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Worth it. All right, let's get on with the show now. Weeding down upon the underworld to smash gang men, come a friend of the unfortunate enemy of criminal. In mysterious, all powerful, character, a problem to the police, but a crusade of a law.
Hello everybody, welcome to Elsworld Exchange. I'm Sal, and I'm joined today by Jason Inman of Jawa and DCO Access. What up, man? Hey, dude, thanks for having me on.
I'm excited to talk about comic book things that we have forgotten about. Yes, that we as a collective group have forgotten, and it's shame on us for letting them fade into obscurity. Oh, Darras, we're assholes. Right?
What does that matter with us? That's actually rule number one of any show, is at the top of the show, insult your audience. That's right. Before we get started, Jason, there's a lot of great stuff that you're working on, of course.
What are some of those things, and where can they find them? Well, first off, I wanna talk about, we're gonna talk about comic books. I love talking about comic books, I love reading comic books. Me and my wife have made a comic book.
It's called Jupiter Jet Number One. Now, you may have heard that we did kick-started a while ago. Well, it's going to come out in comic stores on December 6th, and that means that it's in October previews. And if you don't know comic fans, that means that this is the time that you need to go to comic book shops and tell them to order Jupiter Jet.
It's a Kim Possible meets the rocketeer-type story set in 1935 about a girl with an experimental jet pack. It's like the best steampunk Pixar movie you've never seen. And I'm really proud of it. What's that?
Sorry. They'll never make because they'll never make. So if you would go here, if that sounds like a cool thing to you, we have a cover by John Boy Myers from Teen Titans and Wells fame. He's a really amazing artist.
And it's in October previews page number 254, or you can just go to your own comic shop and be like, hey, give me some of that Jupiter Jet. That sounds like something for you. But this is how you support comic books. This is how you make sure that comic books don't become forgotten.
Oh, good job. I like that. Yeah, we're really proud of it. And please go check it out.
Yeah, I picked up my copy over at Neer Comic Con this past. This is it. My copy's over there. It's on the outside of the room.
I showed it to you, but I got to get up. I'm not going to do that. So yeah, let's jump into it today. We're going to talk about Forgotten Universes.
I guess we'll start with one just to give you kind of an, everybody kind of an example of what we're talking about. The Amalgam universe, which was created from the Marvel DC co-productions after the Marvel versus DC event that took place. And I want to say 1997 or something. Yeah, I think you're about right.
Maybe 1996. But the idea being that the climax story spoilers is that the two universe themselves merge, and then all the characters merge, and then you get a whole new universe worth out of it. And it has a big cult following, but you never really see anything about it, except for a horrible access type spinoff series that eventually dwindle and die. But it's this whole separate universe with a whole rich mythology and a whole bunch of different characters.
And the people who worked on those one shots that came out that were sent in the universe really put a lot of effort and work into them. A lot of them are really good. And I wonder, it's funny because this is just kind of talking about publishing and stuff, but Marvel and DC are kind of intrinsically tied. And while they are competitors, if one were to die, I feel like the other would also be hurt in an irreparable way.
I agree. And so if we're all in the same boat and we're all in this together, why not just like form a satellite company that makes a mal, it's literally called an album, comics, which makes those books and just go with the deal is, we split it down the middle. Our exclusivity contracts do not apply to amalgam comics as like a special clause. And we just published dark claw books and Super Soldier books and Spider Boy books.
I want Spider Boy the most. Right. I hated Spider Boy because he represented the Spider Clones to me and I was like, no. Oh.
But the toughest thing about that though is how Disney has stopped any of the crossovers between the two companies. I've been told that by multiple DC editors. I've told me that they have pitched like cross over. Because you notice DC is actually doing a lot of crossovers.
They're doing IDW crossovers. They're doing boom crossovers. They're crashing over with a lot of companies right now. This is like a new renaissance for DC crossovers.
And it's actually kind of funny because I remember in the 90s, Marvel's crossing over with everybody. There were quite a few wild storm crossovers with Marvel. And DC was kind of, I remember there was, I want to say 94, 96 or something, there was this Bat in Barco where they were like, no. No, you can't use Batman anything as one thing.
And it was because they felt like he was getting too oversaturated. They were just using too much Batman, which is hilarious to think about today. Fun fact we were talking about a little bit earlier, the Wild Storm, is it 30th or 25th anniversary? It was 30th, but it might be.
I think it's 30th, I think you're right. The 30th anniversary of Hardcover in there, there's a piece of art by J. Scott Campbell about a abandoned Gen 13 Batman crossover. Yes, I've seen that art.
And let me tell you, having read the Spider-Man Gen 13 crossover, I think it would have been horrible. But I want it, I want to know who wrote that and where that script is because- I don't know man. Locked up in the garage, dimly. We covered JLA Wildcats.
I like that series. I think that was horrible. But it's written by Doryn Morrison. And it's like, can you imagine who would have written the Batman Gen 13 crossover?
It would have been somebody like, they got a guy in Frank Miller. Or a couple of them- It would have been Chuck Dixon to be honest with you at the time. It would have been Chuck Dixon. Well, he did that, I think he did both of the Batman Punisher crossovers.
Mm-hmm, he did the one with Azrael and the one with the normal Batman. Exactly, obviously. But yeah, you're right, man. Amalgam is like the series that I think 20 years after, it's funny, I've reread most of those issues actually this year because I tracked down all the trades this year because I really want them.
And you know, rereading them without the nostalgic glasses, a lot of them aren't great, but the idea of them are so amazing. And because they're based on these long lasting characters, they have such an expansive history that new universes generally don't have. It's because we're leaning on the histories and Wolverine and all those characters. So that universe seems so much more expansive than it actually is.
Right, and you also get a chance to parallel those characters and see the kind of shades that they all share. You know, you're able to run those parallels and go like, no, actually, there is kind of a correlation between Bruce Wayne and Wolverine. I never really thought about it before, but you know, we can actually do something with this. What a weird sentence.
Yeah, what a weird sentence. True. But yeah, the amount of universe, but that's the example we're going for, is just these universes that had a history and an inner continuity and interconnected characters and they all hinged on each other. People forget that like, actually, when image first started, they were like, hey, we're a shared universe.
And so Swan and Shadowhawk and Savage Dragon, they're all in the same universe. And they could all bump into each other at any point. That, of course, became a real clusterfuck for them when. They banded it real quick.
They ended it real quick. I feel like, you know, it's funny. I think that they ended it a lot later than they should have based on some of the things that I have in my storage closet that have things like the Spawn Wild Cats crossover, which is written by Alan Moore and is horribly terrible. It's just atrocious.
But you know, that universe actually sort of still exists because Invincible has all of those heroes. Show up, including Spawn. Oh, yeah. I mean, well, and really, I think that's less of a testament to the rich history of the image universe than it has to do with the like, bullheadedness and the refusal and stubbornness of the creators.
Like, you'll notice that like, Hellboy showed up at Savage Dragon, at some wedding at Savage Dragon. It's just because Eric Larson's like, I want to see Hellboy. I want to see these characters. They show up.
Robert Kirkman's like, yeah, these characters show up in Invincible because, yeah, I'm writing Invincible. And I think I was at a achieve at the time. So I can do whatever I want. Also too, Savage Dragon just recently crossed over with Spawn because that's all the trade, because that's the run where Eric Larson wrote Spawn for a while.
Yes, he did. Yeah. And he was like, Savage Dragon's getting in there, of course. Oh, of course.
And as I understand it, there was a little bit of that between both Larson and McFarland after that. But they both had kind of confusion or frustration with each other's use of the characters. And that's what happens when you have an interconnected universe where all the creators can do whatever they want with their characters. You know, like, I heard that as well.
I heard they did not in that run as friends. No. The one thing that reminds me the most of like, the image universe, and it's not image united, is actually the Mars attacks, the image universe, crossover. I remember that.
First of all, it's an intercompany crossover, Topscomics, which published stuff like Mars attacks and Jurassic Park. Talk about Forgotten Universe. The Topscomics universe. You got it, right.
But Topscomics was a good image. And then the Martians attacking Shadowhawk and the Max and Spawn and Savage Dragon and some of those books having spin-offs. And some of those characters actually winding up dying and being like experimented on, or there's actually a rape in one of them. But a lot of character and story happens in this random crossover and it affects the image universe.
I think that's probably when the writing was on the wall for those guys. And they're like, we've got to stop. You know, it was also the same kind of thing. And we're kind of going into like this weird crossover episode.
Yes, true. But it's OK. It's all right. It's kind of like the Stormwatch Aliens crossover, which all the Stormwatch characters were killed by the aliens.
And then that's what launched authority. Right. Which is a brilliant way to do it, although, albeit convoluted and kind of insane. Agreed.
But it is a way to make a crossover actually matter. Yes. I love when crossovers have weight, or when they don't waste time trying to explain how the crossovers happen. Yes.
Actually, that reminds me of the wildcat aliens crossover. I was so baffled and confused. I'm like, first of all, Warren Ells wrote this. Secondly, what has happened?
The aliens are actually connected to their mythology. But it was all incontin but it was all incontin but part of their re-launch of those characters. In that series. Nuts.
You know, can I throw out a forgotten universe? That. You know, I see how much people talk about Milestone. We'll get the Milestone even though Milestone's not really forgotten universe anymore.
Not anymore. Which I'm fine with because I love that universe. But let's talk about Malibu. OK.
And is it the ultraverse? Yeah. OK. Yeah, Malibu created ultraverse.
Or at least they acquired it or used it. But yes. Yes. Ultimately, they have the ultraverse.
Because I remember, I remember seeing those characters advertised all over Wizard and stuff like that. And then I can even remember, do you remember the classic that was the Nightman television show? I do remember the Nightman television show. It was so bad.
It was almost as bad as the Ultra Force animated series on USA. What? I didn't know that existed. It's solid because it has an intro.
First of all, the theme is just a man screaming the word ultra force four times. OK. Wild Cats. With a sick, no, Wild Cats at least has some lyrics.
There's zeros, not heroes and so forth. Ultra Force is just a guy yelling or just screaming. It's like a surgeon. Ultra Force!
It's literally just a guy going ultra force. It's the only thing worth watching is the theme. Every episode is available on YouTube for free right now, until such a time. Oh, really?
It wants to claim they own Ultra Force? I got it. I got it. OK, I'm sorry.
I got to put this on pause because I got to hear as a fan of bad 90s. Cartoon. Ultra First. All right, so I've got an episode one.
There you go. All right, I'm going to turn up the volume on this, OK? Let's do it. There's a lot of noise.
What's left of the volume? OK. All right, that wasn't as. All right, I'm sorry, listeners.
I'm sorry. What's amazing is the intro to Ultra Force also shows you all the characters, like Ghoul and Prime and Cartes and Topaz. And it's amazing to look at this team because it's just basically all the characters that were created in Malibu on a team and how disconnected they all. There's no cohesion.
Yeah, there's also too. You look at that team and it is every bad 90s cliche that you could ever think of on one team. But here's the thing. I remember when Marvel bought the Ultraverse, and we started mixing.
Remember when Marvel characters started appearing on some of the team books? Like Juggernaut was on a weird team. Oh, yeah. I remember Spider-Man being up with Prime.
I remember the Phoenix Force was resurrected for the first time since the teen Titan's X-Men co-host. As an Ultra Force character. Yeah, as an Ultra Force character. I'm like, what is happening?
Yeah. They were trying to get their bang for their buck, man. And as I always heard it, the reason why Marvel could bother with Malibu, because it's not like they were competing in sales or anything, was just because the coloring and the print quality on Malibu comics was so good. And yet the price of the Malibu books was so low, Marvel couldn't believe that they could get away with making such top quality books for such a low cost.
And they're like, they've got to be fudging the numbers and messing with some but we need to know how they're doing that coloring. And it turns out it was just digital coloring. And yeah, it was on the up and up. But when they acquired it, they didn't do anything with it.
And they just went, oh, OK. You know, that is the same thing. That is a rumor that has gone around for years of why DC bought Wildstorm as well, because of Jim Lee. But because Wildstorm's coloring and like inking department were so amazing that they were like, we want those guys.
Yeah. Well, it's similarly, I think, event comics was the pomodicosodit team up. Yeah, they did Ash. They did Ash, exactly.
The Firefighting Superhero. And Marvel acquired them. And literally, that's how Marvel likes is born. They were just like, you guys from events, like we're outsourced.
These characters aren't selling like Daredevil and Punisher, which you can't even believe. And they're humans and just make books about them and call it this. So there was actually kind of like a history of like the big two acquiring companies smaller than them because they're doing something right. Or they're doing something that they want.
And they don't want to like just have lunch with them like regular people. But yeah, I do. They don't make action figures of ultra force. I don't know.
Malibu, I don't know where the money was coming from. But like somebody was doing something right over Malibu. I think it was just, that was the time. Like, I feel like if you were anything, you mean?
Well, I feel like if you and I were our ages now in 1994, we would have had like a comic company. Each of us would have had our own comic company and we would be equals. And we could have sold at least we could have at least a 24 episode cartoon run on UPN or USA or something. Because they were taking everything and anything.
It was important. No, we can't breeze by this. We need to name our comic company like right now. All right, let's say we were both too small.
We need to collaborate to work on something together. I mean, I've always liked your Jawa name. I kind of dig that. I'll stick with that.
All right, fine. I worked with the comic. I worked with the comic. I was always hanging out in the basement.
I don't know. I had a couple friends who have always wanted to own a comic book store. And they always for years had the joke of, to call it Electra's Alley, to get like the sex joke in there. But I'm like, nah.
Not worth it. Langley Meeley says mixed jaw and comic pop. So is it pop join? Yeah, pop win or comic win.
Pop win. I like pop win. That's it right there. Pop pop win.
And just a big exclamation point because everything's got to be extreme. And yeah, and we publish these books. And I honestly feel like our universe would look a lot like ultra force where it's like here's a character over here and here and they all look completely different. I'm down.
Yeah, pop win comics. Pop win comics. We watch out Marvel. It's the biggest thing to come out of 1995.
That's right. We're so we're so we're the best. Like here comes Trash Man. I mean, like what's funny is that's kind of how these guys got their footing.
I mean, all we need to do now is just call up our buddies, Garib Shamus and Jim McLachlan and get full page spreads in Wizard Magazine. We got made. That's how it works, man. That's how it works.
Yeah. That's how techno comics became a thing. If you're not familiar with techno comics, they were an interconnected comic comic company that also managed to get like major creators like Jane Roddenberry and Leonard Nemo and Neil Gaiman and like Tad Williams and get these people who had names and just recread and have them just do whatever they wanted. I remember, I remember, apparently people in the chat are going crazy because I'm label as Joel, but you know what?
I don't care. Whatever. He's not here guys. Yeah.
Relax. So I remember those comics and remember, you talked to me off Mike a little bit about it and I didn't even remember their names. And but as soon as you said like, oh, primordals, I was like, oh, I remember those stupid ads. Yes.
They were all over. You know, it was kind of funny. There were certain comic companies that would just plaster wizard like they were the Gestapo fighting World War II, at least dropping leaflets everywhere. And they were a company that that also, you know, cross-gen was a company that did that too.
Yeah, cross-gen absolutely. It's actually kind of spectacular to see like- I guess cross-gen would also be a forgotten universe as well. Yeah, that's not bad. Yeah, that's actually good.
They qualified. They were interconnected. Yeah. They were interconnected.
I'm sure I remember any characters from cross-gen. Well, the best, there's only two good cross-gen titles ever. And the two are Ruse and Soger. Okay.
And the reason why they're so good is because Ruse is written by Mark Wade and it is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche. Yes. And you know, do you remember, how much of cross-gen have you read? Like very little.
Okay. Some of cross-gen's thing, they're all, every character, some character in every book had like a sigil. That was the sign of the cross-gen universe, the little symbol they had. Okay, I know what you're talking about.
Yeah. It gave people powers and stuff like that. And in Ruse, his assistant had the sigil and they basically ignored it. So it was just Mark Wade writing a Sherlock Holmes book.
It was awesome. I could see Mark already doing that. Yeah. And then Soger was good for about the first 30 issues.
I think it went to 40, but it kind of like fell off the rails. Ron Mars wrote it. Okay. And it was Greg Land before he copied every porn star picture he could ever find on Google.
If you want to see like true Greg Land pencils, go back, pick up a Soger. Soger. Yeah. And that one's pretty good.
It's sort of like a D&D. It's not a girl that finds a sword and basically tries to conquer the demon. It's actually pretty good. Okay.
It reminds me a little bit of a stuff like Witchblade and Dark Child. Yeah. They're hard to find, although you can find Ruse because Marvel absorbed cross-gen. Yes.
And Marvel actually had Mark Wade write like another four issue mini series under the Marvel banner, under Ruse. And then they took that mini series and then they collected it with the old cross-gen stuff and released like a trade of it. And it's actually, I think it's, if you like Sherlock Holmes, you'll like it. Now, because number one, Mark Wade wrote it, number two, Dan Slott recommended it to Tiffany.
Oh, nice. Oh, you know what you want to pick up is Ruse by Mark Wade from Marvel or something. And you're like, what is that? Yeah.
And I've been looking for it. Now I know why I can't find it. I will say. The only reason why I even remember primortals besides reading the Wizard of the Man.
Be honest. Did you buy it? I bought it. I bought a copy of the Primorals.
It was in a dollar bin in Pennsylvania. And I'm like, and Tiffany's like, is this from those freaking magazines? We got to get it. I read it.
I've covered cover. It's the worst. And it's really bad. It's really cool.
Leonard Nimoy got to write a comic book and it's bad. No, it's based on a concept that Leonard Nimoy and two other people came up with. And then they had someone else write it. So Leonard Nimoy's Primorals is like maybe one-tenth of Leonard Nimoy's idea.
Okay. Complete bait and switch. Just to trick you. Just get his name on the book.
Just to get his name on the book. Okay. As a person, I've seen these ads. And you're the one person that I know that I ever bought that comic book.
Can you even explain what it's about? Oh, yeah. No. It's in space.
And it's like a bureaucracy on a spaceship. I was waiting for you to just stop. You said like it's in space and just stop. I mean, like really it is in space.
It's really dumb. And like there's like a there's a coup that's going to have it. It's just a I was like, I'm trying to read through it. I'm like, this is this isn't comprehensible.
But at least the art is but the art is as good as any industry standard book that came out during that time. It was great. It wasn't horrible. Like it was just a standard looking book.
It wasn't like it wasn't transcendental or even really impressive. But it wasn't impressive in that it at least was competent. Yes. Was it was it?
And if you don't remember it's fine. Was it any kind of a name? That was really dark. No.
OK. What's somebody that went on to something? I'm going to look him up because I want to see. Yeah, I'm very curious.
Like I'm like that's the thing about like even the crosshends. But I got the thing about crosshends. And you have to remember is that like even ultra force, like a lot of the guys that drew those books are like became big deals in the 2000s. OK.
I mean like Scott Eaton drew it. That name sounds familiar to me. You worked on friendly neighborhood Spider-Man X-Men Messiah complex. OK.
So yeah, he's so he's gone on to other stuff. Yeah. And he's been working in the industry since at least 03 or 98 rather. So he was a work he was an actual like penciler.
And I guess that's just because people were looking to make money. You're also looking for your first book as well, like your break in as well. I mean the dude was drawing Dr. Fate before that.
I think he was just like, yeah, Isaac Asimov. I'm in like he was probably yeah. He was like, oh man, let her name away. Yeah.
Well, he might be in today. Like no, he'll never be in. Yeah, exactly. Stop.
Stop asking. I got to bring it. Oh, well, he's gone. I was going to say like the next Star Trek convention bring a copy of primordals, but he's no longer with us.
So he can't sign it. Yeah, that's true. I wonder also if you would just slap it out of your hands. Yeah.
I think you would look at it and go, why does this have my name on it? He might do. He might do. He might do it.
I feel like it's so weird and out there and not in any way related to him. I want to say he probably just licensed his name. He probably just had like an idea. He wrote it down in email, sent it off to somebody and they were like, let's publish it.
Yeah. Yeah, just crazy. But I don't buy a man. If people would pay me to send off emails, I'd do it as well.
Yeah, kidding me. Totally. Hey, you know it's a weird universe that actually existed and I never really understood it or knew the difference between them when I was picking them up was Marvel UK. Did you ever read any Marvel UK books?
Okay. Specifically, but correct me if I'm wrong. Isn't that sort of like what Excalibur came from and stuff like that? I don't remember Excalibur being involved.
I know that Excalibur was set in the UK, but more of the UK was more like Death's Head too. I remember Death Head. It's not great. No, I think it was Wild Thing because then I'm in Carnage where I'm the cover.
Weird. That Wild Thing was basically an A on Flex Repoff. Plus like virtual reality. What?
It was a mess. I don't even know what it was supposed to be. But it was just this weird decision. Oh, there's a team.
I don't remember what the hell the team was, but there was a big crazy looking gun-toting team that Dr. Strange visited. Oh, did I try to pick up the sales or like, hey, here's Dr. Strange.
Yeah, we'll pick up all those Dr. Strange readers to get them over to read Marvel UK. Weird decision. I don't understand it.
They never really did a good job of actually articulating what they were doing and why it was separate from Marvel. It was really weird. That is a weird idea. No, yeah, I can't honestly say that I've actually read Marvel UK book them.
Yeah, I've read three and they're really weird. You're going to Google it right now and just to see. Yeah, just look at them. Yeah, look at the see what these are.
Wild. Captain Britain. Yes, that's probably where you got the caliber. Oh, Warheads was the team you were looking at.
Thank you very much. Warheads. How dare we forget Warheads? Yes, they were just begging for a resurgence.
If Marvel's legacy is worth its salt, then we will see Warheads come back. Yeah, as we know, that's the true problem with Marvel. They forgot Marvel UK. I forgot to.
Where's Wild Thing? Where's Warheads? Where's Death's Head? God, nobody's asking for Death Head.
Although, I did say that they just made an action figure of him. I still like that very same action figure to target not two days ago. And I went, who is this for? Yeah, I couldn't believe it either.
I was like, yeah, who is buying? I was like, they're really stretching for figures, aren't they? Right? I mean, we really just make the figure that they all, you need to buy them all to assemble.
Yeah, that's what you make that for. Yeah. Oh my God. I guess we could move on to the next one.
Sure, let's do it. Hey, speaking of Marvel, remember when MC2 was spawned out of the Spider Girl series? I do. I like MC2.
Although, it's funny, I didn't like MC2 when it was coming out. But I have grown to appreciate it over the course of the rereading some of it because I actually like Spider Girl that made a Parker series a lot. I think it's really good. It's probably the best thing that's in there.
Oh man, Marky Miller just brought up the Mutinex universe. We got to talk about that one too. We got to table that one. But MC2, I remember when it was published at the time, I remember thinking it was a stupid idea because I was like, why do I want to read Avengers squared?
I can just read Avengers. Right. Well, and especially when you saw who was on that team where it's like, oh, it's kid juggernaut and American dream. And what?
You're like, who is this? I don't know who this is. I read them. I didn't read all of them.
But I didn't read all of them. I was like, I'm not in on this. But I really admire just how far it went. They were struggling to sell Spider Girl books and they were like, and we're going to make the Avengers.
And I think they were called something else like A2 or something like that. Our Avengers next maybe? I'm not the animated people right now. They had crazy names.
I remember. Yeah, like we're designs. Like I was just like, okay, I see what you're doing. Oh, Dark Devil.
It was Spider Girl A next. J2. And then remember, they did Fantastic Five. Yes.
And then you read the Wild Thing. And well, another Wild Thing. What the hell, Marvel? Right.
And Wild Thing literally just looks like X23. Yeah, I was Wolverine and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and Electra's daughter, which was ridiculous. And now, now Fantastic Five, because also not to be confused with the Fantastic Four, 2099, where that was the re-Richard that had been transported to the future, just like, doom, and the Transporter of the future. No, Fantastic Five consisted of this amazing team that you're going to love, Sal.
The Human Torch. Yep. The Thing. Big Brain, which was actually a Herbie.
Herbie joke, right? Yeah. Yeah, it was a Herbie that actually had Reed Richard's brain in it. Lila the Scroll from Fantastic Four that Johnny married everybody loves.
And Siloard, Franklin Richards. By the way, I've always hated that name for Franklin Richards. Siloard, that's horrible. Mm-hmm.
It's just terrible. Such a 90s name. You know, MC2 is not a bad, you know, I'll give you this about, about MC2. MC2 comes from a time of Marvel Comics when Marvel Comics, I feel, was like, they weren't so confident in their main universe.
Right. And I, and I think they looked at Heroes Reborn and were like, how do we replicate that? And sometimes it worked. And sometimes it didn't.
Like, I think 2999 really worked. Whereas MC2 half and half. Yeah. And then Mutinex only could work for like 40 issues.
Now, here's the thing. I don't even know anything about Mutinex. Oh my God. So Mutinex was a forgotten universe that is only in one comic book, a comic book called Mutinex.
Now, there was an issue of X-Factor in the late 90s, I believe, where Havoc got blown up on a plane. Okay. But he was around some weird device or something like that and it blew him into an alternate reality. Okay.
And when he woke up, he woke his consciousness woke up in the body of the Havoc of that universe. Oh, okay. And he found out that in that universe, he was the leader of this team called the Six. And it was basically an X-men continuity that was completely different.
So like Spider-Man still had six arms in that universe. He was married to Madeline Pryor in that universe. Iceman was still suffering from that 80 storyline where Loki cursed him and so he can't touch another human being. Okay.
So he's constantly Iceman. Beast was actually called Brute. He had like experimented on himself so much that he was like a green sort of like vampire creature with hoves. And then Archangel never spent longer under apocalypse as control than any other universe.
So it was an idea that they'd only freed him a couple years ago. So he was like super fucking evil. Okay. Cool.
Oh, and then Storm was still a vampire. Right. Naturally. So that was his team.
And it was a whole series of him like navigating the waters of this universe but trying to figure out how to come back to his universe. Yeah. I liked it. I can't remember.
I think Tom Rainey, am I saying that artist's name right? You know, I think Tom Rainey was the one who drew it. Okay. But you Google Mutin X, Marvel Comics.
Yeah. The designs of their costumes are so good. And I think that's half the reason why I decided to read the book. Like I go to the image like Mutin X right now and you can see like the main team.
Like that's the best costume Havox ever had. Yeah, I agree with that. So but it only ran for about it only ran for like 36 to 40 issues and then it was basically just canceled. Right.
Just on ceremoniously, I assume. Yeah, basically. But it was enough for me that, you know, like, I don't know, I didn't care about Havox. And that series actually because the designs are so cool and I like that logo.
I read it and it is a universe that I miss. I would love for them to go back to the next universe or just publish a title that takes place completely in that universe. And I think that's a shock that they didn't bring that back during Secret Wars. You know what?
Me too. You know, because I don't even think it's on the Marvel app, which is a shame. Oh, that's weak. No, it's got, well, at the very least, if you are looking for it, I feel like if you go to any place with a lot of like long boxes, you can probably head for a full song.
Oh, oh, I have looked on eBay several times because I thought about buying it and like buying it myself. But I've never pulled the trigger on that purchase. But yeah, we'll say look at the Wikipedia here. I did not know this.
Apparently Mutin X was only supposed to be a 12-issue limited series, but it sold so well that they turned into an ongoing. Good for them. Wow. I think it would work.
Yeah, that's fair. I mean, here's an idea that didn't work or ultimately only works a little bit was Marvel Tsunami was their attempt at being like, hey, they're all Marvel. What's the deal here? And I think you hit it right on the head, which was Marvel didn't have confidence in their own universe.
Yeah. They were just like, I don't know. This is the last one, by the way, this is the last Marvel one. But Marvel's just like, how about this?
We know the characters were selling sell. We just know that no one cares about our books. So how about this? Although this was Marvel Tsunami was their attempt at doing like an Eastern influence thing.
I think Big Hero 6 came out of Marvel Tsunami. I think Runaways came out of Marvel Tsunami. Runaways did. I don't think so, but I'll tell you what, man, Man of Steel Studios or whatever they're called.
Man of action. Man of action studios. I think the way they adapted Big Hero 6 was great. And I went back and read some of the Big Hero 6 comic books because I was very curious from the movie.
Yeah. And I'll tell you what, I kind of, I think they should be on their own. I don't think they work in the Marvel universe. I think that, I think anything can work in the Marvel universe, but I also would not be grudge them not being connected to the Marvel universe.
Like, I'm excited for that new cartoon. Oh, yeah. Looks great. Although it's, yeah.
I mean, I like the movie, we'll see. But we got our first issue of the Hero 6. I was like, I'm like Chris Claremont. Well, you're a comic con.
And he was like, oh, nice. He was like, hey, thanks for writing Big Hero. So he was like legitimately surprised and excited. Was that this year?
He was this year. I saw him walking around very briefly. I didn't introduce myself though. Man.
He was cool, man. He was super nice. I've heard varying stories about Claremont having met him in that environment. He was super awesome.
Nice. I was very, I was very happy to experience, to have that experience. But yeah, he was like, yeah, this is not what he said. Do you see the movie?
It's not this. And I'm like, no, it's not. I like how he was like, is he gonna movie? Not mine.
I'm gonna bring that poster over here. I won't sign it. But yeah, do you remember anything about the greatest world, which is from Dark Horse? No.
It had like that. I think it was had like ghost in it back when ghost was... And is that like cement? Like John Byrne cement?
Yes. And cement. Thank you. Or concrete.
Concrete. That's right. That's right. Concrete.
And I mean, come on. And the big one that I remember, which was just an awesome image that I saw in a lot of wizards was X. I remember X, because she was like the ghost is the ghost lady. X is the giant.
Yeah, they had the giant X across his face. Yeah. Yeah. I think Gelsomone.
Well, I know Gelsomone wrote a lot of ghost books after the fact. I don't know if she created a ghost in that universe. All right. Steven Grant is the guy that is credited with X.
I'm gonna look up ghost right now as well. Yeah. I think it does not say... Here we go.
Telly's due to comic. Sorry. It's Celly's due to comic. All right.
So good. Ghost in Fat Girl. The resurrection machine happened though. Yes.
In the 2000s. Nice. Yep. No, I forgot about that universe.
I think that universe has been forgotten for good reasons. Right. Well, it didn't. They just...