EFFORTPOST [ New Effort Post Series! ][Superhero Archeology #0] The Dramatic rise of Malibu Comics part 1 (Shattered Earth universe)

Superhero Archeology: and introduction

One of the most defining features (or criticisms) of American Superhero comics is that they never end. Superman has basically been continuously published monthly since 1938 which is a lot of issues and a lot of story to cover. Despite this there are plenty of superhero universe which are intended to be ongoing (ideally forever like DC or Marvel) which end up going belly up. Its this pile of lost dreams, tattered capes, controversial story decisions, and interpersonal drama which has come to interest me lately so I thought I'd follow up on my dream of doing a comics drama series by doing a drama write up + review on these strange comics.

Just a few ground rules and terminology before we start:

Superhero universe: a total collection of separate titles which all tell stories that occupy the same continuity. These stories can be tightly connected or just share a loss background continuity.

Imprint: an imprint is a subcompany within another publisher. They can either be a newly formed entity with a specific niche (think of how penguin classics publishes classics for the penguin random house brand) or a publisher gets bought out by another. An imprint maintains a deal of autonomy and often has its own staff and HQ but is ultimately under the thumb of the parent company. The most famous comic imprint is likely Vertigo an imprint of DC comics which focused on self contained, mature comics with less of a focus on superheroes and more on fantasy, sci fi, and horror. This imprint produced popular comics like Sandman, Preacher, and Hellblazer (starring john constantine). Imprints are often used to start new universes within a company separate from the main brand or is the fate of comic publishers which get bought out.

1. Dead Universes can come in many forms on the end of most dead you can have a superhero universe whose parent company utterly goes bankrupt or gets bought out leaving the all the comics cancelled and the characters to never see publication again, like defiant comics. You can have a company who gets bought out by another and has their universe shut down and the most popular characters folded into the new owners universe, like what DC did to Wildstorm. A comic publisher can go fully out of business and have a clean break in continuity only for the universe to be fully rebooted by a new owner, like with Valiant Comics. A dead universe can also be an imprint/separate universe of a major comic company which gets shuttered and its characters reduced to cameo appearances, like Marvel's Ultimate Universe and New Universe.

2. Things like one shot elseworlds or what ifs? or mini series or long running monthly comics with little to no spin offs do not count.

3. There needs to be some evidence that the universe was intended to go on for a long time or was prematurely shuttered so stand alone mini series or series with a definite planned end point do not count

Now with this groundwork laid out lets get on with the show.

An Elf, Aardvark, and Some Teenage Turtles Walk into a Bar

In late 1977 a Canadian cartoonist named Dave Sim would spin his failed fanzine Cerberus, accidentally misspelled as Cerebus at the prints, into a black and white self published Conan Parody called Cerebus the Aardvark. Eventually this book became very successful for a time (enough so that people actually bootlegged copies of the first issue which had become a collectors item) which inspired another Canadian couple, Wendy and Richard Pini, to publish their own black and white comic called Elfquest a few months later and this was also a moderate success. The self publishing success of Dave Sim would lead two more Canadians, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, would create the ultimate comic book parody Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in 1984 which combined elements from all the most popular books at the time. Teenage from the New Teen Titans, mutant from the Uncanny X-men, and Ninjas from Daredevil. The turtle part would be a callback to funny animal comics that inspired them like Cerebus the Aardvark and Howard the Duck.

TMNT was a huge success with its first issue selling 3,000 issues in a few weeks. Sales would only climb and the pair would use merchandising to further expand the reach of the brand. A Playmate toys toy line was a huge success with kids leading to a Saturday morning cartoon to be commissioned which simply furthered the reach of the turtles among kids. Not only was this a success for the creators, but also one for the comic stores that were early adopters. Back issues of the Turtles were quickly becoming collector's items so anyone (or store) who had over ordered the earlier issues now had a fat stack of leftovers they could sell for a profit. This lead to a mass speculation bubble in the mid to late 80s (preceding the massive total industry bubble in the mid 90s). A rapid number of publishers were debuting at a rate that hadn't been seen since the original superhero bubble of the 1940s with many pumping out action/ninja parody titles along with standard fantasy/sci-fi/superhero comics. For example:

Amateur creators were being picked up by these new companies who were publishing upwards of 19 series a month on the hope that at least one would be a TMNT style hit. Comic stores overbought comics in the range of 10s and 100s of thousands in hope that one would become a collectors item. On top of that many of these indie comics (despite being on low quality paper, in black and white, and being made by sub-par talent) sold at a premium of over a $1.50 (sometimes even $2) per comic. For context your average full color newsprint comic from DC or Marvel was 75 cents at this time and books in higher quality formats could go for a $1.25, and annuals or prestige series with higher page counts could go for more. Here is a sample of some average art from this era:

This one below was a $1.75

Oh yeah and this era saw the start of furries

Young Ex-Mutant Samurai Humans and Eternity Comics

In 1986 a small black and white comics publisher Eternity was formed by Brian Marshall and Tony Eng after an infusion of capital and with Sunrise Distributions set to distribute the comics. At the same time a freelance comic writer and editor David Campiti formed a comics packing company (basically a talent agency for comics which outsources the creation of a comic think of how newspapers buy strips from a syndicate vs having a dedicated on the payroll cartoonist like the new yorker had) called Campiti and Associates which focused on selling comics to newly formed publishers. Campiti, burgeoning comics writer David Lawrence, and burgeoning artist Ron Lim came up with a concept to parody the trend of TMNT clones called the Young Ex-Mutant Samurai Humans. It would be about a future where nuclear war has mutated humanity into gross mutants with a group of normal humans being the "weird ones" in this society. The title was then changed to just Ex-Mutants and sold to Eternity comics as their first published comic and was a hit. The book easily grossed more then its meager 400$ advertising budget and printing costs. Its not hard to see why since the concept is novel and Ron Lim could actually draw in a professional comics style.

As a modern read its not particularly great. For one the issue has way too much going on we are first introduced to the world of Ex-Mutants and see some mutants looking sad and wishing they were human. Then we get an exposition dump about the nuclear war.

Then we see a scientist, called The Doctor or Doc, who finds a fully functional solar battery just lying in the rubble that he takes and uses to activate his science machine that turns five mutants back into humans (4 women and 1 man, steamy!).

He then trains them in life skills and shows them to the rest of the mutants which causes a race war

We then see a spooky masked evil mutant called Fred (totally not shredder) who wants to kill the ex-mutants and sends his gang after them.

The ex-mutants then leave in a car to explore the world but the crash it. With some shadowy figures watching them.

As you can see there is a lot of stuff happening here with nothing but the most thin character traits propping everyone up (and even then I cant tell any of the ex-mutants apart), also despite being formed as a parody there is basically no parody elements here as its a pretty straight foreword action book with banter.

Amazing Comics

For unspecified reasons Marshall and Campiti feuded so with a fresh capitol influx Campiti founded Amazing Comics to publish black and white comics and Wonder Comics to publish color comics. With his own money Campiti founded Pied Piper Comics to publish special products like posters, art books, or graphic novels. During one of these arguments Lawrence and Lim sided with Campiti and moved the Ex-Mutants to Amazing Comics; reprinting the eternity issue with added bonus pages as a special edition. These bonus pages included a steamy s*x scene which, judging by letters, seemed to be somewhat controversial. Shield your eyes kids!

In issue 2 we learn that the shadowy figures were actually a group of benevolent, agrarian bikers called the wild knights and the ex-mutants agree to repair their bikes. Fred's gang attacks the encampment and the ex-mutants fight them off.

In a B plot a mysterious baby shows up at the doctor's door which he begins taking care of but as a last minute stinger the baby's hand grows super large and smashes the floor. We are also introduced to a stupid henchman of Fred's named Douglass who looks like a cartoon character.

In issue 3 the baby monster continues to attack Doc until he runs outside and is captured by Fred; who reveals that the baby is his son and that mutants are born normal babies but become giant monsters after a set time.

At the time the Ex-Mutants party, drink, and eat with the wild knights and Douglass who is now a good guy. Suddenly the Ex-Mutants collapse and its revealed they are dying from radiation poisoning. They decide to head back to the city and visit Doc so he can cure them. At the same time a computer in a bunker many miles beneath the earth suddenly springs to life.

In issue 4 the Ex-Mutants show back up in the city and realize that Fred is going to execute Doc. A large group of the mutants then turn on Fred and side with the New Mutants. The baby then sides with Doc because Doc was nice to him and both the Baby and Fred kill each other. After this Doc and Ex-Mutants are declared heroes and become the leaders of the city. Doc then puts the Ex-Mutants into pods to cure them of their radiation poisoning. I'll admit that killing off what appears to be the main villain so soon is pretty bold and according to Lawrence the series was originally going to be a 4 issue mini series with the Ex-mutants dying shortly after Fred. The issue is also a tribute to Lawrence's recently deceased cat who has a few cameo appearances in the issue.

Issue 5 is entirely a stealth pilot for a spin off centered on a new group of characters, The New Humans. The humans were test subjects for an experimental stasis system for long distance space travel. They would be frozen for 90 minutes as a test of the technology except the nuclear war happens during this experiment so all the scientists are killed and the test subjects stay in stasis until the battery lets out and they are left the last normal humans in this world. They also find a nuclear powered aircraft with unlimited fuel they use to fly around. The New Humans fly into NYC (where Doc and the EM live) and run into Doc. We learn one member of the New Humans is actually Doc's mom (this was foreshadowed in the expanded version of issue 1). Doc then demand the New Humans hand over their nuclear reactor as he can use it to start purifying the land and water and the New Humans instead want to keep flying around looking for places untouched by radiation for some reason. Doc pulls a gun on them and Douglass (that weird cartoon guy) distracts Doc for long enough for Doug and the New Humans to escape. In terms of drama it seems like originally issue 5 and issue 1 of the coming new humans spin off would be drawn by a new artist to give Ron Lim a break except this unnamed guy never turned in work so the issue had to be cobbled together by a variety of artists which probably explains why this issue features a massive drop in art quality. With less backgrounds, simpler designs, and everything being hard to tell apart.

Pied Piper Comics and The Secret of Eternity Comics

In the letters page of issue 3 Lawrence hints that issue 5 of the Ex-Mutants would spin off into a new title. This would be presumably a New Humans series except such a series no Ex-Mutants issue 6 ever released at Amazing comics. We learn that man who financed eternity was named Scott Rosenberg, the same man who owned Sunrise Distribution and he weirdly demanded a lot of secrecy. Eternity and Amazing were locked in a race to the bottom to try and crowd the other out of the market by pumping out more and more titles. Anyway eventually the checks dried up for everyone at Amazing Comics and the mysterious board of directors was silent on the matter. Campiti then moved the Amazing comics talent, including the Ex-Mutants team, over to his own company Pied Piper comics to publish while the payment situation at Amazing could be sorted out. This was summarized in the editorial page for New Humans #1 (Ill note Pied Piper comics soon began to also mass announce issues many of which were never made.

At the same time in July 1987 The Comics journal (or maybe Rosenberg himself in a press release I honestly can't tell) dropped a further bombshell: Rosenberg had secretly financed not just Eternity comics, but also four other comic publishers: Amazing, Wonder, Imperial, and Malibu comics. This was done in secret for seeming a few reasons: one is that he wanted to force a TMNT style hit by placing a bunch of publishers in contest with each other where no matter who won Rosenberg would win in the end and second is that Imperial and Malibu comics were both founded after the other 3 and after the payment issues described at Amazing and Wonder. Meaning Rosenberg was likely funneling profits he should have been paying to others back into entirely new comic companies. Tom Mason, Cartoonist and co founder of Malibu, described Rosenberg's strange scheme as this:

https://scoop.previewsworld.com/Home/4/1/73/1017?articleID=195091

He secretly financed four (yes, that’s right) comic book companies with the idea that they would publish comics, he’d push them through his existing distribution channel at Sunrise, then sell individual copies by mail order through yet another company of his called Direct Comics. Having a distribution company that distributes books from multiple publishers, then expands to publishing its own books while also running a mail order division isn’t a bad way to create a vertically-integrated company without many assets. Unfortunately, he did it in secret, and had been trying to manipulate the market to create “hot” comics that could be sold at higher prices post-publication, and it all went bad when the bubble of inflated high-priced “hot” comics burst. Sunrise was bankrupt and shut down leaving behind a trail of bad debt that hurt a lot of small publishers at the same time Malibu was launching.

With the market bottoming out and the gig being up Rosenberg would use his majority share in all companies to suddenly take control of them. Folding all of the brands into Malibu comics and shuttering all of the brands except for the most profitable one, Eternity, which was turned into an imprint of Malibu. It seemed that Lawrence, Lim, and Campiti had smelled a rat in Rosenberg and has avoided a disaster.

Back to pied piper comics with the Ex-Mutants issue 6. The ex-mutants wake up from their healing pods and discover that Doc has deified them as gods in order to keep all of the mutants under his thumb. The ex-mutants are uncomfortable with this new status and are attacked by a mutant loyal to Fred. Doc intervenes and kills the attacker which enrages the Ex-Mutants who now have a no-kill code despite killing in issues 1-4. The Ex-Mutants then leave NYC disgusted by Doc's actions. In a backup story we see that Doc has made a new Ex-mutant called norma jean to serve as his wife and is in the process of making a new batch of Ex-Mutants he can hold up to his rule. With this story there seems to be an attempt to move the Ex-Mutants in a more serious and introspective direction but it doesn't fit at all with the character's previous actions.

The New Humans spin off ran 3 issues at pied piper and since they have slightly more personality then the Ex-Mutants I will list them off. Duke Goldberg: An all American military man who hates commies and rowdies and race mixing

Kelly Brock: Doc's mom

Roger Brunner: a nerd who wants to bang kelly

Calvin Gordon: a black guy who wants to bang kelly and only exists so Duke can cry about race mixing

Issue 1 is just a slightly expanded version of their origin from issue 5 of the ex-mutants not at all interesting. In issues 2 and 3 the new humans land in England which is full of mutants, lead by a delusional figurehead king, and actually led by Fred (so basically indistinguishable from real England). The new humans conclude that the mutants were not in fact caused by radiation but genetic warfare waged at the same time as the bombs, and wait didn't Fred die? Well it turns out fred is like a rank or a persona different people put on or maybe hes cloned either way there is multiple freds which lead gang branches in different cities. This Fred really has it out for Duke and tries to attack him while Roger and Calvin try to have a threesome with Kelly. Also Fred has a Cartoon face like Douglass and issue 3's cover is colored in with marker.

Now back to the Ex-Mutants. In issue 7 the ex mutants find two laurel and hardy looking goons (they have appeared periodically since the special edition of issue 1 but haven't been important until now) wandering around the smoldering ruins of the Wild Knights HQ. One of the women tries to kill them believing them to behind the attack but the others stop her until more evidence can be gathered. Back with Doc he laments how much the Ex-Mutants have grown from wise cracking action heroes to somber travelers with everything seeming more gritty and serious now (lamp shading the change in tone). The two goons call over a tank which the Ex-mutants can't fight and they are sent to a prison camp run by a mutant gang called the frogs. The next issue is called "A day at the race war"

In issue 8 we start with the Ex-Mutants and Wild Knights sitting in the Frog's prison only for the issue to immediately jump to Doc and his backstory. You see Doc's parents were both big groucho marx and classic comedy fans and ofc his mom left to be a part of the experiment that made the new humans. He and his dad survived the nuclear war, mutated, and lived together until his dad died of cancer and doc was left alone. Doc then started his experiments with remaking humanity via genetically creating clones of classic Hollywood characters. Like Norma Jean who is a clone of Marylin Monroe or the laurel and hardy goons. He also made clones of cartoon characters which I guess explains all the weird looking cartoon guys. Now Doc hates his creations and kills Norma Jean, gets a sci fi gun thing, rescues the ex-mutants and wild knights off screen, takes the Ex-Mutants back to the lab, turns them into Mutants making them the ex-ex-mutants, and activates a Russian nuclear warhead in the heart of NYC. If it wasn't clear Pied Piper was dying due to the black and white small publisher market collapse, the same thing that killed Rosenberg's plan. Ex-Mutants issue 8 seemed to have dropped in late 1987 with Pied Piper officially going bust in early 1988. This decline can easily be seen in this issue which has four writers, two pencillers, and two inkers. They couldn't even afford a letterer so all of the lettering is very cheap type set stuff. On top of that the story is super rushed side stepping the presumed action of fighting the frogs for an exposition dump of Doc which has very simply art with little to no background. Then it all ends in a random anti climatic death of everything ending that comes out of no where.

One more issue of Ex-Mutants would be produced by Pied Piper, Lawrence & Lim's Ex-Mutants Microseries: Erin #1. In this comic Erin is peeped on by Douglass's weird redditor manlet incel brother and they set off to look for Douglass. Scott acts like a redditor the whole time and tries to show off how smart he is by name dropping Shakespeare, philosophers, and sherlock Holmes which doesn't appease based r-slur Erin who doesn't know how to read. Eventually they find find a giant rabbit baby because apparently cartoon mutants like Douglass start off as giant cartoon bunnies for two years before becoming cartoon people. They drop the baby off with Doc and Norma Jean and then Erin gets exposed to some horny plant that makes her wanna frick scott. Scott being a trucel refuses and simply talks her ear off about nerd shit. The exact continuity of this issue is unclear. Erin references being attacked by the frogs which happens in issue 7 and 8. This cannot be after issue 8 as issue 8 has Doc kill Norma and also nuke NYC. This cant be after issue 7 as Erin is captured by the frogs and locked in their prison in issue 7 and broken out by Doc at the end of issue 8.

From here to Eternity

After the demise of Piper most of the talent moved with Campiti to his new company Innovation Publishing which was pretty successful, however two creators were unable to join. You see Rosenberg was in a conundrum, while he had salvaged together Malibu and Eternity was moderately profitable he didn't have that TMNT level hit he wanted and it seemed the closest he had gotten was with that first issue of Ex-mutants at eternity. He then had eternity launch a very strange lawsuit against Lawrence and Lim which is not fully understood. With a lot of those Rosenberg gate stuff there isn't many clear sources avaible now with even the different Wikipedia pages contradicting each other and the timeline being very vague. Frankly Rosenberg-gate is a massive untapped drama well that someone smarter and more connected then me should write a book about because its crazy. An article from the Capital City Distribution’s Comic Dealer Newsletter says this:

The complexity of this situation can be illustrated by looking at Ex-Mutants, one of the most successful of the properties in dispute. In the past, it had been produced by Lawrence and Lim, in association with Campiti and Associates for TriCorp Enterprises, Inc., of Brooklyn, owned by Brian Marshall and Tony Eng. Orders for the book were solicited on behalf of Eternity Publishing by Mark Hamlin of Pied Piper Press. When the book was shipped, it was invoiced by Guaranteed Services on behalf of Eternity. Campiti then broke first with TriCorp and later with Eternity. If the question of ownership of this property goes to court, just deciding which court has jurisdiction is going to require a large amount of legal work and a major court ruling, since Campiti and Associates is a West Virginia company, TriCorp is a New York corporation, Pied Piper is a Michigan company, Guaranteed Services is a California company and Eternity Publishing is based in Boulder, Colorado.

With all of these packagers, publishers, and distributors being interconnected it turned out the rights were a legal nightmare with Eternity claiming they infact owned the Ex-mutants brand and all of the books associated. It would be impossible tell who is in the right without access to the contracts between Campiti and Lawerence/Lim and the one between Campiti and Eternity, and as far as I can tell Campiti has not commented on this case. Eventually for unknown reasons were able to convince Lawernce/Lim they owned the rights for the characters in exchange for megar royalties. Lawrence had this to say on the case http://www.silbermedia.com/qrd/archives/28davidlawrence.html

QRD - Do you know who owns the rights to the Ex-Mutants & the rest of the Shattered Earth cast? Do you see yourself ever buying them?

David - It would take an infinite number of lawyers with an infinite number of typewriters, and eventually they'd produce a complete episode of Gilligan's Island, but probably never this question. I think Marvel eventually bought Mailibu, so they would claim to have whatever rights Malibu laid claim to. Eternity/Malibu conceded that Ron and I owned all the characters we created and the stories we'd done; they just sort of claimed they owned the right to do their own version. It was unfortunate. I think that it would have been best for everyone if we'd just sat down and talked. Everybody lost as things turned out.

So it seems Eternity claimed while Lawrence and Lim owned all characters and stories but that eternity owned the trademark and right to make new stories, which is a total crock of shit as Eternity picked up the Ex-mutants storyline exactly where it left off with the same characters and without any input from Lawrence and Lim. Lawrence and Lim don't even seem to own the original comics as eternity reprinted issues 1-7 of the Ex-Mutants and issues 1-3 of the new humans without any license from Lawrence and Lim minus royalties. I am assuming Lawrence and Lim got royalties for all ex-mutant content not just reprints as Lawrence mentions getting royalties for an ex mutants video game that came out based on a total reboot Malibu did late. From what I can tell Lawrence and Lim were both likely tired from all the legal shit they dealt with only for eternity to swoop in with a lawsuit and a bunch of fancy legalese which strong armed Lawrence and Lim into signing away all of the ex-mutants rights in exchange for royalties to avoid a costly and confusing lawsuit. Again its hard to tell as there is so little on this case other then the fact that Eternity got the rights to the ex-mutants in a law suit and Lawrence and Lim got royalties. I'm not even sure of the timeline here I cant tell if Eternity stole the rights before or after Pied Piper went bust. In Ex-Mutants issue 8 the editors page lists a bunch of new comics with no indication that Pied Piper would die in a few months, but it lists issue 8 as the last issue of the Ex-Mutants. The last page of issue 8 would tell readers to see next issue if the Ex-Mutants survived with the tagline "from here to eternity". Its not clear if this is telling readers to see the next issue at Eternity comics or if its just an unfortunate tag line.

After this Lawrence's name would never grace an Ex-Mutant comic - minus a single Eternity published annual-(despite it getting title billing as Lawrence and Lim's Ex-Mutants at piper comics) and they would go their separate ways. Lim would be reduced to doing a few covers for Eternity. Lawrence would write a few more comics like Lunatic Fringe and Hero Alliance, but would leave comics to serve as the managing editor at Dabel Brothers Publishing. A company whose website went offline last year and according to facebook comments on their page have constantly funded comics that never came out. Dabel Brothers Publishing's bread and butter seemed to be comic adaptations of the Wheel of Time which they feuded with Dynamite comics over with Dynamite comics now owning the rights as Dabel is defunct. The last scripting work he did was on a comics adaption of Patricia Briggs' Alpha & Omega: Cry Wolf. Ron Lim would be discovered by Marvel and end up drawing some of their most high profile 90s comics like the infinity trilogy(gauntlet, war, and crusade). He would also work at Archie on the Sonic comic. He would continue doing one shots and variant covers for marvel since 2016.

The Shattered Earth Chronicles

Eternity would in theory pick up exactly where Lawrence and Lim left off with New Humans continuing with issue 4 and the Ex-Mutants getting a new #1 in a new series called Ex-Mutants The Shattered Earth Chronicles with both books getting entirely new creative teams. While this is true the series would take a much darker tone and a new status quo that featured heavy retcons. The universe would also be expanded into more spin offs and one shot specials.

One of the first comic's published was Solo Ex-Mutants #2 which involves Vikki of the Ex-Mutants telling some kids a story about her and Douglass being pirates and fighting Popeye at a nebulous point in cannon. It may be in concept, part, or fully an unpublished Pied Piper Comic Lawrence & Lim's Ex-Mutants Microseries: Vikki #1, but no one knows how far along microseries Vikki was maybe the basic concept was turned into solo #2 or maybe it was finished and just printed as solo #2. of note in the back matter is that the coming new Ex-Mutants Shattered earth series is hyped up as being part of one of the most sucessful black and white franchises, so comic stores should over order to prepare for the massive sales.

In the New Humans #4 the change in direction is quiet visible. The comic stops where #3 left off only with strange scientists watching the ordeal. Douglass suddenly sees himself as a bunch of code, and Roger is sent to the cuck shed as kelly only wants dat BBC . While fighting DUke Fred begins to go crazy with his body and face rapidly changing. Eventually all the new humans are captured and realize they have been spied on by these mysterious scientists. Roger finds out fred and all the cartoon people are actually shape shifting androids the scientists made in order to understand old human media by selling how old cartoon characters interacted with the new humans. This completely retcons the doctors back story and the explanation given in Ex-Mutants issue 8. The central machine is destroyed in a fight and fred and douglass and all the cartoon people die. So in one issue a major plot point has been retconned and the most silly aspects of the old series have been totally removed in preparation for the ex mutants relaunch.

The next spin-off would be a Wild Knights themed one where the Wild Knights travel in a truck-motorcycle caravan now that their base is destroyed and solve various problems for people. In their first issue they discover a weird religious cult that wants to kill everyone so they can all go to heaven.

The new Ex-mutants series is mostly just a summary of the past few issues but adds one major retcon: the bomb used by Doc was actually a teleportation bomb that sent the ex-mutants to another dimension. One stayed behind to be tutored by these beings and the rest came back to NYC only to see that the bomb has caused extra dimensional monsters to attack. Now the plot revolves around an alternate dimension royal family with one of the ex-mutants being trained in a phoenix force (the whole thing is just a rip off of the X-men Dark phoenix saga which is funny because Lawrence took pains to stress the Ex-Mutants were not derivative of the X-Men) . The art is also super amateur looking it has some charm but man is it rough.

The final Ex-Mutants comic by Lawrence would be Ex-Mutants annual 1 a strange story which takes place during the time when Doc was training the ex mutants, so notWalt Disney is in cryogenic stasis over notDisneyland and the life support system is powered by people believing in the notDisney magic. However since everyone is nuked no one has time for woke propaganda anymore. Doc plays a notdisney movie for the ex-mutants which the computer senses and teleports the ex-mutants to notDisney land. The computer then makes notDisney movie themed traps to kill them to save notWalt. NotWalt wakes up and tells the computer he would rather die then kill the ex-mutants. NotMickey hugs notWalt and the ex-mutants teleport home. A very werid story and very melodramatic in how sad it is over no one watching Disney Movies.

The titles would continue for roughly a year with increasingly strange and disconnected plots. The solo Ex-mutants series would be replaced with another anthology title, simply called Shattered Earth, that would focus on random tales of the universe. The New Humans would focus a sentient alien computer virus which infects a soviet space station and needs the humans help to fight against evil aliens. Then there is a woman and her robot dog which contains the consciousness of her dead husband and this is related to the aliens. The Wild Knights is just them going from city to city and finding some trouble sometimes related the red kross. The solo ex mutants mostly just focuses on random stories, but does give an origin for Fred. in Solo Ex Mutants #4 we see Doc's first mutant to human transformation was a man named fred who he leaves for dead following a battle. I assume you can put two and two together. The shattered earth series would have 3 random stories often times just generic twist ones (woah the monster chasing the man turned out to actually be nice) or ones on new characters that went nowhere. The Ex-Mutants shattered earth chronicles series had the Ex-Mutants wonder around blabbing about the phoenix and how they will teach everyone reality warping powers to save earth while going through episodic adventures. Doc and the New Ex-Mutants (remember those guys from issue 6?) were sent to a weird heck dimension and become demons and want to kill the Ex-Mutants. Beyond the general shared setting these books had no relation to each other.

There is some interesting lost media here. For one in Solo Ex Mutants issue 5 an ad is seen for a new Shattered Earth earth book called Desert Fox to drop in Winter 1988. In winter 1988 Shattered Earth #1 and #2 would release. In Shattered Earth #1 Desert Fox is stated to be a miniseries and issue 2 has a story called Desert Fox that is stated to lead into the coming miniseries. It involves an aussie foid who flies fighter planes for some org and shes human and she fights an evil mutant cult. Nothing is explained and this miniseries never released. Shattered Earth #1 said it would feature a story in issue 5 drawn by Ron Lim (the original artist who Eternity booted off the series), but such a story never arrived presumably due to Ron Lim now working at Marvel.

Due to space constraints I can't really do justice to how weird this gets. Like issue 2 of Ex Mutants the shattered earth chronicles is about a baseball themed government operating out of yankee stadium and its done like a Frank Miller Daredevil comic but everyone is talking about the scaredness of fricking baseball. Or this werid horny superhero called the Gnat whose just a tiny guy and wants to crawl in the foid's kitties.

By August 1989 most of the books would be cancelled with only the main Ex Mutants book going into early 1990 meaning this universe only lasted a year. The Shattered Earth anthology had a bunch of new characters, some even more interesting then those in the main books, but many ended cliff hangers which were never resolved. The Wild Knights ended on an arc where the leader of the red cross dreams up the location for the last nukes and sets out to launch them so everyone can die and go to heaven. Wild Knights ended at issue 10 in the middle of this arc on a cliff hanger that will never be resolved. The New Humans shook up the book even more with Calvin being thrown out of the ship in space and Duke dying and being revived as a mind controlled cyborg. The rest of the team + dog fricking woman would fly into the hollow earth and see Atlantis where saucer men (guys with hats that are UFOS) would kidnap them. One of these saucer men is Calvin who they remove the ufo from his head and he goes crazy and nuke Atlantis. Then its revealed the world has been controlled by a secret society of rich people who bath in the fountain of youth for a few centuries. Except the leader is tried of ruling a ruined earth so he quits and the new humans get used as pawns in a war between these members who each wanna be ruler. They then travel tp HQ of the secret society leader man who was just pretending to quit so he could watch his flunkies fight. All of the secret society members die and the new humans bathe in the fountains of youth and return to how they were at the start of the book.

The Ex Mutants the Shattered Earth chronicles continued with the Ex-Mutants traveling to a kingdom and getting arrested by a king for murder. An evil wizard locked in a tower from the magic dimension uses his powers to summon monsters and unlease Doc and his minions from the heck dimension. The Ex-Mutants kill this evil wizard and doc and the king dies and their alien wizard companion dies. After that there is a summary issue where the ghost of the wizard alien tells the kings wizard how the Ex-Mutants have all become flanderized dipshits and how they wont be able to save the world. In the next issue the Ex-Mutant who stayed in the other dimension undergoes a mental trial and uncovers her true power. The last issue is fricking insane. So it has the Gnat superhero on an alien planet writing an alien sitcom that's preformed live where the audience periodically votes from a selection of options what will happen next. He narrates how the Ex-Mutants just did nothing and sat around while the king's kingdom fell into a slum because they suck and then the super magical Ex-Mutant shows up and remakes the world as a capitalist consumerist utopia where her and her friends live happily forever like its some Japanese CGDCT series. Its weird and seems like some meta commentary on how the Ex-Mutants brand became increasingly reliant on insane plot twists and commercialized. Remember this book started as a TMNT parody.

Why was the Ex-Mutants Cancelled?

I honestly don't know. None of the Shattered Earth Eternity issues had a letters column or editorial pages so I have no idea what happened behind the scenes or if audiences liked it. I assume the black and white market was in a downfall and the Ex-Mutants was likely hit by it (doesnt help the series had radically changed from what made it popular). I also think the original series owed a large amount of its success to Ron Lim's consistent and professional quality art which made it stand out in the indie market. Frankly the eternity issues were constantly switching artists and most were passable at best. However the same writer stayed on the whole time. The best art was on the shattered earth anthology and Wild Knights 8 had really good art by Bryan Carson:

but this was the exception as he only drew one issue. I'll also note that Malibu was now publishing 4 lines of comics at this point: Malibu color superhero stuff, Aircel Canadian comics and adult comics, Adventure comics for modern licensed stuff, and Eternity for black and white anime adaptations, amerimanga stuff, and classics adaptations. The Ex-Mutants really didn't fit in any of these categories as the edgy non-superhero niche of Eternity was gradually faded out with the fall of the black and white market. As a universe the Shattered Earth was mostly low quality and weird and also wasn't really a universe. The books never crossed over nor had any impact over each other (the only reference being in New Humans where a secret society member mentions the ongoing fight with the evil wizard). If you want to read the series in the exact order I did I've uploaded the whole series, in order [here](https://archive.org/details/ex-mutants-shattered-earth-universe/01 Ex-Mutants v1 01 Special Edition (Amazing comics) [TheRant]/page/n15/mode/2up). I doubt this will ever be reprinted for reasons that will be clear in part 3 so eat up.

This ended up being a lot longer then I expected so this will be split into 3 parts rather then just 2. So join me next time as we explore the rise of Malibu's color line of superhero comics.

Summary

How dead is the universe? /5

This continuity of the Ex-mutants will never be referenced, reprinted, or appear ever again.

Did it get a proper send off?

It ended with a joker side character on a random alien planet summarizing decades of off screen events so you tell me.

Why is it dead?

Unknown. Possibly low sales

Will it ever return?

Unlikely for reasons that will become clearer in part 3.

QRD - Do you know who owns the rights to the Ex-Mutants & the rest of the Shattered Earth cast? Do you see yourself ever buying them?

David - It would take an infinite number of lawyers with an infinite number of typewriters, and eventually they'd produce a complete episode of Gilligan's Island, but probably never this question. I think Marvel eventually bought Mailibu, so they would claim to have whatever rights Malibu laid claim to. Eternity/Malibu conceded that Ron and I owned all the characters we created and the stories we'd done; they just sort of claimed they owned the right to do their own version. It was unfortunate. I think that it would have been best for everyone if we'd just sat down and talked. Everybody lost as things turned out.

Other KatserKitty comic posts:

Dead Universes

The Rise of dramatic Malibu Comics part 1

Mansplaining Capeshit Drama

DC comics strikes out with dark crisis

Misc

Malibu comics video

90s Dc publishes a chud detrans comic

!effortposters I spent over two weeks writing this and its super long

!chuds a (((berg))) does some mischief

!edgelords there is some edgy 80s comic shit here