I stick by the awesomeness of the Scarlet Spider.

Some things I'd like to note:
Spider-Man 2099 and Doom 2099 were actually rather awesome. Neither were really about guns.
AFAIK, Jean-Paul Valley had short hair when he was Batman, and the costume worked rather well with the cape billowing around it, usually showing mainly the claws and the armored head. Granted, my experience with the costume is mostly limited to the Punisher/Batman crossover, which was enjoyable.
Morbius's bondage gear costume doesn't look all that bad, at least not in that picture.
Why note the long hair with Thunderstrike? (Marvel) THOR is the patron god of long hair, after all.

Ok, I cannot sit by while Nomad gets bashed! :) Ok, sure, if anyone judges this book by it's cover you get cliche and "badassery" trying too hard, however! If you read all 25 issues of the series you get
a) Awesome writing!
b) More awesome writing, some great story telling, and great character moments!

Sure the art takes a hit later on in the series, but the writing never lets up. This turned out to be on eo fht ebest written books out there, for the time and still holds up today!

I stopped reading comics right before all that crap went down. I'm still glad I did.

That decade should never have happened to comics.

It is fair to blame Liefeld for a lot of this.
The tumor like muscles piled on muscles, the huge padding, the absurdly large guns/compensation for the curiously squared crotch area, and finally, the sick and perverted pouch/pocket fetish

I think Azbat revamp has been explained a 100 times over. This wasn't a cheesy 90's revamp because the writer/artists were suffering from the same virus that infected all cheesy comic/writers in the 90s. The revamp was purposely given to fans as a "careful what you wish for" example. Ironically, this happened in 1992 and the 90s still suffered another 8 years of bad revamp changes.

But personally I loved Azbat, even after his constume revamp got its own, more armored revamp!

Man, the 90's and their gimmicks. Every character was made into a brooding anti-hero with more guns than they could sneeze at.

I think it's sad that I still have that Nomad #1. The dude literally goes into gunfights with a baby strapped to his back. He can't even be bothered to get a babysitter when he goes out crime-fighting. And he puts a mask on the baby too, like he's Michael Jackson's kids, because you wouldn't want him to grow up WEIRD, now would you? I've never seen a clearer case for child services.
Doom 2099 was kinda cool because it showed Doom as a good guy, who wasn't completely obessed with getting back at Reed Richards, but the comic mostly stunk. The worst was Ravage 2099 becuase they didn't just keep changing his costume, but his power set as well. He starts out blasting energy out of his hands and ends up with horns. WTF?

I STILL dont even know how that batman costume even works...

How is that cape being held up? Rods? I couldnt figure it out then, I still cant.

Plus those shin spike things are really dumb. Hows he supposed to walk thru narrow doorways?
Those gloves always reminded me of the "Revenge of the joker" videogame where batman just shoots guys.

That wasnt even the last of it, they redesigned it two more times. Yuck.

But unlike most of the 9 other costumes, the Valley-Batman was never meant to be permanent. I'm surprised that Superman wasn't much higher because of that fact.

And yet, I still love comics and the goofiness it sometimes takes.

The 2099 series were just a big pile of shock.

I dunno guys. I was in Iraq back in the day. I remember distinctly thinking, "Know what would make me a LOT more tactical right now? Eighteen half-dollar-sized leather pouches around my thigh. And a gun nobody can lift or aim, much less pull the trigger."

I loved the 2099 stuff. Spider-man was great fun and X-men had some of the best storytelling ever. Now if you were talking about bad, recent remakes of 90's titles, I would say the modern 2099 is pretty bad.

I was a staffer in the Marvel Bullpen from February of 1990 through Halloween of 1998 and the shit we saw pass through there was truly a parade of complete and utter fail (and the majority of my co-workers would say exactly the same thing). The old maxim of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" exists for a reason, but unfortunately at the time no one up there seemed to know their ass from their elbow. That said, of the 2099 books both Spider-Man and Doom were actually pretty good. I never read Nomad but many of my co-Bullpenners read it religiously and claimed the scripts were excellent. Thundershite, er, Thunderstrike was a load of bullshit though, and everyone up there knew it. Same for that Punisher Purgatory crap.

Oh yeah,because the norse popular deity of thunder (who happened to be a redhead by the way)would shave and wear sensitive clothing and speak in theathre lines rather than hanging out at ale houses,drinking and smashing things with his hammer just because he can.

Let's put it so your little suburban nerd mind can grasp it,robbie.
What do you think a viking from olden times would do if suddenly placed in the present,go to a teahouse and maybe stop by the library?

I find the hatred of 90's american comics and the subsequent stale silver age nostalgia they suffer today one of the reasons why the newer generations just decided to embrace manga (which ALSO has people with trenchcoats,heroes with impossibly long hair,35kg women carrying guns the size of a Cadillac and more brooding than a room full of emos with no electricity to power the lights)from the get go...

I think comic artists in the 90s just forgot what people looked like. Even really muscular guys don't have balloons taped to their legs and chest. Big greasy mullets look terrible on everyone. And people actually tend to smile (often non-ironically too!).

When did they start tinkering with Aquaman, you know, in some kind of desperate effort to make him badass. He suddenly had long hair, a beard, and a hook hand.

I know they've since cleaned him up again with his hand now being made out of water or something.

X-Men 2099 was pretty good. I enjoyed it. I was sad to see it go.

I thought Spidey 2099 was a lot of fun for a short while, and Rick Leonardi's pencils have never looked better. I seem to remember there was a "Hulk 2099" that you didn't mention Rob, but that's probably for the best, because that was the worst of the bunch, IMO. Had more in common with The Abomination or PITT than ol' Greenie. Plus it was shit.

Yup, I still like Azbats, Hoodie Spider, and definitley Spider-Man 2099. Peter David outdid himself with that title.

Guy Gardner looked hideous, but you have to give DC props for at least trying to keep Guy Gardner relevant post GL-corps.

I would agree that the whole knightfall storyline was a response to the grim'n'gritty era and was, therefore, acceptable. Plus, Azbats costumes look great as action figures!

You forgot to mention that all of the Punisher: Purgatory issues had covers illustrated by the legendary Bernie Wrightson. That doesn't excuse Joe Quesadilla turning the character into a demon slaying zombie, but it did introduce me to Wrightson's work. So... sometimes good things come out of bad ideas. Like, because Purgatory failed so utterly, Quesadilla did a complete one-eighty when he turned the book over to Garth Ennis. Without Purgatory, there might not even be a recognizable Punisher today. Just sayin'.

Oh yeah, Electric Superman looks great too. As a non-permanent change, it was a fun storlyine.

seeing this list shows that marvel and dc were so in love with the dark and gritty that they figured any character needed a make over though always wondered who okayed the look of both the doctor fate and deciding guy should ditch his gl dudes for paint. plus who at marvel thought oh lets do biker thor and call him thunder strike and the scarlet spider for spider man. proving that the nineties was evil for the comic industry

I have to agree with those who love the Scarlet Spider. He was pretty damned cool. Admittedly, the Clone Saga was a major fuck up on Marvel's part, but poor execution of a storyline is no reason to hate the character himself.

Joe Queseada has been on a quest for over a decade now to de-age Peter Parker. Ever since he became editor-in-chief of Marvel, he's been looking for a way to do away with Peter's marriage so they can go back to making the swinging single Peter they used to do in the 70's when Peter's problems were all aobut juggling his dating life with his college classes and being a superhero.

The clone saga was just his first attempt. He wanted to replace Peter with a version of himself that had never gotten married in the first place. When the fans revolted, they scrapped the idea and went back to the drawing board. A few years later, we get One More Day.

I'm sorry, but I'd take the Scarlet Spider over a deal with the devil any day. Plus, I liked the torn sweater thing. Given the many crappy costume revamps that Spidey has had, the Scarlet Spider wasn't really that bad.

This list just reminds me why half my 90s comics collection is viz comics.

guys...I can understand some of thes ethings. But attacking 2099 is wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong. Is so wrong tha t i wish for you to wathc all uwe boll filmography for 126 hours without food. The 2099 had those awesome Doom and Spider Man 2099 version; I'm puzzled if you have ever you read them. Doom 2099 was the BEST RENDITION of Doom , so far. And Sincerely Morbius was BETTER in leather than spandex, Seriously a vampire in spandex...why not make him sparkle at this point uh?
And just to put things in perspective.
Most of these re-make were needed at that point. Alos some of those characters undergo such re-make many many times. To refresh yes, but also to try to voercome those inborn defects...like the fact that Superman is horrendously overpowered, or that(over exposed and joked)problem of sight that prevent anybody to recognize him from clark Kent. Or that the punisher DO NOT FIT Marvel Universe, and work ONLY in his own niche universe. Or that Thor do not behave like a viking at all(the shakespear speech had been made fun many times), and that at the time was without human side, making him kinda detached from human problem(before Thunderstrike carried the hammer, Thor passed very little time on earth). Or that Spidey stories have the tendency to become so "entangled" that author have only a reset to do so(and Ben Reilly was awesome). Sure some of the choice eventually developed poorly, but again what do you whine? Is not tha tbefore they were at their best, or not remake would have been needed in first place.

Oh dear god....not "Superman Blue: Electric Boogaloo"!
The main problem I had with it that Supe's power change was never explained...it "just happened". I suspected it's because his powers were gone for a long time while the Sun got "turned off" in Final Night and his powers changed to adapt without yellow sunlight. (Anyone know if it was explained and I missed it?)
Then it got worse when Superman Red hit the scene 6 months later. (Was Superman White not availble?).
The final straw of suck? 6 months later (without explanation!) Superman has his old powers and outfit back and Supes Red/Blue are never mentioned again.

Another voice for "Nomad" here. Like others have said, it was really well written. And I always dug the "Lone Wolf and Cub" vibe of a vagrant who goes into battle with a kid strapped to his back.

"Punisher 2099" was an awful book, no question. But it at least touched on what a reprehensible person the Punisher is. They had him trying to outlaw everything he disagreed with or offended him as the 2099 project was drawing to a close. Yeah, yeah, Punisher 2099 wasn't Frank Castle, but it was an injection of some much needed criticism in a pre-Ennis Punisher book.

The whole "Purgatory" thing was a sad attempt to shoehorn the Punisher into a bad knockoff of "Preacher." I wasn't surprised when it was announced shortly thereafter that Ennis was going to be writing a Punisher book. The world of comics is small and people tend to notice when you rip them off. At least Ennis was good natured about it, though his run with the character was more bad than good.

Superhero books may have gone to shit during the 90s, but the increased popularity of comics combined with the stupidity of what was going on at the big two (and in Image's founder's titles) helped move a lot of people toward indie/creator-owned books. Alan Moore wrote "From Hell" and pitched "Promethea" during the 90s.

I scanned the comments and saw no one mention Ghost Rider 2099. I thought it was a cool revamp. I think Chris Bachalo did the first few issues, then the look-alike artists stepped in. The thing that turned me off comics altogether was the bait-and-switch they constantly pulled; the talented, mega-popular artists do the cover art, and the interns do all the crappy interior artwork. I think all the brands were guilty of this tactic. Dicks.

I was concerned that my beloved Mr. Rayner was going to wind up on this list. Thanks TR.

I am surprised that you didn't include the short-lived 1990's revamp of Ghost Rider's costume on this list. Granted, I'm one of the few who liked it, so I'm glad you didn't. :-D

Ghost Rider: http://image2.milehighcomics.com/istore/images/fullsize/35314339256.80.GIF

Yeah, pretty clueless to put AzBats at number one. THE WHOLE FUCKING POINT WAS THAT HE WAS LAME. It was necessary to do that in order to shut up all the losers who wanted Batman to be like he was in Dark Knight Returns.

Batman, and to a lesser extent Superman, got changed because the writers had a story in mind and made the changes to tell that story. The others were because the books were out of ideas, or in the Spider Clone case, because head office took a four-month storyline and stretched it out to a full year.

One disastrous one that was missed, and really should be at number one, was the teenage Iron Man. Sure, it only lasted about five issues before being the one GOOD casualty of Heroes Reborn, but that was horrific.

The pouches, THE POUCHES!
Hey wasn't there a Hulk 2099 too?

It may not be fair to judge characters on the basis of the fashion trends of the time, AKA the "Dazzler argument"
The shittiness of the stories however...

The best thing about the 90's and comics was the rise of the independents and MILK & CHEESE!

Morbius was a character who deserved his own title AND a 90s revamp. I collected each issue. He's cooler now due to Marvel Zombies 4, though.

Wow, the Scarlet Spider shouldn't be on that list, at all.

If you think this spotty excuse for journalism is inflammatory enough to get me off my ass and type a response ... YOU'RE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT!

Thunderstrike was far from the biker-wannabee that's portrayed here. It was a decent series for its brief run. Hell, the character was created by the Karate Kid! Seriously, the character/series had a solid storyline with a legitimate death THAT STUCK! What comic book can say that? Removed Thunderstrike and please insert Artemis/Wonder Woman or Captain Armourica.

Hey the Doom 2099 stuff was awesome

As for Scarlet Spider, well I think it would look better on a women, the name alone sounds like a superheroine's plus hey Ult Superwoman (a female clone of Peter) suit is all red so yeah

Another vote here for defending AzBat, perhaps it's becuase I read Knightfall and Bruce's return in one 'hit' a few years ago it never felt 'bad' just misguided. AzBat was supposed to make Batman look cooler by showing why 90s X-TREME wouldn't work for Bats.

I'm surprised that Frank Castle becoming black wasn't included. To me, that was the creepiest revamp ever.

Now that we've seen the worst, how about a list of the ten best? I'll start with Nightwing and Brown Wolverine(not too certain if this happened in the 90's though). Anyone else want to throw their faves in here?

Oh man. What can i say that has not already been said?

Doom 2099. awesome.

Scarlet Spider. pretty decent costume for what it was was. Now, the eventual state of the clone saga; definitely terrible.

Morbius. Already had a silly costume. The revamp worked for him.

Nomad. Omg, Nomad was such an amazing series. Great writing, char dev, etc(just backing up what all the others said). The costume was fine for the nature of the story. It didn't detract from it, not even in hindsight. And let's face it... There's never been a Nomad costume that wasn't F-ing WRETCHED. That blue and yellow shit was lamer than lame. The new female Nomad costume is great, but then again, it's just a Bucky costume.

By far the most deserving of #1 is Fate.
I am actually personally offended by that shit.

Did not even know that Fate reboot existed. That looks pretty tits to me.

Also, I secretly pray for the return of the Super-mullet.

People.
This isn't about writing. I don't care if the book was sooooo good. It probably was. Hell, I have most of the Morbius series, the Batman series, and some of the Superman books. They read fine.

It's the costumes. THE COSTUMES ARE RIDICULOUS. Even Doom 2099. Sure, great comic, but the dude was a silver fucking robot in a cape who looked like he stepped out of a bad Zelda level. It's about revamps of the character and costume that are the worst of the decade. Morbius in a bondage suit? It's the same as polyester in the '80s. Scarlet Spider? The only people who wear torn hoodies are homeless people at the bus station. Did it need to happen? No. I'm sure writers could have put together a year's worth of salvagable Spider-stories.

While the PUNISHER as an angel is a definite lowlight for the character, I always personally thought it was ridiculous when Frank Castle turned black and was living in the ghetto (and fighting alongside a revamped Luke Cage!). That whole storyline, which came at the tail end of one of the best Punisher storylines, pretty much turned me off the character till Garth Ennis took over.

I always wondered what the deal with thigh-belts was back in the 90's. Sure, Cobra Commander had one, but he could get away with such a bold statement. Most others could not.

I'm surprised noone has brought up Jim Lee's name yet...
AND Todd Mcfarlane!
They were as much to blame for crappy 90s revamps as Rob Liefeild.

Boooo. Scarlet Spider is great. End of the Clone Saga not so much.

I would argue that the first 10-15 issues of Ghost Rider 2099 were awesome. Definitely the best of the line up, it went completely to shit when the original writing team was canned,and the new writers made him some kind of flunky / cop for Doom 2099.

Scarlet Spider is pure awesomeness and takes WAY too much flack for the mess that was the Clone Saga story arc! The problem is that he was so awesome that Marvel decided to extend one story into seven convoluted stories on the fly with no real vision. By the end Ben Reilly had really found his niche and Peter was truly happy to have a 'brother' to confide in who knew what he was going through. I think that would have been a perfect way to tie up the story, but by killing him off (by the Green Goblin, no less) it just made the entire story moot and brought us back to status quo (minus Osborne stealing the Parker baby during birth, which could have happened with or without the Clone Saga). The costume was slick as Hell and I would still buy up any Scarlet Spider figures if they put them out today. Maybe his return could be another mysterious byproduct of that ridiculous 'One More Day'.

Also, X-men 2099 was a fantastic book that was dragged down by being tied to the rest of the 2099 universe. If it was brought back with a life of it's own, it would do very well. Hell, throw in Spider-Man & Hulk 2099 and Old Man Logan and you've got a killer title on your hands.

God I had never seen 90s Fate. That is horrifying.

From what I get, fans liked Ben Reilly as a character but hated every other aspect of Clone Saga. I think they're planning to redo Clone Saga and bring back Reilly, if the news is true. I'm unsure.

They're re-telling the Clone Saga from back then as if to say, "Whoops! Our bad. This is how we meant to do it." I too thought it may be a re-introduction, but after the first issue I realized it was just a look back at how they were "supposedly" going to publish it.

Gotta back the call for Teen Tony, worst thing ever written (except Ultimates Vol.3, f**k you Loeb, f**k you).

Say that Tony Stark has been under the mind control of Kang for 25 years of continuity?

Check.

Replace one of the 616's 'father' figures (well, drunk old uncle figure at least), with a 'hip' and 'cool' and 'totally rad' teen version, because obviously teens only want to read comics with other teens in them?

Check.

Hastily rewrite another mid-thirties Tony coming through a dimensional gate to replace Teen Tony who sacrificed himself for... ah I give up, I can't write this crap, you get the idea.

at the time this shit was new i would agree with most of this ...
but now-a-days i go look at comic books only to find spider man with huge manga eyes and chibi-cyclops popping the peace sign ... it makes me want to vomit down my own pants in an attempt to override the waves of revulsion.
i love manga, and i love comic books, but i do not want the two inbreeding.*shudder*
if someone makes a "gimme back the 90's over this current shit" petition, I'd sign it in a heart beat.

at the time this shit was new i would agree with most of this ...
but now-a-days i go look at comic books only to find spider man with huge manga eyes and chibi-cyclops popping the peace sign ... it makes me want to vomit down my own pants in an attempt to override the waves of revulsion.
i love manga, and i love comic books, but i do not want the two inbreeding.*shudder*
if someone makes a "gimme back the 90's over this current shit" petition, I'd sign it in a heart beat.

"Forget the Rhino and Green Goblin, fans themselves wanted to take this guy apart. Even today, say "Clone Saga" around comic geeks and you'll need to run for your life."

Wow. Please stop lying. Just read this comments section. Ben Reilly is flat out LOVED by most comic book fans. The few who hate him are mostly very old men that just hate change in general. Are you an actual comic book fan or are you just taking your information from Wizard?

Oh, and please start more sentences with "of course." It's awesome. I started a drinking game. It took me about two seconds to get wasted.

Ben Reilly was an unfortunate victim of the clone saga and was cool DESPITE it. The "Spidey without all the shit his life has thrown at him" concept is golden. And most of the 2099 titles were.... OK. Spidey 2099 being the exception, as it was well executed. I defintely feel that the Aquaman revamp deserves a place on here (I think it was the 90s), as it was an obvious attempt to make him "gritty, bad-ass and cool." I had always kinda liked him for what he was, all the slings and arrows of the non-water breathing, un-animal communicating haters aside. I also did not know that the Fate revamp existed and am horrified. (Same with the neon Ghost Rider. ACK!) Morbius was something kinda cool happening to a meh character, which resulted in... meh. And part of that whole weird "supernatural" stuff Marvel tried to do at the time, which was like, um..... O.... K? whatever. They should be lumped together like the 2099 group, though some were new and not re-vamps, they were mostly bad.

Anyone else get the feeling that the guy who wrote this didn't read any of these books. A few of the concepts on here, like Blue Supes and angel Punisher, were less than quality, but a lot of these ideas were really great comics. Nomad, most of 2099, Thunderstrike, and even Morbius were solid comics. Even the Beau Smith Gardner and Azbats had their moments. I think we could have dug a little deeper for this one. The lack of Extreme Justice, Force Works, and the Crossing-era Avengers pretty much proves it. Going on costumes alone, the lack of Iron Captain America pretty much proves a lack of research.

Getting pretty goddamn sick of the Jean Paul Valley bashing 'round these parts. Beware the sins of presentism.

Most of these incarnations are crap, but some of them lead back to cool stories with the characters we love (i am looking at you ben and Peter)others fall off in to the history of bad ideas...you just hope that you didn't pay for all of them. (i have not read any of the zombie punisher and i am afraid to, but fuck i was loving war journal when it was running)

While this is a great list, I think these changes need to be taken in the context of the times: the 1990's was all about changing things to see what would stick. Were Superman books really such poor sellers that Superman had to die? Maybe and maybe not.

The 1990's gave us "big changes":
- Superman dies and 4 guys come back to replace him, in what would probably have been a "dial a 1-900 number and vote for the next Superman" promotion.
- Batman is replaced by a violent version just to show Batman isn't the Punisher.
- Hal Jordan is turned into a villain and a new GL takes over.

And of course, the 90's gave us tons of new characters:
- 1993's Bloodlines Annuals where every book spawned a new character and sometimes a new title... just because the industry needed more second-rate #1 issues.
- How many characters were spawned from 1995's Zero Hour, where the DC universe was "restarted"? Fate, Manhunter, the list goes on.

And yet most of these costumes could probably be excused if the characters and stories were written decently. Sure some people have save Nomad was a good book, but were we really supposed to take an electric Superman seriously?

I dug the Moench/Jones run on Batman that followed the Azrael storyline. It's really the only time since I was a kid an Tom DeFalco was running things (Marvel or DC), that I found myself reading a superhero title regularly.

- As was mentioned, AzBats was created so that all the crybaby fanboys would get their "darker Batman" without ruining the character of Batman. You should be THANKING DC forever for giving us AzBats. Hurray from Wayne NOT BEING AzBats!

- Because its been mentioned: Hal Jordan becoming a villain was the best thing they did to that character.

- Spider-Man 2099, Doom 2099 and Ghost Rider 2099 were AMAZING. Doom's character design might have been a bit lame, but Spidey 2099 and Ghost Rider were PERFECT. I still love, to this day, that last page in GR when we found out his weapon of choice was a chainSAW.

- Lastly, another vote for how awesome Scarlet Spider was. Naysayers are wrong. 100%. Plain and simple.

It just occurred to me... wasn't the Nomad book
a little similiar to the Grell run on Green Arrow?

I know this wasn't the intent of the article;
but I had a lot of good memories come back.
I personally liked the 2099 line, spider-man had Peter David and Rick Leonardi, Al Williamson on inks, doom had John Moore and Pat Broderick, Len Kaminski wrote a great cyberpunk story in ghostrider, (he also wrote
morbius, which I liked.)The future version of the x-men was also quite decent,
with Ron Lim on art duties. The punisher 2099
had some neat ideas; velocity armor, a saucer
cult, the variable density power bat, etc.
And although ravage sank quickly, They got Stan Lee to write it! Also, didn't the new warriors come out in the 90's? Yeah, there were some lame costumes back then, but there was a lot of cool stuff too.

So thank you, Ethan, for reminding me.
Finally, I think thelordofhell is onto something. Top ten costumes that were improvements... I'll nominate Tim Drake's
original Robin costume, for obvious reasons.

I get the feeling a lot of the Scarlet Spider fans are younger than me. I thought he was rather lame, but then I think any clone characters, even "evil twins" like Venom and Carnage, are fucking lame. The only good thing about the Scarlet Spider's run was that we didn't have to deal with that annoying Mary Jane all the time.
-
Yeah, it was stupid to have Spider-Man making a deal with a demon (and not "the devil", either. Mephisto is just *a* demon, and not even one of the more powerful ones. In Marvel, even "Satan" is just another demon; Just ask Daimon Hellstrom.) but you know what? MJ is just so fucking annoying that I'd consider making a deal with a demon to get her out of the comics. She sucks. She was forced on readers as Pete's wife when the comic strip decided to hook them up (because the comic strip is more soap opera like Mary Worth, and less action like a comic book) and she's been a pain in the ass ever since. I got SICK of every issue being about Pete not letting down MJ or protecting MJ from villains. It got stupid, and it only got worse when she became the supermodel, soap opera star, movie star, hottest woman on Earth. It was wish fulfillment that reeked of fanboyism.
-
Good riddance to MJ, and I hope they never get Pete and MJ married again. Let him marry someone else. Hell, how about writing a NEW character that could be a female lead for his book? Why must it always be someone from the past?

Azrael's stint in the DC universe remains my favourite and most dearly cherished memories and forms the backbone of my comic collection. Jean-Paul Valley was always supposed to be bad as Batman, he was trained as an avenging angel based assassin and programmed with a 'system' that drove him to the brink. Throughout the course of the Knightfall series we see the costume become more and more like his true Azrael garb (overlay the two design wise and you'll see it's practically identical in many ways). Jean-Paul was always played as the hardest working of the Batfamily and the one who wanted to be accepted the most, the very opposite of Dick, who was the favourite son and 'true' successor to the title. Hence now that Dick is bats (for the time being at least) it's taken on a very traditional Batman take on the character. Reading the run in hindsight it's always good to look at the state of the costume Azbats wears as a marker of how far he's fallen into madness at any given time. Now that JPV is dead and we have a new Azrael I just can't find it in me to get behind the new-guy, he doesn't feel as well written or interesting as poor JPV was.

I recently re-read the Clone Saga in one sitting, and have to admit that I think Ben Reilly was a surprisingly good character. I think that I miss him a little bit - how come Marvel can't bring HIM back?

In all fairness to Jean Paul he wasn't supposed to be liked. Denny O'Neil specifically designed him to be hated once Bruce put him in the suit, and it worked perfectly. Too perfectly.

I stand behind the awesomeness of Azreal.

Now hold on. I loved ’90s Morbius. The leather costume--designed to give those hollow bones a little more protection when taking bumps--looked cool (and he actually bought it from a goth/fetish boutique, so it’s not accidental that it has a bondage feel), he was very well-drawn by Ron Wagner, and in spite of the constant risk of preying on innocent blood, the writers made him sympathetic. I found his ’90s incarnation riveting and still treasure the first year’s worth of issue. I don’t mind ’70s Morbius, but I definitely don’t prefer the older costume.

Unfortunately, Ron Wagner left the title after that first year, and there was never again a decent penciller on the title, but ’90s-Morbius did show up in a John Romita Jr.-drawn issue of the adjectiveless /Spider-Man/ a few years later, looking pretty good.

’90s Morbius found a way to become human for short periods by taking a serum. We saw an interesting range of looks for him, from fully human to pale and sort of angular to the full-on pug-nosed man-bat effect. Later his body was contaminated by demon blood and he gained new powers and seemed to be (where my collection leaves off) about to split into two people, one with a human soul and one completely demonic. The creative team was shaking things up without ruining the character like so many other things were ruined by the ’90s.

Although I hated the ’90s at the time (particularly the way the industry’s default art style became Rob Liefeld), I did my best to preserve the good things that came along during them, and now I can look back at those good things and see that the Sturgeon percentage may have increased, but there was still quality if you looked for it.

Speaking of John Romita Jr., and of the ’90s Punisher in your article, in late 1992 there were eight excellent issues of /The Punisher War Zone/ which to this day comprise the definitive take on the character (at least for me, subjectively).

Although I’m more of an ’80s fan, the ’90s were a time when some artists hit their peak, from which (again, subjectively speaking) they’ve since come down. I loved Steve Epting’s work on Factor X (and speaking of redesigned characters with long hair and stubble, Age of Apocalypse Cyclops may have been typical of the ’90s, but he was extremely cool nonetheless). His Captain America and Marvel Project work seems to lack the solid construction of his ’90s pencils. Ron Frenz (who worked on the Thunderstrike comic panned in this article) had a nice square style in the ’80s and ’90s, but now seems to be getting more cartoony. I vaguely read something recently about his earlier work being full of swipes from Kirby; if that’s what made it so great, he should go back to doing that, because it was working.

On the plus side, some artists are continuing to surpass their previous peaks and making me fans of their earlier work retroactively, like Jerry Ordway.