The WORST Year in COMICS! 1996 Retrospective. Wizard Magazine 65, January 1997

[@lucasartscrafts6023]

Didn't realize it at the time, but yeah, I enjoyed Wizard more than the actual comics.

[@Idleanimator]

I started watching these wizard videos at the start of this year and just finished this last one now. RIP Ed. Thanks for all the hours of entertainment you've given me. What you and Jim achieved with this channel is an incredible resource for comics history.

[@jameswoollard6686]

RIP Ed. x

[@modelflyer2003]

Was looking through my comic books this past weekend after ignoring them for 35 years and had to flip through some of the Wizard Magazines I saved. Brought back lots of memories.

[@DomVonDoom]

my first tattoo was a Stephen Platt Moon Knight pin-up. Got it in 1997 when I was 16! A friend had a older brother who was a tattoo artist who did it for me at his house. My parents were pretty ambivalent looking back.

[@scubanimals]

I bought an issue of Ash new once at a baseball card shop in the strip mall by my house, a guy rented half the shop to start selling comics, but he mostly only had Lady Death, Evil Ernie, and Image comics. He also had 50 cent bins full of Faust and Valiant and Ultraverse.

[@jasonking3182]

It’s funny looking back at the comics industry falling into a pit it would never really get out of but at the same time we got some of the best superhero comics ever made in the mid to late 90s. Astro City, Batman The Long Halloween , Grant Morrison’s JLA, Alan Moores’s Supreme, Warren Ellis Planetary and The Authority are a great close to the decade.

[@williamibanez394]

I one hundred percent agree. Despite all the bad stuff, this was the era that got me into comics because of the titles you mentioned. Lots of gems during this time, if one has the patience.

[@portland-182]

Good eye! DV8 #1 cover C 'Wrath' is indeed by Gaetano "Tanino" Liberatore

[@capearce81]

Man I know these Wizard videos are beloved but I feel for you fellas at this point!

[@admbrnk3665]

Yeah I used to hope they would never stop doing Wizard videos but at this point the actual magazine is so shitty that I wouldn’t blame them if they gave it up.

[@sisyphushappyxvx]

That DV8 cover is, in fact, Liberatore.

[@kerry-j4m]

Nostalgic ride for me,Wizard & 1996/97,I was in the army stationed at Ft Hood,Tx ( now Ft Cavazos ) I remember there was a comic shop right outside the front gate of Hood ( score !! LOL ) went there a-LOT. LOL. And Wizard was sold at the Exchange on base ( another score !!! ) plus lots of adult mags,a single soldier's best friend. Learned how to properly fire weapons ( trigger squeeze,breathing control,earth's rotation,etc,etc,. ) M-16A2,M-203 with grenade launcher,M-249 and 45 pistol. Some good training too.

[@joedee9811]

Man this was my first wizard. I got into comics hard after buying Kingdom Come and Morrisons JLA at the same cigar shop/newsstand by my house. Can’t wait to watch this and relive those times

[@Uploadingvirus]

Loved the Essentials, it's how I read all the classic Marvel stuff for years.

[@927789]

Don't know how much you would care, but that Snap the Punk Turtle dude is Chris Crosby, he would go on to be a co-founder of Keenspot one of the early webcomic collectives.

[@ChristianWolf88]

1996 retrospective was the year I gave up doing shows boxed everything up and it stayed in the closet until the pandemic (2020). A lot of people like to blame Image. Honestly, Valiant was the biggest culprit and Marvel just throwing out so many X titles trying to smash everything and everyone indiscriminately. New comics was dead and unless you were selling dollar comics out of long boxes you were hurting. Some of my friends bought up a lot of silver age and survived but it was brutal.

[@greghoward7261]

That cover is done by Kevin Lau, I believe. He had a run on Vampirella, and was the artist on the "Vampi" manga style comic.

[@D_Fyre]

My dad was born in 55 and got me into comics. He gave me his remaining Doctor Strange #s 1 - 3 and Black Panther #s 15 - 18 on my 21st birthday, still in good condition. Together, we collected the entire 1991 Marvel trading card series. He still has his Mars Attacks cards, too and I knew about that property before the movie came out thanks to him.

[@GreatLordJason]

I hated how Wizard slowly did away with all the little, different sarcastic columns. It was like one would disappear every few months, making it less fun.

[@randywhitehair5403]

Oh wow, I never realized that until you pointed this out. That's a great point - they started making it less entertaining.

[@snarferyasmr3739]

Probably to save cash

[@zejaguar]

I remember that. I thought someone here really hates comics

[@danielbedrosian8869]

Lobdell talks about 286 was his first that he wrote. That's the one we were talking about the other day, Ed! "Awww...You got yourself a Lobdell!!!"

[@chrismacdonald2580]

Steve Skroce is the shit! We need an episode about his Doc Frankenstein series. Uncle Geoff co-created, so hopefully he can help facilitate. Make it happen boys!

[@billyhaney5117]

I never knew until seeing this video that Too Much Coffee Man was optioned for movie and animation rights. Shannon Wheeler is an old acquaintance of mine, but by 1996 we had lost touch. Hope he got some dough for it. Even if he didn't, he showed all of us by getting hired by the New Yorker. Oh, and that is Tanino Liberatore on that DV8 cover.

[@newspooiechannel]

Regarding the Generation X telefilm, I had heard several years later that Fox was interested in picking it up to series as a mid-season replacement, but Marvel balked at it thinking they could do better producing and selling it in syndication. After half a year goes by with little interest, they went back to Fox and were like "hey, we're ready to make that show now!" Fox told them they already planned out their schedule for the next year and to get lost. I think by around this time, outside of Untold Tales of Spider-Man, I had briefly jumped to Daredevil and Silver Surfer just to get out of the big, overblown, company-wide event stuff that was going on at Marvel. I jumped to Silver Surfer, specifically, for the Ron Garney art following his departure from Captain America. Pretty sure all three titles would get cancelled within a year, year and a half tops.

[@zackcahill7966]

I absolutely love Ed’s recurring rants about Scot “Job”dell

[@thxlopez]

I still love how wizard mag would start doing more top list of fight shocker, twist ending , covers etc is was like comic books version of KZbin watchmojo

[@matthewmckinnon-gray9957]

I’m not sure where you’d find them in the states but the McFarlane intros are included on the Spawn episodes on the Canadian Streaming service CraveTV. He’s not wearing a Canadian Tuxedo though. Just a black suit.

[@sbuno3057]

I love this channel, Have you guys ever done a video on Dale Keown Samurai comics? I loved his art as a kid, I remember it being super violent and super clean.... Becoming a Patreon soon x

[@snarferyasmr3739]

Coloring the essentials with colored pencils is pure bliss

[@russellsmith1605]

I think the cover was done by Kevin Lau, who was a manga-influenced artist who was doing some work at Marvel at the time.

[@russellsmith1605]

I remember going to see Frank Cho at one of those hotel comic shows back when he was still drawing University Squared and was selling a collection of the strips. He signed a copy I bought from him, which I still have to this day.

[@burningdaylights]

Talking about parents not discussing their childhood pop culture interests, my grandmother was into the Golden Age Green Lantern and Tarzan when she was young, and my Dad was into Flash Gordon. My grannie would always buy me Tarzan comics, because I think she liked the character and tried to get it to rub off on me. It worked--I love that old stuff.

[@Orgmoy]

Would love to check out the Chinese ship painter/letterer vids.

[@mattr136]

Just seeing GON in this issue made me think about how much I would enjoy seeing one these books under the Kayfabe microscope.

[@levierickson7321]

I had a VHS tape I recorded Pee-Wee's Big Adventure off HBO followed by Red Dawn, so I equate those movies Same with the Last Starfighter and the Muppets Take Manhattan Those movies always go together

[@nmj1937]

Would love to see Doug Mahnke get some Kayfabe coverage

[@capsjukebox]

Have Ed and Jim done any of the Wizard gag issues? Like the one where Dr Doom was guest editor for an issue ? Genius!

[@FavoriteHero]

Kingdom Come original art would probably go at least 10x on Heritage today 😂

[@ultramagneticlion2147]

Doug's Major Bummer if you guys ever wanna give a look at one of the best main DC books in those dark ages if the late '90s!

[@chaselowe4061]

1997 was the year I really stopped buying mainstream comics. Oddly enough Wizard was a big part of that. Palmer’s Picks and talking to other fans in Wizard’s own chatrooms was the end.

[@EasterlyArt]

1:08:26 An episode digging into GON would be fantastic! 🦖

[@derektyler5817]

Seeing that Stephen King and the bash on tattoos in the letter column reminds me that the letter I had published in Wizard should be coming up in a few issues. They shortened the hell out of it but I did hit back about the tats. They didn't publish that portion of the letter just two of my questions.

[@arischaeffer5304]

💔

[@derekbartonart7004]

Lee Moder, Carlos Pacheco & Michael Turner have all passed on.

[@EasterlyArt]

1:08:26 An episode exploring GON would be great. 🦖

[@randywhitehair5403]

Ok, obviously I'm not through this video yet, but I remember this time vividly. I just posted yesterday on your Marha Washington video about how much cool stuff I was discovering in the late 80s/early 90s and how it was one excellent work after another being released. Then just half a decade later....this shit. This is the time when I was pretty much all-out on comics as I was totally disgusted by the garbage being published. There was still some quality out there, but I was tired of buying stuff that was so bad it ended up making feel like I was being scammed. It was like metaphorically getting punched in the nuts over and over. I quickly just quit buying any comics at all.

[@deecee881]

I went to that Alex Ross gallery show and remember the broken AC and Alex sweating his ass off!!!

[@NailsOeltjen]

I was mostly checked out of comics by this time - except I still managed to find the odd cool comic from time-to-time. They did exist.

[@junkdraw]

Jim will you begrudgingly make a 1996 Zine?

[@dirkkortegast6433]

Re: the ASM Essentials ad: for the 2nd ASM one, Marvel had to go to great lengths producing new printing plates for ASM 27, which they had lost - coincidentally, that same number was the first Marvel Comic reprinted in Europe, distributed to several countries… I guess Marvel US made a little mistake there :)

[@glenschol4041]

Please do a video on the comic "Shatter" by First Comics.

[@harrypartridgelive]

That Jack Kirby shirt is dope.

[@uuuhyeah7859]

That DV8 variant cover is absolutely Liberatore!

[@MurielBellini]

i love this chanel

[@Randomcomicsfrommyspinne-xt5kq]

The second half of the 90s were dreadful and almost made me quit comics after 20+ years of being a hardcore fanboy. But working for lots of DC properties propped me up and made me love comics again.

[@slowhed]

The highlight is definitely the Marvel Essentials and Id have to agree that I too felt we might be headed towards a manga like template of publishing from the big two but alas, here we are and boy do they love self sabotage...

[@beefymcweefy]

I have a topcow Savage dragon vs mars attacks and it came with some mars attacks trading cards still attached

[@thomasdempsey721]

LMAO! "...never read a comic of his that I liked..." re: Lobdell, made me almost spit my beer. I concur!

[@randywhitehair5403]

Oh man, I hope you really are drinking a beer at 10:30 on a Sunday morning....bonus points if you're out west and doing so earlier!

[@CartoonistKayfabe]

It is St. Patrick's Day so...enjoy? - JR

[@thomasdempsey721]

@@randywhitehair5403 It's midday for me Randy....I rise at 4am. (Plus , I'm a fourth generation alcoholic of German/Irish descent.)

[@matfan-q7p]

Onslaught is known to be terrible, but stuff like X-Cutioner's Song seems to be pretty well regarded. I'm only a handful of issues into Scott Lobdell's run on X-Men, but so far it seems fine?

[@MalditoMendoza]

So, 96 'zine from Jim coming up? Would be an interesting counterpart to the 86 one.

[@terri_blueberri]

little Jessica sure missed out on that day.

[@Endraven_Prime]

DV8 "Wrath" cover by Gaetano Liberatore.

[@jakerise980]

As bad as you say it was, what they put out these days is way worse. Sorry.

[@NFLDude56]

Marvel went super far for some titles in the Essential line, the last books came out in '12 or '13. Wolverine got into the late 90s, the computer coloring looked horrible in grayscale. X-Men got to the Jim Lee era, I think the last book ended with the first few X-Men issues. Spider-Man got into the Ron Frenz era, it would've been cool to see McFarlane's art in grayscale.

[@russellsmith1605]

Jeff Moy and his brother Phil did art on a run of Legion during this time

[@staticxtreme27]

I'm all for some Doug Moench love on the channel, hope we see something soon!

[@richardreynolds1590]

First Wizard I ever picked up.

[@DoctorExplosion]

Scott Jobdell!! Ed destroyed him with a single switched letter

[@robblatt9120]

Tattooing was in the headlines around this time in New York because it was illegal in NYC from 1971 through 1997

[@cyberpunkholiday]

I think I hung onto reading comics till about 97’ and then I completely dropped out. These were hard times to be a comic reader, for sure. I tried so much to like Lobdells X-men. When it got to Onslaught I was out!

[@lookylookhere71]

Read more comics!👍

[@thxlopez]

The Ending of Spider-Man clone saga only bright spot in 1996 I think comics would start getting better by summer of 1999

[@HisNameIsX1]

That school dance sorry is legendary lol

[@Steenar123]

I have that Batman/Captain America comic!

[@Gootie29]

The comment about the older generation not having any memories of pop culture of their youth is interesting. My parents were children in the 50s, teens in the 60s, and they loved pop culture. My dad often talked about Captain Midnight, Tarzan, Blackhawk, and 3 stooges. My mom still read comics when I was a kid, and she loved Little Lulu, Dr Strange, and Silver Surfer. Looking back, I don't think any of my friends' parents were like that though

[@teetoo3790]

@Gootie29 my mother loved Little Lulu as well.

[@LumberjackNick]

Jim needs to make a ‘96 Zine

[@mjmartinejohn]

Heavily tattooed guy - I got two small tattoos in 1997 and people thought I had sold my soul to Satan.

[@russellsmith1605]

I know Barbara Kesel worked for Crossgen, but I don’t think Karl did. He probably moved down there with his wife though

[@daquenking5261]

I would try to get my comic book turn into a movie cartoon instead of live action.

[@DomVonDoom]

My Pops is a Boomer. Read FF4 comics. That's it. Only the late Boomers seem to hold onto their pop culture influences the rest have been mind-wiped.

[@CartoonistKayfabe]

You’re so right. It’s the people born in the ‘60s who didn’t get hit with the MIB flashlights

[@hognatius_valentine9057]

I must have been out of Wizard by this time. I forgot how bad things got in comics or at least mainstream comics. I used to love getting this magazine and still have the no. 1 somewhere, but man, looking back- this era was not good.

[@bobhoskins-kl6ue]

Big ups Gon!

[@donaldglass2421]

damn! so much of my family is the same way when it comes to remembering things from their childhood. its like they grew up locked in a fucking cellar lol. my dad used to tell me a little bit about toys or baseball cards that he had and maybe some shows he watched but not much. i guess maybe its true baby boomers and prior generations just played outside with sticks like animals. i do think starting gen X or so pop culture, movies, music, comics, video games, etc just got a hold of us more and its more of our identity.

[@tooruoikawa8985]

I’m pretty sure 2023 was the worst year in comics! lol

[@andyzuleta5344]

I started to buy less comics. I don’t even have a pull list anymore

[@thebey0nder668]

Not near as bad as 2023 was.

[@Doofball3]

🙏🏾😩

[@williamibanez394]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/rHupdIhop9Ofd9k Topps ended up getting the license and published a mini series as Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. My guess is that they were trying to capitalize on the cartoon on cbs at the time. Creators that worked on it include Roy Thomas, Dick Giordano, Steve Stiles (who did fill ins on Xenozoic Tales) and alternate covers were drawn by Sam Kieth and William Stout. Apparently one issue had a pull out poster drawn by Moebius!