Murdock and Marvel: 1992 Part 1

Comics Over Time

Episode 34 - Murdock and Marvel: 1992 Part 1

Well, here we are. Image starts a new creator-owned era, even as the man who created the superhero sensation dies, along with one of his creators. 1992 was a very big year for changes.

The Year in Comics

Comic books managed to make it into the news and public consciousness in different ways in 1992, as movies, TV shows, new companies and a massive character death kept things interesting!

Notable and Newsworthy

Sales & Industry Trends

Beginnings and Endings

Memorials

Eisner Awards

Dan's Favorite

The Year in Marvel

1992 is a weird year, in that as it begins nothing seems to have changed from the heady days of 1991. But the Image artists no longer are present as the summer rolls around, and the Marvel Universe itself moves into darker territory. Here begins the anti-hero turn of the 90s, with dark futures and truly irredeemable villains.

TOTAL SERIES: 246
TOTAL NEW SERIES: 149
TOTAL ENDING SERIES: 129
THIS YEAR'S EVENT(S):

• Operation Galactic Storm (Avengers and Quasar in a Kree/Shiar war)
• X-Cutioner’s Song (X-Men fight Stryfe)
• BEST SELLING COMICS: Death of Superman, Spawn and all the Image books

Events & Happenings

New Titles (Ongoing and Limited)

New Characters

Series Ending

Who's in the Bullpen

• ROOKIE OF THE YEAR: Chris Bachalo

Dan's Favorite

Next week: 1992 Part 2 - The year in Daredevil

Questions or comments

We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [e-mail] or find us on Twitter @comicsoftime.

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THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING CREATORS AND RESOURCES

Music: Our theme music is by the very talented Lesfm. You can find more about them and their music at https://pixabay.com/users/lesfm-22579021/.

The Grand Comics Database: Dan uses custom queries against a downloadable copy of the GCD to construct his publisher, title and creator charts.

Comichron: Our source for comic book sales data.

Man Without Fear: Kuljit Mithra’s Daredevil site contains a staggering collection of resources about our hero, including news, interviews and comic details.

The American Comic Book Chronicles: Published by TwoMorrows, these volumes provide an excellent analysis of American comics through the years. Because these volumes break down comic history by year and decade they are a great place to get a basic orientation on what is happening across the comic industry at a particular point in time.

Joshua and Jamie Do Daredevil: A fantastic podcast that does a deep-dive into Daredevil comics. This ran from 2018-2020, and covered most of the first volume of Daredevil, and was a fun way to get an in-depth look at each issue of Daredevil from 1-377.

My Marvelous Year: This is a reading-club style podcast where Dave Buesing and friends chose important or interesting books from a particular year to read and discuss. This helped me remember some fun and crazy stories, and would be a great companion piece to Murdock and Marvel for those who want more comic-story-specific coverage.

BOOKLIST

The following books have been frequently used as reference while preparing summaries of the comic history segments of our show. Each and every one comes recommended by Dan for fans wanting to read more about it!

Licari, Fabio and Marco Rizzo. Marvel: The First 80 Years: The True Story of a Pop-Culture Phenomenon. London: Titan Books, 2020. This book is sort of a mess, as the print quality is terrible, and Titan doesn’t even credit the authors unless you check the fine print. It’s like this was published by Marvel in the early 60s! But the information is good, and it is presented in an entertaining fashion. So its decent, but I would recommend you see if you can just borrow it from the library instead of purchasing.

Wells, John. American Comic Book Chronicles: 1960-1964. Raleigh: Two Morrows, 2015. Not cheap, but a fantastic series that is informative and fun to read.

Wright, Bradford. Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. This is the revised edition.

Marvel Year By Year: A Visual History. New York: DK Publishing, 2022. The academic in my rails at using information from any work that doesn’t have an author credit, but this is a decent (if very surface) look at each year in the history of Timely / Marvel from 1939 to 2021.

Cowsill, Alan et al. DC Comics Year by Year: A Visual History. New York: DK Publishing, 2010. Because its nice to occasionally take a peek at what the Distinguished Competition is up to.

Dauber, Jeremy. American Comics: A History. New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 2022. An excellent, relatively compact history of the domestic comic industry from its 19th century origins through to recent 21st century developments. An excellent successor to Bradford Wright’s Comic Book Nation.