2006 was twenty years after Jim Shooter’s attempt to create a new universe of heroes, wholly unrelated to the shared universe created by Stan, Jack and Steve so many decades earlier. I know it has its fans, but most would agree the launch was not a success and it petered out after a few years. But even detractors had to admire the effort–sinking tons of creative time and publication space into a brand new group of stories.

Untold Tales of the New Universe/New Universal were intended to pay tribute to that work and attempt to reboot it. UTotNU were five comics by a variety of name-brand creators, each featuring one of the New Universe teams (Star Brand, Psi Force, Nightmask, Justice and DP7). In addition, smaller features were added as back-up stories to various comics for those NU characters/teams who didn’t get a full comic (Kickers Inc., Merc, Spitfire).

The quality of these issues varies greatly. The Nightmask story actually served to end the 20-year-old storyline from the original series (which was cancelled before running to conclusion).

Star Brand was the most interesting of the lot because it brought the character into the multiverse where he glimpsed Earth 616. We’ve already seen in the pages of the old Quasar series that the Star Brand power source does exist in the 616.

All of these built to the New Universal launched in early 2007.