.jpg)
Jason Shayer is an expert in the field of Marvel and DC Comics. He has half a dozen short story credits and is a regular contributor to Back Issue! magazine. You an find him nostalgically revisiting the 1980s in his Blogs - Marvel 1980s and DC 1980s
In the previous article about Comics Evolution, several highs of the comic book industry have been highlighted along with a few lows but none lower than what hit in the early 1990s. The 1990s were a decade of surplus and greed as all sorts of promotions, like die-cut covers and hordes of family related titles (like the X-Men, Batman, and Superman titles), flooded the comic book market and led to its significant downturn as the speculator boom imploded on itself.
The explosion of the X-Men titles was led by Jim Lee and Chris Claremont as they launched another monthly X-Men book, simply entitled The X-Men, with variant covers. This event proved to be Marvel’s most popular as the sales figures were reported to be over 8.1 million copies. DC Comics responded a few years later with their Death of Superman story-line which culminated with Superman #75 which sold 2-3 million copies. While it was a commercial success, what proved to be entertaining and rewarding for fans was that the follow up story-line, which introduces four different characters, all with their own approaches to carrying on the legacy of Superman.