As part of the 2015 Secret Wars storyline, a series titled Weirdworld starring Arkon was released in June 2015 which featured other characters like Morgan le Fay of Earth-15238, Skull the Slayer, a variation of Jennifer Kale from Earth-11234 that is the Queen of Weirdworld’s Man-Things, and characters from The Saga of Crystar. Weirdworld is featured on the map of the storyline’s version of Battleworld as a floating island composed of fragments from many alternate reality magical realms like Polemachus, Crystalium, Klarn, and the original Weirdworld. By the end of the miniseries, Weirdworld manifested on Earth-616 in the Bermuda Triangle.
The 1990s saw the Green Hulk return. In issue #377 (Jan. 1991), the Hulk was revamped in a storyline that saw the personalities of Banner, Grey Hulk, and Savage Hulk confront Banner’s past abuse at the hands of his father Brian and a new “Guilt Hulk” persona. Overcoming the trauma, the intelligent Banner, cunning Grey Hulk, and powerful Savage Hulk personalities merge into a new single entity possessing the traits of all three. The Hulk also joined the Pantheon, a secretive organization of superpowered individuals. His tenure with the organization brought the Hulk into conflict with a tyrannical alternate future version of himself called the Maestro in the 1993 Future Imperfectminiseries, who rules over a world where many heroes are dead.
Marvel Comics introduced a fairly faithful version of Conan in 1970 with Conan the Barbarian, written by Roy Thomas with art initially by Barry Windsor-Smith, then John Buscema and Ernie Chan (aka Ernie Chua). The highly successful Conan the Barbarian series spawned the more adult, black-and-white Savage Sword of Conan in 1974, by Thomas, Buscema, and Alfredo Alcala. Savage Sword of Conan soon became one of the most popular comic series in the 1970s.
The Marvel Conan stories were also adapted as a newspaper comic strip which appeared daily and Sunday from September 4, 1978, to April 12, 1981. Originally written by Roy Thomas and illustrated by John Buscema, the strip was continued by several different Marvel artists and writers.
The Hulk first appeared in The Incredible Hulk #1 (cover dated May 1962), written by writer-editor Stan Lee, penciled and co-plotted by Jack Kirby, and inked by Paul Reinman. Lee cites influence from Frankensteinand Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in the Hulk’s creation. The Hulk’s original series was canceled with issue #6 (March 1963).
In the debut, Lee chose gray for the Hulk because he wanted a color that did not suggest any particular ethnic group.Colorist Stan Goldberg, however, had problems with the gray coloring, resulting in different shades of grey, and even green, in the issue. After seeing the first published issue, Lee chose to change the skin color to green. Green was used in retellings of the origin, with even reprints of the original story being recolored for the next two decades, until The Incredible Hulk vol. 2, #302 (December 1984) reintroduced the gray Hulk in flashbacks set close to the origin story. Since then, reprints of the first issue have displayed the original gray coloring, with the fictional canon specifying that the Hulk’s skin had initially been grey. An exception is the early trade paperback, Origins of Marvel Comics, from 1974, which explains the difficulties in keeping the gray color consistent in a Stan Lee written prologue, and reprints the origin story keeping the gray coloration.
Lee gave the Hulk’s alter ego the alliterative name Bruce Banner because he found he had less difficulty remembering alliterative names. Despite this, in later stories he misremembered the character’s name and referred to him as “Bob Banner”, an error which readers quickly picked up on. The discrepancy was resolved by giving the character the official full name of Robert Bruce Banner.
The series was launched with an April 1985 cover dated issue by writer Louise Simonson and penciller Greg LaRocque and featured the return of Spider-Man’s alien black costume, which attempted to rebond with Peter Parker. Peter managed to rid himself of the costume again using church bells and the alien was presumed to have died after that. The first issue featured a cover painting by artist Charles Vess.
In issue #18 (September 1986), Peter Parker is pushed in front of an oncoming train. He thinks to himself that this should not have happened, as his spider-sense would have warned him of the danger. Writer David Michelinie has said that he wrote this as the first “teaser” appearance of the characterVenom, whom he was planning to introduce at a later date. Venom is an amalgam of reporter Eddie Brock and the alien costume. The costume could nullify Spider-Man’s spider-sense, and this was the first clue of a puzzle that Michelinie was planning to weave to introduce Venom.
An all-new Venom from some of comics’ greatest talents! Marvel mainstay Al Ewing, who himself has just ended a character-redefining run on Immortal Hulk, is being joined by Ram V, a horror maestro all his own, to craft a mind-bending and gut-wrenching tale of symbiosis the likes of which the Marvel Universe has never seen! Aa if that wasn’t enough, they’ve been joined by Bryan Hitch, who is leaving it all on the page.
On two separate occasions – April 1996 and June 1997 – Marvel and DC co-published issues under the Amalgam Comics imprint. The issues were presented as if the imprint had existed for decades, with stories and editorial comments referring to a fictional history stretching back to the Golden Age of Comics, including retcons and reboots. For example, they referred to Secret Crisis of the Infinity Hour (an amalgamation of Marvel’s Secret Wars, DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths, Marvel’s The Infinity Gauntlet, and DC’s Zero Hour), which featured the well-known cover of Crisis on Infinite Earths #7, but with Super-Soldier holding his sidekick’s body, instead of Superman holding Supergirl. Several issues included fake letter columns to provide the illusion of background to the stories, with the “fans'” hometowns formed by amalgamating the names of existing cities.
The heroes of the 1950s are back with big plans for the 21st Century! When Federal enforcers under the hand of Norman Osborn burst into an armory under the control of the Atlas Foundation, Jimmy Woo’s Agents go head-to-head with the new powers that be. How it all goes down will make the playing field of the modern Marvel Universe more volatile than ever!
The first team of New Mutants characters was created by Chris Claremont and artist Bob McLeod. They first appeared in 1982’s Marvel Graphic Novel #4 and are subsequently featured in their own title from 1983 until 1991. Like its parent title, The New Mutants highlighted interpersonal and group conflict as well as action and adventure, and featured a large ensemble cast, including the introduction of cult figure Deadpool. With the end of the first series, the characters were relaunched as X-Force in a new, eponymous series.
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