Below you’ll find our reading selections for the year of 1990, and once we’re finished reading, I’ll post the winners for hero, villain, issue, artist, and writer.
Feel free to discuss the comics and any related thoughts below in the comments!
1990 Comic Reading List
(Check out Patreon for Full List With Notes!)
1990 | Comic Book Title | Issues |
1 | Acts of Vengeance | Reading Order |
2 | Excalibur | #18 to #25 |
3 | Silver Surfer / Thanos Quest | #34 to #38 / #1 to #2 |
4 | New Mutants | #87 |
5 | Incredible Hulk | #373, #376 |
6 | Spider-Man | #1 to #5 |
7 | Uncanny X-Men | #266 to #268 |
8 | New Warriors | #1 |
9 | Fantastic Four | #337 to #341 |
10 | Excalibur: Weird War III | #1 |
Reading Orders:
Voting Results:
Hero of the Year: Silver Surfer
Villain of the Year: Thanos
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Issue of the Year: Thanos Quest #1 (with a nod to #2)
Writer of the Year: Jim Starlin
Artist of the Year: Ron Lim
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David Keith Hughes says
Acts of Vengeance felt really old school. As I was reading it I couldnt help feeling it was from the 70’s. At first it was very difficult to get through, but toward the end it got much better. Especially the Fantastic Four stuff, and best of all was the Magneto/ Red Skull sub-plot
Spider Man was really awful and disappointing, So much Narrative and the spider man dialogue did not feel like the character at all. McFarlane are is always great, but it was a bit to busy and at time looked rushed.
New Mutants was terrible. The art, the dialogue, the story, I couldnt figure out what was happening half the time. Its amazing the character the Cable grew out of it.
I was absolutely consumed by Silver Surfer and Thanos Quest. Those books were absolute perfection from the writing of Starlin to the artwork of Lim.
I was pleasantly surprised by Fantastic Four. Having read FF just a few issues after these when I was younger, I found them to be pretty bad. These issues were very fresh and entertaining and just edged out Silver Surfer for the Hero of the year.
Michael says
I thought this was a solid and better than average year, with a couple of huge standouts and mostly good quality work (with a couple of notably lackluster runs). Let’s go down the list…
– I liked Acts of Vengeance despite it being all over the place. The lack of focus gave it less pressure to be about some big thing and instead just made it a showcase for unusual groupings of characters, which was fun. I also didn’t immediately guess that Loki was behind the whole thing, which for me is unusual for stories with a big mystery at the heart of them. Sure, some of it was rough, but if it was it almost always had redeeming qualities. For example, I think the Fantastic Four part of Acts of Vengeance wins for most dialogue per panel of anything we’ve read, though the slapstick nature of the trial was fun.
– Excalibur continued to seriously drag for me, and at one point they suddenly shifted to a new universe in the middle of a page with almost no warning, which was truly jarring and almost felt like bad editing. I did like the resolution at the end, but in general, not too enjoyable for me.
– Silver Surfer/Thanos Quest is just amazing, grade A work from both a writing and artistic perspective. Thanos Quest in particular is just extraordinary and incredibly imaginative, and it’s awesome how it blends old and new characters together, as well as shows off how ridiculously intelligent and crafty Thanos is. Definitely the best of the year by a long shot.
– New Mutants is decidedly “meh,” which is my usual reaction to New Mutants. Because of the debut of Cable, this is important historically, but certainly not a great piece of work.
– Spidey is the only run here that I would classify as “bad,” though the artwork from McFarlane is strong as usual. But this just goes on and on with the same emotional beats, and could have easily been one or two issues instead of five. At least it was a quick read.
– I’ve been doing the entire Claremont X-Men run (I can’t believe it ends next year/week!), and this was mostly notable not for the writing (though Gambit makes a strong first impression) but for Lee’s unbelievable artwork, especially with Psylocke/Lady Mandarin. I found myself taking my time with this run mainly just to savor Lee’s detail. Kid Storm is interesting but when you know how great Storm’s character is as an adult, Kid Storm feels a little bit pointless, especially since we’ve had plenty of Storm origin/kid stories in the past.
– New Warriors was the definition of mediocre. A bland group of heroes fighting a big villain. As has been said in the comments, this could have been written in the 1960s and would have fit in fine.
– Fantastic Four was utterly insane and a lot of fun. It felt old-schoolish but fresh. I do love how Thor’s dialogue instantly pops because of Simonson writing him again.
– I found myself pleasantly surprised by Weird War 3, especially given how little I enjoyed the Cross-Time Caper. It was certainly uncomfortable reading with the Nazi theme, but it should have been! I also especially enjoyed Professor X’s portrayal in this. Overall, worth reading just as a What If kind of scenario.
– Avengers West Coast is still weirdly one of my fave runs we’ve read in a while, though I found these issues a bit weaker than the ones we’ve read before. Still, this whole run seems hugely important to understanding the history with the Vision and the Scarlet Witch, and I’ll always enjoy the extremely awkward constant references to towns and roads on the West Coast to prove that indeed, they are on the West Coast and not in NYC.
– Ghost Rider was a case of the plot not being too inspiring, but the character of Danny Ketch being pretty good. I did find the main villain in the first part of this really insane and dark for what typically gets shown (also much, much more gore than usual). Also, the team of Ghost Rider and Punisher is notable for it working better than it would seem to at first.
– Guardians of the Galaxy is my surprise of the week. The first issue was so heavy on exposition and boring to read that I almost put it down and decided not to waste my time. However, I pushed through it and discovered a really interesting, epic, very different kind of story from what we’ve been reading in general (other than maybe Starlin’s cosmic work), and the last issue with the dual storylines going on in the top and bottom halves of each page felt super innovative and fun. I was also surprised with the overall depth of each character, and the reveals of Mainframe’s true identity and the origins of the Stark race were both great.
Overall, a good year. Onto 1991!
Claude says
I liked Acts of Vengeance. Liked it back in the day. Like it this week. It is good to have Byrne back at Marvel doing cool stuff like this…but why no Namor The Submariner in this week stories. I get that McFarlane was hip at that time, but Spider-Man was weak. At the same time I really got a kick out of Byrnes Namor stuff. And his work on Wolverine in the same year.
The other great, but largely ignored, book was Hulk. This is the year Dale Keown started on the Hulk and his work together with Peter David made for solid storytelling.
New Warriors, pfft. Pass. Same can be said for New Mutants.
Starlin’s Surfer n Thanos stuff, on the other hand, was fantastic. The art wasn’t quite as good as Byrne on Namor or Keown on Hulk, but a bronze is still a medal. And Starlin is the master at cosmic storytelling. Looking forward to the run of Infinity books.
Claremont and the X-Men are slowly moving towards burnout. I have to say that Claremont lives and dies on his artist. The last few years with Silvestri have been hard going. Important issues and stories, but wow, I had not realized how poor his art was. Jim Lee is a real breath of fresh air.
JohnV says
Acts of Vengeance-I can kind of see what they were trying to do here, but it all felt kind of sloppy to me (like they just pulled names out of a hat to decide who would fight who). I did enjoy the Magneto-Doom showdown though.
Is it just me or was the level of quality of the Silver Surfer and Thanos books ridiculously higher than the rest of the bunch? The art by Lim was fantastic, and the dialogue kept the whole thing moving. My favorite issue was from Silver Surfer 135, I loved the back and forth between Thanos and the Surfer-ending with Thanos tricking him. Great example of the way Thanos works.
I really liked that last issue of X-men as well with Cap, Wolvie, and Black Widow, the art by lee was amazing and I thought the switching back and forth between the past and present was well done.
New Warriors had my favorite line “Not quite. But it’s got more gigabytes than a Macintosh!”
The Hulk was pretty fun too, but everything else was a little bit more work to go through. Way too much text that I feel didn’t need to be there.
This was the first week that I have done this, and it was a lot of fun. Thanks for putting this all together-I really can’t wait for the rest of the 90s!!
No Name says
Wow, Thanos Quest was impressive! I’ll be amazed if it doesn’t sweep the awards, well aside from best hero.
BrandonH says
Acts of Vengeance: This crossover had a good idea at the heart of it, but the actual issues involved were mostly just average. I like in Thor #410 that She-Hulk does not take any sexist nonsense from Hercules. The first scene between Red Skull and Loki in Captain America #365 is very nice.
Thanos Quest #1-2 is a strong duology, and it got Thanos a vote for villain of the year.
My issue of the year is Captain America #371. It is nowhere on the list, and it has no universal implications. It’s just a fun date with Captain America and Diamondback. It’s cool that her villainous friends keep outside problems from interfering with the couple for one evening.
Ron Lim got my choice as artist of the year for his work on Thanos Quest and Captain America #371.
John Byrne is my choice for writer. Avengers West Coast is pretty solid, and so is his work on Iron Man, particularly #263. West Coast Avengers get hero of the year for Darker Than Scarlet and an overall good number of issues.
Cable and Stryfe appear in New Mutants #87, but both are better served in future issues, so I cannot recommend that issue.
Uncanny X-Men and Fantastic Four are both pretty good. New Warriors #1 would get three stars, but Speedball brings it down to two. He is that awful here.
Silver Surfer got mostly 3s and one 2 (for #35).
I know enough to know that I am not an Excalibur fan, so I skipped those two entirely. The same goes for Peter David’s Incredible Hulk and Todd McFarlane’s Spider-Man.
Carson says
Will check out Captain America #371, thanks for the tip.
Silvio says
Hi!
I just finished my vote. I was most impressed by the issues of Silver Surfer and Thanos Quest. The art was very good and I also liked the writing as prelude to Infinite Gauntlet. Therefore the creative team behind these issues where my favourites for 1990.
Hulk was also very good and Spider-Man even if terrible written could at least impress with McFarlanes artwork.
However I was not able to get on friendly terms with Excalibur and most issues of Acts of Vengance. The issues where in my opinion boring and the art could also not impress.
I can’t wait for next weeks readings. This has been fun.
Carson says
Mah thoughts!
“Acts of Vengeance”.. eh, I guess I can see what they were hoping for here. I didn’t think it was that great though. Mostly forgettable, didn’t help that the big reveal of the true antagonist was apparently in an issue of the “Cloak & Dagger” series that is totally absent from Marvel Unlimited. To be honest the only part that I genuinely dug was Magneto saying “screw this supervillain super-teamup” and cutting loose on the Red Skull.
“Excalibur” .. ahh, the one thing on the list that I actually read back in the 90’s. I liked that Excalibur a lot. But the Cross-Time Caper was my least favourite story arc of the entire thing. And no Jamie Braddock story is ever as entertaining for the readers as I think it was for the writer. Also what was the deal with #20? Old story they had sitting in the can and rushed out mid-arc to cover over a delay, or what?
“Silver Surfer” / “Thanos Quest”. Well, I got misled by MU’s incorrect publication dates and read “Thanos Quest” first. Oops. Oh well. This was the highlight of the ten stories for 1990, for mine. Particularly loved “Thanos Quest”, it made me nominate Starlin, Lim and Thanos as writer, artist and villain of the year. Silver Surfer was a little wet, though. But great stuff, all in all, and I’m sure we’ll be seeing the Infinity Gauntlet on 1991’s list, no?
“New Mutants”. First proper appearance of Cable and Stryfe? I’m assuming that at this point, the writers had no idea who they were, just as the readers didn’t? Historically interesting by not terribly memorable.
“Incredible Hulk”. Excellent. Definitely reminds me that reading all of Peter David’s massive run is something I should try to do (I read a bunch in the 90’s, but nothing as old as these two, this was a couple of years before I got into comics)
McFarlane’s “Spider-Man”. Yep, this is everything that was wrong with comics when the “hot” artists were allowed to write. The writing was embarrassingly awful, the art.. well, I guess it would have been technically difficult to draw pages with that much stuff going on, but it was really ineffective for story-telling. Just an unreadable mess, for the most part. Hated it.
“Uncanny X-Men”. The Stormy and Gambit issues were OK, more interesting for introducing Gambit than for the actual issues. But I loved the hell out of #268, with the then and now Wolverine / Captain America / Black Widow adventures in Madripoor. I voted this my favourite single issue of this year’s stories. Loads of fun!
“New Warriors”. Couldn’t see the point. The cover said “Heroes for the 90’s!” but this could have been published in the 60’s and I don’t think it would have felt out of place. I wouldn’t have picked up issue #2 if I’d bought this at the time.
“Fantastic Four”. Now this was exactly the sort of earth-threatening action I expect from a big FF story. Really well executed, very enjoyable, second best story of the year after “Thanos Quest”, and made me nominate the FF as the heroes of the year.
“Excalibur: Weird War III”. Might as well have been another two issues of the Cross-Time Caper storyline. To be fair, it would have probably been the best bit of that arc. Art was rather odd, though, I imagine a lot of people wouldn’t have liked it.