It's a Welcome to the Prime Time Tuesday !

We continue our journey through Malibu Comics ULTRAVERSE titles with Len Strazewski, Gerard Jones and Norm Breyfogle's creation PRIME since I am still hoping that I can find the coloured pages for the sixth issue of ULTRAFORCE from the late George Perez in some way, shape or form.

Although that is highly unlikely. Because the reason why Marvel Comics never reprinted any of Malibu Comics ULTRAVERSE titles is the same one why it has never used any of these characters since they acquired the comicbook publishing company more than 30 years ago. There are a lot of people online who deny that this is an issue but the fact is that since Malibu Comics had a contract with some creators of the ULTRAVERSE characters that they would get royalties if their creations would be used - be it in comicbooks, games, tv shows, movies etc. - Marvel Comics or better Disney would have to pay them money for using their creations.

Now again, there are statements out there that what Disney would have to pay the creators would be minimal and no reason to keep Marvel Comics from using them but if it's not that then what is the problem ?

One thing that I have to correct is that I mentioned in earlier posts that Marvel Comics bought Malibu Comics because it needed their colouring department to could compete with iMAGE Comics computer colouring.

But after doing some research and watching a lot of videos about this it seems that while that was an incentive to make the purchase it was not the main reason . It seems that Marvel Comics bought Malibu Comics to prevent DC Comics from buying it which could have made DC Comics the number one comicbook publisher in the US. Which was a position Marvel Comics had to retain at all costs because at that time they had already gone public and constantly had to create revenue to the stockholders.

That makes a lot more sense and explains why right from the bat Marvel Comics started if not outright sabotaging the ULTRAVERSE line then at least relegating the series to promote the regular Marvel Comics titles.

It also explains why as soon as they acquired the colouring department they immediately tried to shut it down and it was only through the combined efforts of Mark Gruenwald and Mike Giles - the guy who was running the colouring department at that time - that it didn't happen.

Another thing I have to mention is that I wrote in my last post that to my knowledge there have been no german editions of Malibus ULTRAVERSE titles and I am not sure if that it true. Because according to the internet some of these books have been published in Germany although they can't decide on which ones and by which publisher. The first website stated it was Bastei Verlag who printed some german translations of these comics but that is extremely unlikely because the ULTRAVERSE started in the 90s and while Bastei Verlag published a ton of comicbooks - especially those based on tv shows or cartoons - they were already getting out of making comics by the 90s, only continuing the most profitable ones like Casper, Elfquest, Benjamin Bluemchen, Bibi Blocksberg, Police Academy or The Smurfs and stopped publishing comicbooks almost completely after the death of Gustav Luebbe in 1995 with the only remaining title being cult horror anthology Gespenster Geschichten which continued until 2006.

In 2010 Bastei Verlag moved destroying their complete comic archive.

Another source claimed that ULTRAVERSE titles were published in german by the B & K Comic Verlag but I could find no evidence to prove that on any german comicbook related website. So if any of my german readers know more about this - please do let me know in the comments below.

With that said it is already time to wrap this up but don't worry, there will be more PRIME posts in the future where we can get more into my history with the title. If I remember correctly it was mainly my younger brother who had PRIME - and a few of the other ULTRAVERSE titles - on his pull list and we brothers tried to read as many comics as possible so if one of us had a book on his pull list the others stayed away from that title. It would not be until years later that my appreciation for Norm Breyfogle had grown and I started to seek out his work by any publisher.

One last thing, usually I only use the original artwork in my BLACK AND WHITE posts but since finding material from Malibu Comics ULTRAVERSE is almost impossible I have included some scans from the ashcan edition of the first issue of PRIME. Now for those newer comicbook readers out there who have never heard of an ashcan edition, back in the day comic book companies printed thin pocket sized comics in black and white with pages from the comic, sketches and other behind the scenes material to promote all their upcoming publications before there was an internet.

Those would be included most often than not in issues of comic news collecting magazines like HERO or WIZARD and were very sought after. I remember there was an especially big hype to get the WIZARD issue that included an ashcan edition of Dale Keown's PITT series for iMAGE Comics.

I don't know if they still are of any value ( probably not since nowadays everybody only cares for the so - called " key issues " that are the first appearance of some obscure long forgotten character who may or may not appear in a movie / tv show / cartoon ) but I had dozens of these ashcan editions and other free promotional material that came with american comicbook related publications. Of course I either had to give them away for free of throw them into the trash when I moved to Spain.

But let's not dwell on my misfortunes because then I will only get more depressed and instead enjoy some PRIME artwork by Norm Breyfogle.

it's prime time

Whatever happened to Malibu's Ultraverse ?

Well, once again this is not the post I wanted to write. What's more it is one day too late. I was going to make a post Yesterday to commemorate the date ( if you know you know ) and since I have mentioned some of the comics Malibu Comics published in the first part of my series about Howard Chaykin's groundbreaking AMERICAN FLAGG series from First Comics and found the complete original artwork by George Perez for Malibu Comics ULTRAVERSE series ULTRAFORCE during the research for the post I thought I could do a BLACK AND WHITE post about the issue.

But that turned out more difficult than I thought because I don't know if it is because Marvel Comics bought Malibu Comics and then Disney did buy Marvel Comics ( at a time when Marvel Comics really did not need it because they had already recovered fully from bankruptcy so you know somebody in the bean counting department got a huge payday out of this ) so everything Malibu Comics published is now owned by Disney but apart from PRIME I could not find any scans from Malibu Comics books.

I don't know if PRIME has that many fans or if it has something to do with the art of Norm Breyfogle that it is still online but I came up empty when I was looking for the scans from ULTRAFORCE. And I am not sure if Norm Breyfogle's art is such a big factor in why you can still find PRIME online.

Don't get me wrong, I am a huge fan of this artist - as should be apparent by the number of tribute posts I did for him even when he was still alive - but there are also a lot of the issues to be found online after he left.

Anyway, as longtime followers as well as frequent blog visitors know I like to post the print version alongside the original artwork in my BLACK AND WHITE posts so not being able to do that was a really big problem.

Thankfully I found some scans on COMIC BOOK FAN AND LOVER which not only had a review about ULTRAFORCE issue 6 but most of the issues of the series as well as a truckload of reviews about the Ultraverse. The only problem was that while there were scans form the issue - and in english which is lucky for my readers since it is a spanish blog written in spanish so the scans could have been from the spanish issues - naturally he did not include all of the pages. So I decided to put that post on the backburner for a while in hope of finding the rest of the pages I need.

But at that point I had already found a lot of pages from ULTRAFORCE, PRIME and - what may be their most successful comicbook series because it was adapted a tv show which lasted two seasons ( although at that time it was a Marvel Comics property ) - NIGHT MAN I decided to delve into the Ultraverse. And before turning my attention to the individual series we are going to talk a bit about the series Malibu Comics published because unlike with AMERICAN FLAGG I actually read a lot of the books.

The first one was ULTRAFORCE and as it should come as no surprise to anybody who has visited this blog over a longer period of time it was all because of George Perez. While a lot of people will tell you that the 90s was the worst decade in comicbooks I don't think that is true - as you can see in the many posts I wrote defending that decade or featuring comics from that period - and subsequently there has been a lot of appreciation of 90s comicbooks lately. True, a lot of that has to do with nostalgia and also with the sorry state the comicbook industry is in right now but what you can't deny is that the 90s had an explosive expansion of publishers that wanted to cash into the big boom caused by iMAGE Comics arrival.

So there were a lot of options available to comicbook creators beside the big two or other well established independent publishers like Dark Horse Comics, Fantagraphics or Kitchen Sink. And George used this opportunity to do series like ISAAC ASIMOV'S I - BOTS or Malibu Comics ULTRAFORCE.

As for me there were already a lot of options available to get american comicbooks in Germany so that while it was difficult finding series not published by the big two it was not impossible. Although truth to be told it was quite some time after they were first published that I managed to get all of the issues by George Perez. Plus as I already mentioned there were spanish translations of the ULTRAVERSE comicbooks so whenever I was on vacation in Spain I bought any I could get as I already was buying more mainstream american series back in Germany and so was looking for series off the beaten path for my holiday comicbook entertainment.

Also Spain has always been way ahead in comparison to Germany when it comes to publishing american comics so that I usually first encountered the more independent american material while being on vacation. Since my homebase back then was Germany I brought tons of spanish comics to old Deutschlande and later on I wished I had left them in Spain. Then they would have been still here when I was forced to relocate to Spain.

On the other hand a lot of the comicbooks that I still had here in Spain were lost when we moved so who knows. In any case, I had at least all of the ULTRAFORCE issues by George Perez either the original US comics or the spanish translations. I don't think there are any german translations.

And that's where we will wrap things up for Today as it is already late at night and if I don't stop now I can't include any pictures until Tomorrow.

And like I said this post is already one day late. But don't worry we will continue this topic in our next post which will be either about PRIME or George Perez ULTRAFORCE - even if I don't have a lot of coloured pages.

welcome to the ultraverse hope you survive the experience was going to be the title for this post but it was too long

ultra stuff

ultra links

ultra videos

he wrote the strangers for malibu comics ultraverse

what happened to the ultraverse

sorry no reprints of this material

dead heat

corrie yee special

ultraforce episode three

abrafaxe movie

mosaik

steve gerber one of the architects of the ultraverse

schlefaz brut des boesen written directed and starring modern talkings thomas anders who also did the music and plays the main character

cobra episode seven

ultra banner

ultra quote of the day

Howard Chaykin's AMERICAN FLAGG - part 2

For everyone who thought Yesterday's post about AMERICAN FLAGG was my idea of an April Fool's Day prank no, I was serious. And to prove that - and also because I just finished adding the rest of the original Howard Chaykin artwork to that post - here is the second part which I promised.

Now the attentive blog visitor may have noticed that some of the covers from AMERICAN FLAGG that I included in our first post on this seminal series are the original covers by First Comics - like the one you can see above - while some of them sport the Dynamite Entertainment logo.

That's because most of the scans from the original comicbooks that one can find on the interwebs ( and I want to stress again that 90 percent of what I use in my posts consists of material that I find on the internet and that I don't own any of the original artwork you see here as some people think I am loaded with money ) are of really poor quality and so I used scans from Dynamite Entertainment's DEFINITE COLLECTION reprint which sadly only covers the first twelve issues. Although to be fair these twelve first issues are considered to be the quintessential AMERICAN FLAGG issues which tell one big story while later you have Howard Chaykin leaving the title and other writer and artists coming in. So I understand Dynamite Entertainment's decision to stick to the good part especially in light of the fact that there will be only a limited interest even in that since AMERICAN FLAGG is not as sought after as it should be.

In any case, usually I stick to the scans from the original comicbooks as I prefer the subtle and varied colour palette they used back in the day over the glossy, thick computer colouring they use nowadays which more often than not overpowers the original line art. However I also want to bring my readers the best visuals so in cases where the original scans are not very good I go for the reprints. And you will find more of the scans from the original comicbooks in this post so you can judge for yourself if you would have made the same decision. As for the order in which I am posting the pages, as longtime followers of the blog know I like to keep pages from the same issue in the same post but since these BLACK AND WHITE posts ( which is not a racial slur and only means that you have the original black and white art alongside the corresponding coloured pages ) are made to showcase the original artwork I skipped a few pages to include more original artwork. Apart from that I am sticking to the original publishing order from the first AMERICAN FLAGG series which lasted 50 issues, skipping the parts that were done by other artists and continuing with the second AMERICAN FLAGG series where First Comics managed to lure Howard Chaykin back in and which lasted 12 issues.

I am not including any artwork from the AMERICAN FLAGG SPECIAL ( At least not at the moment. Later on, who knows ? ) because I have already enough of a big headache figuring out which page is from which series.

oh say can you see

flagg stuff

flagg links

flagg videos

howard chaykin

controversial

issue one

written by howard chaykin

viper

briana smith part three

daimn these girls

behind the scenes photoshoot

episode two

franz von assissi

alle jahre wieder

a different version of the folk tale

videobuck shivers

david cronenberg predicting the future in shivers

the time manimal guest starred on night man

the episode in english and it's a miracle that I even found this one

flagg banner

flagg quote of the day