Man figure for a new generation and went on to become the publisher’s most enduring character. We discuss the series’ balance...

If the Iron Age begins with the Crisis/Dark Knight/Watchmen trifecta, where does it end? In this episode, we propose a turning point: Ultimate Spider-Man by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley. The brainchild of controversial publisher Bill Jemas, the Ultimate line sought to make longrunning superheroes more accessible for moviegoing audiences, but who could have guessed the decompressed storytel...

In the late '90s, Marvel was struggling through a bankruptcy and looking for innovative ways to boost sales and find a wider audience. They turned to hot artists Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti, who enlisted their pal, indie screenwriter and director Kevin Smith, to relaunch Daredevil to mainstream media coverage. The success of the Marvel Knights line led to a new era at Marvel and paved the...

Another fifth week is upon us, the perfect excuse to take a quick-hit look at one of DC Comics' actual fifth-week bonuses: Superman: The Man of Tomorrow #1, first of an ongoing quarterly title designed to ensure a Superman book came out each and every week of the year. We examine this curious artifact of a publishing strategy the market will no longer bear, along with a brief overview of Superman'...

Wonder Woman is perhaps the most iconic female character in comics and one of the few superheroes to remain in continuous publication since the Golden Age, but Diana of Themyscira has had an uneven and somewhat rocky creative history. Following Crisis on Infinite Earths, George Pérez took it upon himself to radically reinvent the character with co-plotter and scripter Greg Potter, emphasizing her...

At the height of the grim ‘n’ gritty superhero craze, Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross offered fans a nostalgic but innovative look at the superheroes of yesteryear with their 1994 miniseries, Marvels . Through a combination of man-on-the-street perspective and near-photorealist painting, this series brought Marvel’s Golden and Silver Ages to life like never before. Today, Marvels is rightly celebrated a...

We’ve seen several different tellings of Batman’s origin in comics, movies, and TV since Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s 1987 masterpiece four-issue “Year One” arc (Batman #404-407), but many fans still consider this the definitive version of who he is and how he came to be. This episode takes a look at why this story is so highly regarded, and what distinguishes it from the other post-Crisi...

If you were reading comics in the ‘90s, you probably also read Wizard : a glossy magazine offering irreverent commentary along with news, interviews, and the latest up-to-date price guides. To many fans, Wizard was all the hilarity and fun of comic book culture wrapped between two covers and sealed in a polybag; to others, it was a symbol of everything wrong with the industry. We look back at our...

March having a fifth Wednesday in it throws off our usual "every other week" release schedule, but you can't get rid of us that easily! We pop in for a quick look ahead at the next three months of episodes, plus a promise to get to reading the five-star reviews you've so graciously been leaving us. All this plus a John Byrne joke to tide you over until our next full episode.

While many of DC’s other heavy hitters were massively revamped in the wake of Crisis on Infinite Earths , Green Lantern Hal Jordan received a comparatively modest tune-up to his origin story. But Emerald Dawn ’s attempts to retrofit a Silver Age icon with personality flaws met with resistance from many diehard fans. We look at the legacy (or lack thereof) of the 1989 miniseries, what effect the be...

Spider-Man went through a lot of changes in the Iron Age, but not even the Clone Saga had as big an impact as getting married to Mary Jane Watson. What began as a multimedia PR stunt became a development that Marvel eventually felt it had to retcon out of existence entirely with “One More Day.” Fans and pros alike continue to argue whether marriage was a positive step in the evolution of the chara...

When DC decided its flagship character needed a top-to-bottom reboot for the post-Crisis era, they turned to superstar writer-artist John Byrne. The six-issue origin series The Man of Steel introduced a streamlined, modernized, and arguably “Marvelized” Superman, but many fans felt that it threw the baby out with the bathwater. We take a critical look at Byrne’s influences and controversial change...

In 1992, Todd McFarlane and his fellow Marvel superstar creators jumped ship to found Image, creating a major independent alternative to the comics industry’s “Big Two.” In this episode, we examine how McFarlane’s most popular creation, the grim ‘n’ gritty supernatural vigilante called Spawn, became not just a sales phenomenon, but also an existential threat to the traditional way of superheroes t...

While DC was breaking new ground with the Crisis / Dark Knight / Watchmen trifecta, Marvel entered a paradigm shift of its own with the rise of superstar artists like Jim Lee. Under Lee’s creative direction, 1991’s X-Men #1 became the best-selling single comic book of all time - a record it still holds - but in the process drove away Chris Claremont, the writer who'd made the X-Men a phenomenon in...

From 1985 to 1987, DC released three groundbreaking series that kicked off the Iron Age and changed comics forever: Crisis on Infinite Earths by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez, The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller, and Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. We’ll eventually do a deep dive on each one in turn, but our debut episode takes a high-level look at these three books as a collective ph...