Year: 1996
Major Events:
- The Age of Apocalypse and the Clone saga are in Marvel’s rearview mirror now, so you might think, “Thank God! We can get back to series based storytelling!” Think again. Now it’s time for Onslaught and most of Marvel’s major characters being entirely rebooted for a year in the Heroes Reborn event.
- The DC/Marvel crossover publishing line, Amalgam, and a bunch of Marvel/Indie crossovers. Marvel will try anything to pull in new readers. Including Combo-Man, a hero sponsored by the “filled pretzels” snack “food.”
- That’s pretty much it for events. This year was completely dominated by them and it was one of the worst years in Marvel’s history.
- Mark Gruenwald passes away, along with Jack Abel and Curt Swan.
Important Deaths: Pyro, Jigsaw and Tombstone (all not), all the major heroes are killed by Onslaught (all majorly-not), and Vengeance.
Best New Series: Elektra. And it’s not that great.
Cancellations: War Machine, Fantastic Force, Ghost Rider, Green Goblin, and Doctor Strange. Also, most major series are cancelled and “rebooted” with new #1 issues that take place in a pocket universe.
Best New Characters: Nobody from the “pocket universes” is worth mentioning, but there were a bunch of new characters introduced there, and like Age of Apocalypse, some of them will cross over to the 616 universe. Other than that, we go the return of the Micronauts, the knock off Kraven the Hunter Jr., and Graydon Creed.
Top 10 Stories
Again: Terrible year for Marvel. Only the top five below got “A” ratings, and none of those were A+. The bottom half of this list were just B+ stories.
- Daredevil #359-360
- Untold Tales of Spider-Man #16
- Savage Hulk One Shot
- Punisher #9-10
- Archangel: Phantom Wings
- Untold Tales of Spider-Man Annual 1996
- Logan: Path of the Warlord
- Darecevil #358
- X-Factor #127
- Wolverine #102.5