EFFORTPOST [Superhero Archeology #0.5] The Dramatic rise of Malibu Comics part 2 (The mysterious death of the protectors)

continued from https://rdrama.net/post/169431/marseylongpost-new-effort-post-series-sneedbuddysuperhero

Dedicated to @Bellicose-Twink (he payed me 300 dc to finish this)

Wanna read the comics I'm talking about here? Check out this link: https://archive.org/details/genesis-universe

Tom Mason's Dinos

When Scott Rosenberg financed Malibu in 1986 he placed cartoonist Tom Mason and Dave Olbrich as its heads. I'll note a cartoonist is someone who writes and draws their own comics (usually also implying they handle all art duties but not always) and I'm not entirely sure what Tom Mason drew. At Malibu he only wrote and edited comics. Tom Mason's commentary provides some insight into the Ex-Mutants legal case:

Ex-Mutants had been created by David Lawrence and Ron Lim, and was published by Campiti through the Amazing imprint. But they lost control of the title in a bizarre dispute with Scott that I could never figure out – this had all happened just before I signed on to Malibu. The end result was that Scott ended up with Ex-Mutants being published through Eternity.... Eternity still had some books that were selling well, but Scott wanted to move its operations to the West Coast so we inherited the Eternity books that were in the pipeline. That included Ex-Mutants.

Tom joined Malibu at its founding in 1986 and Ex-mutants was published at Campiti's company pied piped in late 1987. So I don't know how its possible for the legal issues around the book to predate Tom unless they somehow happened right after the move to amazing. I'm just assuming Tom either misremembered the timeline or was trying to wash his hands of the situation.

In 1988 Tom Mason wrote a comedic comic series called Dinosaurs for Hire. It originally going to be a comic about Elvis Presley fighting crime but he changed it to dinos to avoid a lawsuit. The titular Dinosaurs for Hire are a group of 3 dinos who act as mercenaries for the US government. They are never given a definite origin but are implied to be aliens. The first 5 issues feature Bryon Carson on art and is more of an action + comedy affair as the dinos uncover a soviet vampire corruption candle. The next 4 issues were just random one off comedy skits with a few different artists that learned far more on the comedy. I'll just say I didnt find these comics very funny nor that well drawn so I'm not gonna bother with an issue by issue summary. I'll just leave you with the reveal that Dinosaurs for hire invented braap posting.

In terms of drama there was a letter from a very angry beetles fan

It seems that Dinosaurs for Hire would be a victim of its own success as by issue 9 it was cancelled so Tom and Eternity could pursue tv and movie deals in hopes they had finally found their TMNT

Adventure Comics

In 1988 Malibu bought out the Canadian company Aircel and in 1989 it bought Adventure comics another Canadian comic company (which actually was originally part of Aircel). Adventure comics was used for licensed comics. One of these was 1991's Miss Furry in full color. Miss Fury (originally called Black Fury) was one of the first golden age female superheroes debuting in 1941 Sunday strips.

By the 90s the character had fallen into the public domain so Adventure published a 4 issue sequel series to the original following Miss Fury's Grand Daughter who finds the old costume in the attic and wears it to a costume party only to beat the shit out of a drug dealer on the way there which resparks rumors of the 40s era hero. There is an imposter called Black fury who wears a miss fury costume but does crime and a second miss fury also fighting crime. The art here looks okay in costume but the normal humans look awful and the story doesn't really go anywhere besides the obvious reveals of there being 3 Miss fury's and who the second non evil miss fury is.

Public Domain Superheroes

In the 1940s comics featured its first "bubble" in the form of superheroes themselves. With the wild success of characters like Superman and Captain Marvel dozens of publishers who shat out super-hero content. Most of it cheaply made by freelance publishing syndicates or directly from freelancers themselves for little pay. Many of the people involved too had criminal histories or were involved in shady industries like porn. As the 40s rolled into the 50s Super-heroes rapidly fell in popularity as genre anthology comics- horror, romance, western, monster, war, crime, sci-fi ect-became the new trend. This ended when the Anti-Comics Crusades led to the heavy regulation of comic book companies. Of the companies started in the 40s only two have continued unchanged from then: D.C. and Archie. This rapid collapse led to many of these heroes falling out of trademark and copyright. There is a whole community of people who keep track of golden age heroes in the public domain and make comics about them. Established comic companies will also use public domain heroes in order to get some of the prestige that DC and Marvel have with their long history.

The Protectors

In 1992 Malibu would publish another revival of golden age characters in the form of the Protectors, a superhero team book centered on public domain characters from the defunct centaur comics. I have no idea if this idea was done independently of Miss Fury or if the success of Miss Fury led Malibu to pursue other golden age revivals. Similar to miss Fury this isn't a reboot of the Centaur comics characters but rather a sort of sequel following the characters in the present day after their 40s adventures now roll call:

Man of war

Amazing Man

The Ferret

Fantom of the Fair (renamed to Gravestone) ironically DC would have the fantom in his original name and costume in their own series All Star Squadron and a few other golden age inspired books

Mighty Man

Prince Zardi, The Eternal Man

Masked Marvel renamed to Night Mask

So the Protectors serves as a sequel to the 40s centaur comics where the superheroes fought super villains until the early 80s when an event called the Brinkstone incident happened. All of the superheroes and all of the supervillains lined up in the town of Brinkstone to fight, a large explosion is seen and the town is left in rubble with only the heroes left standing. All of the villains and civilians were simply gone with no bodies recovered and everyone just assumed the superheroes were behind it so superheroes were made illegal. The protectors was originally intended to only be a 6 issue miniseries with 3 one shots but it was popular enough to continue for 20 issues, because of this the first six issues serve as a complete and stand alone arc.

The story starts with a pretty generic super villain named Mister Monday assaulting places. He's super scary so the seemingly immortal hero Gravestone tells the president he needs to assemble a super team. So he calls up Philip Reinhart, the man who was formally the non powered masked vigilante Night Mask, to assemble a team. He calls up the patriotic hero Man of War, Arc a woman who can shoot lasers, and Airman a guy with mechanical wings who flies and they fight some random thugs. At their new base, a decommissioned us tanker ship, Philip's son shows up as the new Night and demands to be let on the team despite having no powers and also not being all that fit. Issue 1 ends with the president telling Gravestone he needs to summon everyone "even the Ferret".

The next issue is the Ferret one shot where we met the Ferret. This sexy beast has advanced animal like speed and strength, a healing factor, and enhanced animal like senses. Him having "animal" powers also makes him very susceptible to hormones and very horny. His civilian identity is as a grunge musician because 90s. He's basically Malibu's attempt to make a Wolverine clone. So anyway Ferret is getting his favorite chinese takeout and then a chinese gang kills the owner which makes Ferret very angry. He finds out the gang has another old centaur hero named Iron Skull, who is a cyborg, under mind control. Ferret frees him and beats up the gangster. Hes also already a member of the protectors as this issue was written before Protector's 1 was finalized so there are some minor continuity issues.

In Protectors 2 the rest of the team is formed. There is prince Zardi, The Eternal man, a powerful and immortal sourcecerer. The Ferret actually joins in this issue. There is the Amazing Man who is plucked from an asylum do to having some unknown mental illness. Its never really explained and he just seems angry, but since its the 90s most of the male heroes are angry. There is Aura who is a black woman. Then the Protectors make their first public media appearance while a strange eye watches.

Next up is The Arrow One shot where we meet arrow a vigilante who doesn't join the protectors as he has less qualms about killing. You see one time Arrow was fighting a super villain and accidentally hit a kid in the knee before the Binkstone Incident. He then decides to return to heroics after the Protectors return and this time kills a kid in the crossfire. Man of War chastises him over this. The villain from the beginning takes another kid hostage but this time he don't miss. He determines that killing criminals is based. Then the weird eye watches him brood.

Protectors 3 the protectors fight Mister Monday's army. Night Mask is a wimp who can't fight. Amazing Man flips out till a new hero called the Witch uses her feminine wiles on him. People are naturally disturbed that their state sanctioned heroes are insane. Reinhart doesn't a give a shit if his son dies. The media debates if the protectors are good or not while the team argues. The protectors bring in one final member in the form of Mighty Man who is currently being just a dad. Mighty Man really hates the Witch for an unknown reason. The Protectors ship is falling apart as there is a union strike going on so no one will fix it. Rinehart goes to a mafia don to pull a favor to break up the strike. Mister Monday attacks Rinehart's car as he's leaving.

Protectors 4 Arrow and Man of War argue some more. Rinehart looses use of legs after the attack and thinks there is a mole in the organization. The witch vaguely threatens Mighty Man. The protectors publicly fight more of Mister Monday's minions and this time the public loves them. Ferret beats up Night Mask to show him how much of a loser he is and Night Mask has a moid moment and thinks the foid comforting him wants to bang him. There is also a shadowy figure telling Mister Monday what to do.

Protectors 5 is the big one where Night Mask is killed, as seen on the cover. The story starts off with a cool effect where the Protectors and Mister Monday are directly compared side by side. It doesn't really mean anything, its not the two have anything in common but hey we finally got something resembling a story telling device. The rest of the issue is pretty simple. The protectors go off and fight Mister Monday's minions. Night Mask gets separated from the group and actually manages to take down some minions on his own. The coms break down so he decides to trace Monday to his base. Monday reveals it was all a trap and broadcasts his fight with night mask which ends with him killing night mask. Looking at the art you probably notice a random hole in it. Well in the 90s one of the gimmicks was "bullet hole" issues where the book would look like it had some visual damage like what happens in the story. In this case its clear the whole thing was done after the issue was finished as the hole only lines up the cover and actively ruins everything else. Its just a random hole that's cuts into the art and letters page like it doesn't even line up with the wound in Night Mask's death spread. Like the one thing you'd want to look right for the bullet hole.

Next is the Airman One shot which mostly sets up the arc after this one. Airman is contacted telepathically by the water based hero thresher who is being held captive. Thresher is the son of Neptune and is captured by the villain The Conqueror who is torturing him to out the secret of "doors". Airman busts him out and beats up the Conqueror. The Conqueror runs back to his master The Great Question.

Now its time for the grand finale of this arc Protectors 6. The Protectors are at their lowest. Amazing Man goes insane and destroys Monday's whole base which was evacuated by the time they arrived and a US senator is using this failure to campaign for their disbanding. Arrow's killing of a child as seen in his one shot continues to escalate hostilities. The protectors then host Night Mask's funeral which is attacked by Monday himself and his goons. It turns out the Protectors had planned on this all along and make quick work of Monday and his goons. It turns out Monday is actually a midget wearing robot prosthetics and this victory is able to entirely reverse all of the bad PR the Protectors got so everyone loves them. We see that Monday's true master was The Great Question who is being watched the mysterious eye who is owned by a superhero called The Eye.

At this point comics were fully in the Image revolution so a comic like this seems quite quaint. Its very 80s inspired taking some basic cues from Watchmen and TDKR (slightly morally grey heroes, a media against the heroes, and government sponsored heroes) the art in the main issues is also more subdued then your average image revolution comic. I think some of the lore here could have made for a good story. The Brinkstone incident is interesting and has a lot of mystique around it where you aren't quite sure if the heroes did anything wrong in it as the heroes never defend themselves on it. Sadly I think the arc is let down by how little actually happens. Mister Monday is not an interesting villain and only two things happen of direct note: Night Mask dying and Mister Monday being stopped and no one is developed to justify such wasted plots. When you read the characters backstories from the back material they all have these insane backstories with weird powers that just aren't mentioned anywhere in the story. Like Mighty Man is the last surviving member of a race of giants who was given a belt to shrink down to human size but it broken so now he can shrink and grow at will. Or Man of War gets his powers from planets imagine if what powers he had and how strong they were were related to the orbit of the planets. But none of these are mentioned in story and everyone just has generic super strength. Then there is Night Mask. I like the idea of Night Mask. Its a darker take on non powered heroes that I think aged well. In the modern era of comics where any random teenager who is toats the biggest fan of x hero can become a fighter able to rival said hero in a week its interesting to see a story where someone of only above average physical ability tries to be a hero. Really the issue is I don't see a clear message with Night Mask. Issues 1-5 portray it as a tragedy. Night mask wants his fathers approval so he undertakes a fools errand by trying to be a hero while his father increasingly withdrawals from him as all this hero play does is bring back negative memories to Rinehart. Night Mask's last words are "I'm Sorry Dad" showing that he realizes this was a bad idea yet all of issue six and the rest of the hero everyone just goes off on how great a hero night mask was even though all he did was just die. From here itll just get worse as the book slowly devolves into pure 90s slop and any interesting plot threads are just forgotten.

The next major Protectors arc is told over issues 7-9 and finally reveal the truth behind the Brinkstone incident. One of the Protector's villains, Wisecrack, who was thought killed in brinkstone has actually been sent to some strange heck dimension with Jackdaw. Rinehart's secretary is summoned by the eye and gains super powers to be the new night mask. Some of the team gets new 90s costumes and we finally learn what was up with thresher. His back story was his mom was an Atlantean who traveled to earth via an interdimensional portal called a door to frick a fisherman. The conqueror supposedly died in Brinkstone with every other villain but he is clearly back and wants access to teleportation. Issue 8 starts in media res with the Protectors exiting a door portal into a heck dimension and being attacked by monsters. Through a flash back we learn that they had all realized that no one had died in Brinkstone and that a door had just been opened which teleported everyone but the heroes away and that The Eternal man will be able to temporally re open the portal so they can all enter and free any survivors. Arrow also sneaks in the portal. During the fight Gravestone and Arc are captured and sent to wise crack to be tortured. In issue 9 we further learn that every single villain was fed into a different pocket dimension and Wisecrack wants to unite them all before they head to earth. Gravestone dies while being interrogated and tortured but comes back to life a page later. The protectors fight their way through Wisecrack and his monsters before Wisecrack manages to open a door to another pocket dimension and forces all of the people of Brink stone to go with him but tricks jackdaw into staying behind. Jackdaw fights Ferret one on one and takes a woman hostage until Arrow kills Jackdaw and Ferret helps him dump the body in a fire moat surrounding the castle to hide the body. The protectors narrowly escape the dimension and Ferret puts in a good word for Arrow to join the team. We also see that the Mysterious eye guy watching everyone is dying and the great question is still scheming.

Around this time 3 spin off books were launched based off Protector's characters: Man of War, Ferret, and Gravestone. These are quite simply terrible and have bad art so Ill be skipping through them fast. Man of War 1-3: Man of War is sent to Cuba to recruit a super hero called lift who uses his telekinetic powers to cheat a casinos. Both are attacked by Man of War's brother who is an assassin and Man of War learns the US gov sucks so he leaves lift be. Man of war 4: Man of war's doctor is actually an evil scientist who ressurected Night Mask as his zombie slave and tries ti transplant night mask's zombie brain into man of War's super body. Man of War 5: Man of War helps a schizo superhero named Killinger who then turns on Man of War as hes crazy and wants to kill everyone even heroes idk.

The Ferret 1-4: The government has supernormal assassins. One named Toxin is seemingly programmed to kill Ferret and breaks free too soon. He attacks and poisons Ferret. Ferret needs to capture him to get an antidote. A female superhero named midnight blue is hire by the gov to kill Toxin so Toxin can die and Ferret can die. Ferret beats toxin and Toxin is used to make a cure for him. The gov still wants ferret dead for reasons. That's it over 4 issues.

Gravestone 1: Remember back when Gravestone died for a page? Well everytime he dies he just ends up in the underworld tells the dead to frick off and just walks right back to the land of the living. While he's in the underworld a teenage girl who died of shock at Brinkstone asks if she can hitch a ride back to the living. Gravestone says he cant do that and then immediately offers Night Mask's ghost a trip back to the living which Night Mask refuses but ghost girl gets pissed at this hypocrisy and hitches a ride back anyway. Gravestone 2: the ghost girl resurrects as a powerful demon which can reanimate any corpse creating a "death plague" where anyone killed by these monsters becomes one. Eternal man shows up and explains this death plague struck Atlantis which is why he had to sink it. The comic ends with Gravestone and Eternal man surrounded by zombies.

The last Protectors arc before the BIG EVENTtm is from issues 10-12 and features the return of Miss Fury from adventure comics. You see a new Black Fury assaults the white house and holds the president and his family hostage. The Protectors intervene and Black Fury runs off with the presidents son and Miss Fury pops in to say she knows where she went. Issue 11 then spends half the issue having her fight the protectors in a big misunderstanding. We then learn that when Marlene (the blonde miss fury) and her aunt who was also miss fury fought and fell into a vat in chemicals all the way back in the adventure comics issue the vat actually gave both superpowers and Marlene's aunt turned evil and became black fury for some reason. Then in issue 12 Miss Fury leads the Protectors to an abandoned mall where Black Fury is holding the presidents son but uh oh Arrow is there and super jelly everyone is paying attention to a foid over him so he blows their cover but they end up saving everyone and black fury escapes. In a epilogue we see a mysterious villain named Extreme attack the king of an alien world.

The New New Ex-Mutants

A few months into starting The Protectors Malibu also launched a new color reboot of the Ex-Mutants. It featured the same basic premise as the old series but entirely revamped cast and lore with no input from Lawrence or Lim. Its really quite bad and barely makes any sense so I'll be skimming it hard. So it starts off in Slugtown which is run by a slug like mutant named Sluggo who controls everyone through mind control headbands and he has a short blue servant named Zygote who is planning some coup we never see. Well now Doctor Kildare is now a robot and needs a power cell from slug town so the Ex-Mutants go there, kill Sluggo, free the people, and Zygote becomes Kildare's slave. This is all over 3 issues. The next arc takes place over issues 4-8 and is after a Dinosaurs for Hire crossover where the Ex-Mutants get sucked into the Dino's world and when they get back they need to head to a dimensional rift that has been created a close it. There is also a mutant in a suit named Nathaniel Gleeson who is giving the people of slugtown access to powerful tech like water purification but has a bone to pick with Kildare. Eventually the Ex-mutants find a facility full of robots which look like Kildare but have no consciousness and then one chick ex mutant falls in the time portal. In the past she sees that the facility was staffed with a people who look exactly like the Ex-Mutants and there is a human Dr. Kildare trying to cure the genetic mutations of a Dr. Gleson's son but instead they make him into a hulk monster. Then terrorists attack and the female ex mutant is shoved in a stasis. In the present Nathaniel Gleeson is the son who was also put in stasis and he hulks and attacks kildare but the ex-mutants kill him and then find the stasis tub where the girl has been sitting. Then in issue 9 one of the men finds a magic sword which possesses him. Then in issue 10 a bounty who tries to kill them but they are saved by a human bounty hunter even though all humans but the ex-mutants are supposed to be dead and we end off with the ex-mutants surrounding the bounty hunter who tried to kill them.

A somewhat funny thing I noticed

The Return of Dinosaurs for Hire

The original Dinosaurs for Hire is an interesting cancellation in that it wasn't cancelled for being too unprofitable but was in fact profitable enough to pursue licensing so Tom Mason was taken off the book to head up Hollywood deals. Well those went no where until 1993 with the hype leading up to Jurassic Park. Now every company wanted their own dino themed brand. To this end Malibu started up a new full color Dinos comic with Tom Mason still at the helm to drum up hype while they worked on a Saturday morning cartoon deal with FOX. I found this 4 color version of the Dinos to be quite a bit funnier then their old one with a little less focus on bland pop culture references and a little more on absurdist humor and satire (well at least the first 5 issues). The first five issues tell a barely coherent about the Dinos being bought out by a company called petro-global who attempts to IP whore them while super tax collectors and alien bounty hunters hound the dinos. There is some pretty funny running gags like there being a new 4th member, a pterodactyl, who is openly there by corporate mandate and simply talks about how little there is for him to do. The issues past 5 become increasingly to rely on pop culture references but hey its easily the best series of the 3. More info on the Dinos can be found here:

Street Fightin' Interlude

When Capcom wanted to start licensing out Street fighter to western companies to profit off of Street Fighter 2's massive success. The first company they went to for comics was Malibu as they had had previous success with licensed comics via Adventure Comics and Eternity plus Malibu had also recently snagged the high lucrative star trek license. So it starts off with Ryu becoming the street fighting champion and beating Sagat so Sagat and Balrog go and work for M. Bison who hates Ryu for reasons. Ryu is childhood friends with Ken and Chun-li with Ken becoming a popular martial arts actor and Chun-li becoming a police women to investigate her father's death at the hands of M. Bison. Then Ken walks off a movie set and is attacked by Sagat and Balrog. They beat and scalp Ken. Every other Street Fighter hears this and is sad they will never beat Ken in a fair and square fight. I mention this comic as in issue 3 Piston Honda meets the Ferret and Ferret challenges him to a duel and looses meaning this book takes place in the protectors universe. Issue 3 ends with some new female OC being trained by "Sheng Long" (yeah the hoax character) in order to gain chi powers so she can beat up Ryu for reasons. This series was so bad in fact that Capcom personally striped Malibu of the license after 3 issues leaving the series unfinished. Issue 3 ends with a text summary of the writers plans up to that point which included bringing back Ken who would simply be bald due to being scalped.

The Big EventTM

So Malibu had a superhero universe with the protectors and they had 2 unrelated titles which kind of crossed over once. Well Malibu wanted more so in a big event called Genesis they combined Protectors, Dinosaurs for Hire, and the Ex-Muants. The event ran over 6 main issues in a sequence of Ex-Mutants 11, Dinosaurs for Hire 8, Protectors 13, Ex-Mutants 12, Dinosaurs for Hire 9, and Protectors 13 with two tie in issues from Gravestone, Ferret, and Man of War in theory providing extra context, however this event is really bad. So Ex-Mutants 11 starts with Extreme talking about how his dad used to beat him (something that never comes up again) and how he needs to conquer worlds to raise his power basically a rip off of the Anti-monitor from DC. He then travels to Ex-Mutants world beats them up and travels to Protectors world.

Next in plot is Gravestone 3 where gravestone and some random dad blast away zombies until Gravestone kills himself to kill all the zombies and he comes back to life and is sucked through a random portal. Eternal man flies off to L.A.

This directly leads into Dinos 8 where the Dinos are revealed to have died via eating bad fast food and Extreme has already been beaten by the protectors and trapped in an energy cage so he sends out his minions to attack LA. The dinos end up in heck which is where Gravestone is after being pulled through the portal. Gravestone then leads the dinos back to Protectors LA where they witness the minion raid.

Next is a two part Ferret tie in over Ferret 5 and 6. Part of Amazing man's golden age backstory was that he was a baby chosen by an order of Tibetan monks to serve as a warrior against another evil cult and this finally gets mentioned. This evil cult sends a pupil, Bloodlust, in an exo suit to go and kill amazing man. The suit has a 30 minute power supply and when its up he'll teleport back to base. After the pupil leaves the Great Question goes to the cult says he needs Amazing Man alive and will them all if the pupil returns with everyone dead. So Amazing man is in the infirmary so when Bloodlust teleports into the Protectors HQ he actually finds Ferret who beats him up then Ferret randomly teleports to a fantasy kingdom and sees a princess about to get murdered by a warlord. Then he teleports back to the ship and times out Bloodlust and then Ferret teleports back to the fantasy world sees that the warlord has kills the princess and tries to kill the Warlord until he teleports to LA where we find out all this teleporting was because Eternal Man messed up his summoning spell.

Protectors 13 is technically part 3 of 6 but actually dinos 8 takes place in the middle of Protectors 13. So we see how Extreme got trapped in the energy cage it was via The Eye sending power to Eternal Man. Five out of the six ex-mutants are rendered nearly dead or dead so Kildare and guy who is left put them back into the pods which made them humans. Then Extreme breaks back out of the energy cage (no mention of his armies from Dino's 8) which seemingly kills Eternal man and then Extreme replaces LA with Slugtown from the Ex-Mutants would causing the two worlds to collide.

In Ex-Mutants 12 the Ex-Mutants pop out of their tubes with super powers and fight with the Protectors for no reason. Except one Ex-Mutant is still in her tube so Kildare uses up the last of his power to save her or something. The dinos and gravestone pop out in Slugtown battling some random goons and then Extreme shows up again to wail on the Protectors and Ex-Mutants.

Next up is Dinos 9 which has nothing to do with Genesis minus the Dinos being in Protectorsverse now. They meet with Widowmaker who was this really minor protectors character who really hates superheroes and they kept trying to push him despite his first appearance being in a random magazine and the plot from there going nowhere. Apparently the protectorsverse is actually really different then our universe in terms of pop culture oh and the Triceratops got sucked back in a portal back in Ex-Mutants 12 and is gonna be eaten by some rich club.

So Gravestone 4: in slugtown Gravestone saves an anti superhero reporter from a mutant. Gravestone then goes to an organ to play music until and evil gravestone (idk) shows up and beats him up and steals his powers and then merges with a mutant to become evil. Then in a back up story a halloween party goer saves Gravestone from a demo so he turns her into a cat as she was wearing a cat costume so this means she wants to be a cat.

Now its time for the grand finale of the Genesis crisis where both the protectors and ex-mutants get beat up by Extreme. Then the tube b-word shows up absorbs his lasers and explodes which knocks out Extreme. Man of War wont let anyone kill him so they send Extreme and his minions back to their home dimension and destroy the teleporter. After this crisis we get a glimpse of some big changes. Slugtown has now replaced LA and to better integrate the mutants the US gov forces grave stone and arc onto the ex-mutants and two ex mutants onto the Protectors oh and Man of War is down as leader and has been replaced by a bishop knock off named Chalice.

Its about time I bring up the Man of War Genesis "tie-ins" I only bring them up now as despite being tagged with Genesis and one cover showing Extreme the issues have nothing to do with the event and just continue the man of war story. Anyway Killinger is acting schizo and Rocket Ranger (a ww2 superhero who was from a video that Malibu adapted into an adventure comics series ) who is now an old man shows his son his rocket gear so he can fight off a nazi super villain named zeppelin who has returned and Rocket also saves Man of War.

Dead Clown and Lobomainia

So in 80s DC a bounty named Lobo appeared in Omega Men #3. Eventually Lobo was brought back in the 90s as a parody of grim and gritty superheroes but ended up being so popular he was shoved into all sorts of random books. Including a staring role in L.E.G.I.O.N a book about Brainiac's chuddy NRX son Vril Dox who makes an authoritarian private police force to bring order to the universe with Lobo as his body guard. Well Malibu wanted a piece of that pie so they made Dead Clown a book whose ad even calls out Lobo. You see Dead Clown takes place in the Dinos Universe and hes owned by Petro Global but he hates being a mascot so he breaches contract and the company sicks a stupid super team on him. The art is really bad here and barely coherent.

The New Genesis Status Quo

This new shared universe starts off with a Genesis 0 issue with a foil cover and basically a story for each book. These stories have no info beyond the Ex-mutants one showing that sluggo was a televangelist before his mutation. The Dinos story is a fantastic four parody with art by the prolific silver age Superman artist Curt Swan so thats fun.

The Protectors 15-18: Chalice is a black solider from the 1920s who had a meteor land right in his eye which lets him shoot lasers from it. In the 50s he was put into suspended animation and let out. Man of War is on trial for destroying LA because some how eternal man destroyed LA and not Extreme. Witch quits the team over the hypocrisy of the no kill clause which upsets Amazing man as his mental illness is berserk seizures. Aura and Mighty Man also quit to spend more time with their fams and Ferret also quits over the no kill clause. Witch is brainwashed by a street preacher named "Reverend Gloom" and attacks Ferret. Everyone hates superheroes until Man of war lets himself get beaten by an angry mob to protect a little girl which changes public opinion. Man of War is cleared of all charges after Arc shows that had he not sicced eternal man on Extreme Extreme would have destroyed all of earth and not LA.

Ex-Mutants 13-18: There is a super 90s super team called the Kill Corps that the US gov sends to patrol sluggtown. The only interesting one is a dude named Posse who can clone himself but looses control over his clones the more he makes and to get rid of them he has to kill them which could be cool in a better written story. The one depowered Ex-mutant, Dillion, finds a random floating cube which gives him cybernetic enhancements and also is secretly controlled by Cybernet. Slugtown is also expanding. It turns out Shannon is actually possessed by Chakra the blonde women who Gravestone sees every time he dies. She then kills everyone but Gravestone and then opens a portal to heck so all of the dead ex mutants just walk back into life and Shannon renters her body. Arrow then joins the Kill Corps and the entire Kill Corps and Dillion are brainwashed by Cybernet. Dillion then thinks really hard and Cybernet goes away and somehow this upgraded all of his cybernetics to be even better.

Dinosaurs for Hire 10-12: You know how the triceratops was gonna be eaten well now randomly hes tied by by a surgeon who wants to vivisect him so he can make dino clones. The dinos save him and fight off hoards of baby triceratops clones. They then fight a giant monster in manhatten who has taken out all of the random superheroes.

Man of War 7: The Nazi Zeppelin holds the president hostage and rocket ranger and Man of War fight him off.

Ferret 7-10: Ferret beats up some Thugs and then fights with old boomer Airman and then he saves a woman from killing herself (she was the woman he saved from Wisecrack's heck dimension). Ferret fights Posse before he joined the Kill Corps and gets pissed then the US gov recruit him. Ferret then meets Iron Skull again who is attacked by a ninja bodyguard of the Purple Dragon and Ferret holds the Purple Dragon's gussy hostage. Then Ferret finds and kills a superpowered serial killer showing he has fully broken with the protectors. Anyway I like Ferret he's cool and sexy and I want him to r*pe me.

Gravestone 5-7: The evil gravestone is like a shapeshifting mutant mimic who is killing moids for thinking about s*x and Gravestone uses Medusa's head to turn him to stone. Gravestone then fights a vampire clown. Then then mimic that Gravestone turned to stone is no longer stone and being studied by a lab and breaks free so Gravestone opens a portal to another dimension and throws him in it and also pulls out the sister of the Journo who hates supereheroes as her sister was at LA when Slugtown happened. This is contradicted by Protectors where Eternal Man claims everyone in LA who wasn't in the protectors forcefield instantly died.

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