THE NEW UNIVERSE AT 40: A LOOK BACK AT MARVEL’S UNWANTED RELATIVE Part 4

 

THE NEW UNIVERSE AT 40: A LOOK BACK AT MARVEL’S UNWANTED RELATIVE

BY MICHAEL HOSKIN

PART 4: WHITED OUT

NEWUNIVERSAL AND UNTOLD TALES

In 2006, Warren Ellis announced he would be rebooting the New Universe with artist Salvador Larroca in the series newuniversal. “Reading the original work,” Ellis told Wizard magazine, “it became clear to me that all the books were attempting to tell the same story, but the effect was muted by half a dozen writers naturally pulling themselves in half a dozen different directions. Newuniversal pulls all these books into a single series, weaving all those stories into one.”

Before newuniversal launched – but after it had been announced – editor Mark Paniccia launched an event titled Untold Tales of the New Universe to celebrate the New Universe’s 20^th anniversary. As Paniccia explained to Comic Book Resources, “We thought it would be fun to go back to the New U one last time before Warren did his thing.”

Untold Tales of the New Universe would include new stories of all eight of the original headliners: one-shots for Star Brand, Justice, D.P.7, Psi-Force and Nightmask; 8-page back-up stories starring Mark Hazzard and Spitfire that appeared in Amazing Fantasy; and an 8-page Kickers, Inc. story that appeared in New Avengers #16 to promote the other stories.

Peter David was the only New Universe writer to pen one of the Untold Tales, returning to write Justice one last time. Despite his apathy towards Star Brand, John Romita Jr. drew the one-shot’s cover. Marshall Rogers also came back to draw the Spitfire story, one of his last published stories. Otherwise, the Untold Tales fell to other hands, including artist Mark Bright (D.P.7), writer and future editor-in-chief C. B. Cebulski (D.P.7), Exiles writer Tony Bedard (Psi-Force), writer Jeff Parker (Star Brand) and writer Fred Van Lente (Nightmask).

Looking back at the New Universe, Mark Paniccia noted, “I think the thing that's been most fascinating for me is to look back at this attempt to create something new from universes that organically happened (Marvel and DC) and see just how difficult a job that can be. It's been tried so many times after with companies too numerous to mention. It ran for 3 years, though, and that's pretty impressive.”

Rather than follow-up on the New Universe in 2006, obeying its real-time rules, Untold Tales of the New Universe set its stories within the imprint’s first year of publishing. Indeed, the Spitfire story was set prior to the events of Spitfire and the Troubleshooters #1! Fred Van Lente used his Nightmask story to finally tie-up the cliffhanger Archie Goodwin had left in Nightmask #4, 20 years earlier.

In his Star Brand one-shot, Jeff Parker went meta; his story, set just before John Byrne’s first issue, featured Ken Connell meeting a multiverse traveler named Arden who learned about Connell through reading comic books about him from another reality (which is to say, Arden did the same research Jeff Parker had). Arden told Connell she’d found the comic books underwhelming. “No one here should really have anything like the power you have, Ken,” Arden stated, “So essentially, nature itself keeps throwing mundane situations and relationships at you… like some self-correcting mechanism.”

Warren Ellis’ newuniversal proved a different take on the New Universe; in this version, Ken Connell received the Star Brand from the White Event while asleep and its destructive power destroys his girlfriend. Simultaneously, Izanami Randall was a female, Japanese American equivalent of Nightmask who discovered an extraterrestrial intelligence existing within the Superflow, a space between universes. Philip L. Voight was introduced as a government agent who hunts and kills superhumans to prevent them from supplanting humanity.

Unlike the New Universe before it, newuniversal didn’t depart from real world history at the moment of the White Event; Ellis’ scripts were peppered with references to divergences from real world history, such as John Lennon being alive in 2006. One character was even seen attempting to diagram when the planet’s divergence moment occurred. There were also minor appearances by characters from the Marvel Universe, such as General Ross from Incredible Hulk, whereas the New Universe eschewed Marvel Universe counterparts. The presence of Marvel’s characters sent a subtle message: Gruenwald intended the New Universe to exist within the Omniverse; Ellis was planting it within the Marvel Multiverse.

More bizarrely, Ellis chose to tie newuniversal into the obscure sword & sorcery character Starr the Slayer, who had appeared in a single issue of Chamber of Darkness in 1970 when creators Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith were still trying to lobby Marvel to pick up the Conan the Barbarian license.

When he heard about Ellis’ newuniversal, Fabian Nicieza joked, “Let me guess: He deconstructed the super-hero myth, and he left before he bothered to reconstruct it?” Nicieza guessed correctly; newuniversal ran just six issues with Ellis and Larroca. It returned as newuniversal: Shock Front with artist Steve Kurth replacing Larroca, but at that time Ellis lost the hard drive to his computer and his scripts after issue #2 of Shock Front were lost. Shock Front, like most of the books Ellis’ had been writing at the time, was abandoned rather than being rewritten from scratch. Marvel attempted to keep newuniversal going, first with the one shots newuniversal: 1959 by Kieron Gillen, then newuniversal: Conqueror by Si Spurrier, followed by a Starr the Slayer mini-series by Daniel Way and Richard Corben, but just as these placeholder titles wrapped up, Ellis informed his readers newuniversal would not continue.

Or, at least, it wouldn’t continue under Ellis’ pen.

ANOTHER WHITE EVENT?!

Jonathan Hickman had evidently been reading newuniversal – specifically that series rather than the New Universe titles. First, he used the Star Brand in a Fantastic Four story where it was wielded by an alternate reality’s Reed Richards. Then, while writing the Avengers, he brought back the Superflow from newuniversal and introduced Earth-616’s counterparts to Nightmask and Ken Connell; while the new Nightmask was an artificially grown man named Adam Blackveil, the new wielder of the Star Brand was Kevin Conner.

In a story titled “The Last White Event,” Kevin Conner received the Star Brand in a violent fashion, similar to Ellis’ version in newuniversal – but where newuniversal had killed Ken Connell’s girlfriend, Kevin Conner was at a crowded college in Pittsburgh when he received the Star Brand; the explosion was said to have killed 3,203 people. This was familiar to readers of the Pitt – the idea of the Star Brand being destructive and poorly-understood by the person wielding it.

Yet while the scope of the deaths in Hickman’s story was less than the Pitt, the consequences were telling. That is, while Kevin Conner continued to stumble and falter in his use of the Star Brand (generally being more destructive than necessary), the 3,000+ lives snuffed out in his origin did not come up again. The Pitt took time to consider the environmental, social and political repercussions of destroying an entire city; even in newuniversal, Ellis’ Ken Connell spent the rest of the book’s short run traumatized from his girlfriend’s death – but in the Marvel Universe, deaths are mere numbers on a spreadsheet.

With New Universe concepts now formally introduced into the Marvel Universe, interest was taken by Al Ewing, who debuted a variety of counterparts to New Universe characters in his series the Ultimates². These included Jim Tensen (instead of John Tensen), Terry Jessup (instead of Tyrone Jessup) and Philip Nelson Vogt (instead of Philip Nolan Voigt).

Eventually, Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers storyline led to the collapse of the Marvel multiverse, setting up the 2015 Secret Wars crossover event. Afterward, a new version of the Squadron Supreme was introduced who were comprised of counterparts of traditional Squadron Supreme members taken from different alternate Earths that had been destroyed in the crossover. Jeff Walters of D.P.7 – using his occasional codename the Blur – took the place of the Whizzer. Sadly, this meant the New Universe had been destroyed (or maybe not; another cast member in Squadron Supreme eventually discovers their reality is intact).

CONCLUSION

Many of the architects of the New Universe have passed on: Mark Gruenwald in 1996; Archie Goodwin in 1998; Gray Morrow in 2001; Herb Trimpe in 2015; Paul Ryan in 2016; Peter David and Jim Shooter in 2025; Gerry Conway in 2026.

It’s in the White Event itself that the New Universe proved to be somewhat ahead of its time. In the decades since 1986, many other writers have similarly indicated that, like Mark Gruenwald, they prefer a common point of origin for super-powers in their fiction. Starting in 1987, there was the Wild Cards series of prose novels where all super-powers originated from an alien virus. Nearly all of the superhumans in Milestone’s comics debuting in 1993 obtained their powers from “the Big Bang,” an explosion of mutagenic tear gas. In 1999, J. Michael Straczynski started writing Rising Stars, a comic book series where all the characters’ abilities appeared after a comet landed on Earth. Starting in 2003, Straczynski also wrote Supreme Power, a reboot of Squadron Supreme, but wherein nearly all the characters received their super-powers from manipulation of the hero Hyperion’s DNA; Straczynski even replaced the Squadron Supreme’s speedster the Whizzer with D.P.7’s the Blur. The 2006 television series Heroes opened with super-powers emerging following an eclipse (although the series would eventually decide their super-beings had been around long before the eclipse).

Even in Marvel’s own Ultimate Universe, it would be decided (in Brian Michael Bendis & Butch Guice’s 2008 Ultimate Origins) that all of the Earth’s superhumans (including mutants) were the result of long-ago genetic manipulation. From the Boys to Misfits, it seems more common in today’s fiction for all superhumans to share a common origin, rather than a variety of independent origins.

Although Avengers writer Jason Aaron killed Kevin Conner in 2017, he continued to use the Star Brand in his Avengers stories. For that matter, a version of Ken Connell turned up as recently as 2025’s Battleworld mini-series by Christos Gage and Marcus To. The New Universe’s influence continues to appear in present-day Marvel comics.

“Marvel did not get out of the New Universe what Shooter’s original goal and idea for it was,” Fabian Nicieza opined. Yet Fabian observed many positives that came from the New Universe: “In some ways, New Universe, the comics, was a great fertile testing ground for a lot of people, not the least of which was Jim Shooter, the guy who created it all because it proved his fertile testing ground that he was able to manifest in Valiant. For the rest of us, we got me and we got Ron Lim and we got Mark Bagley, and we had Lee Weeks, and we got a lot of new talent that got an opportunity to hone their skills on books that not that many people were paying attention to.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bruce, Dylan. (2006, December). The New Deal. Wizard the Comics Magazine, 182.

Carbonaro, Paul. (1986, September 1). Comics in Review. Amazing Heroes, 102.

Carbonaro, Paul. (1986, September 15). Capsule Reviews. Amazing Heroes, 103.

Caruba, David and Twine, Brandon (eds.). (1987, May). Theories on New Universe Failures. Four Color, 5.

Castro, Adam-Troy. (1989, May 15). Comics in Review. Amazing Heroes, 165.

Fiore, R. (1986, October). Funnybook Roulette. The Comics Journal, 112.

Fisch, Sholly. (1987, August). An Annual Tradition. Marvel Age, 53.

Frazer, Jessika and Thompson, Mike. 2023 March 9. Ten Cent Takes. https://tencenttakes.podbean.com/e/issue-54-psi-force-with-fabian-nicieza/

Fryer, Kim. (1986, September). Sales on Marvel’s New Universe Line Mediocre, According to Many Retailers. The Comics Journal, 111.

Fryer, Kim. (1986, October). Marvel Editor Brown Relieved of New Universe Duties. The Comics Journal, 112.

Grant, Paul J. (1995, August). Favorite Son. Wizard the Comics Magazine, 48.

Heintjes, Tom. (1986, April). Newswatch. The Comics Journal, 107.

Heller, Jason. (2013, November 15). How Marvel’s New Universe Holds Up – or Not – Three Decades Later. https://www.avclub.com/how-marvel-s-new-universe-holds-up-or-not-three-decades-1798241948

Gruenwald, Mark. (1989, July). Mark’s Remarks. Marvel Age, 76.

Gruenwald, Mark. (1989, August). Mark’s Remarks. Marvel Age, 77.

Gruenwald, Mark. (1993, December). Mark’s Remarks. Marvel Age, 131.

Howe, Sean. (2012). Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. HarperCollins.

Johnson, Dan. (2009, June) Sparks in a Bottle: The Saga of the New Universe. Back Issue, 34.

Jones, Gerard. (1987, January 1). Comics in Review. Amazing Heroes, 109.

Jones, Gerard. (1987, March 15). Comics in Review. Amazing Heroes, 113.

Jones, R. A. (1986, September 15). Capsule Reviews. Amazing Heroes, 103.

O’Neill, Patrick Daniel. (1986, August 15). New Universe Tour. Amazing Heroes, 101.

Peattie, David. (1989, June 1). Comics in Review. Amazing Heroes, 166.

Plowright, Frank (ed.). (1997). The Slings & Arrows Comic Guide.

Richards, Dave. (2005, December 12). Everything “New” Is New Again: Paniccia Talks “Untold Tales of the New Universe.” https://www.cbr.com/everything-new-is-new-again-paniccia-talks-untold-tales-of-the-new-universe/16

Salicrup, Jim (ed.). (1987, May). Give Me Letters or Give Me Death. Marvel Age, 50.

Sanderson, Peter. (1989, January). John Byrne Interview. Marvel Age, 70.

Shade, Leslie Regan. (1986, July). Marvel’s New Universe: The Line-Up. The Comics Journal, 109.

Slavicsek, Bill. (1987, May). Exploring the New Universe. Marvel Age, 50.

Thomas, Michael David. (2000, October 6). Jim Shooter Interview: Part 1. https://www.cbr.com/jim-shooter-interview-part-1/

Thompson, Don (ed.). (1987, May 22). Straw in a Hurricane. Comic Buyer’s Guide, 705.

Thompson, Don. (1988, November 25). Comics Guide. Comic Buyer’s Guide, 784.

Thompson, Kim (ed.). (1986, May 1). Newsflashes. Amazing Heroes, 94.

Thompson, Maggie. (1987, August 28). John Byrne: ‘Now It’s a New Universe!’ Comic Buyer’s Guide, 719.

Trauger, John. (1988, August) Last Word. Comics Interview, 58.

Wheeler, Andrew. Fabian Nicieza: Working for the Man. https://web.archive.org/web/20010423001159/http://www.popimage.com/industrial/062000nicezaint.html Archived from the original on 2001, April 23.

Zimmerman, Dwight John. (1986). Archie Goodwin. Comics Interview, 36.

Zimmerman, Dwight John. (1986, November). Behold… the New Universe. Marvel Age, 44.

Zimmerman, Dwight John. (1988, February). The New New Universe. Marvel Age, 59.

Zimmerman, Dwight John. (1988, March). Mark Gruenwald. Comics Interview, 54.

Zimmerman, Dwight John. (1989, July). John Byrne. Comics Interview, 71.

THE NEW UNIVERSE AT 40: A LOOK BACK AT MARVEL’S UNWANTED RELATIVE Part 3

 

THE NEW UNIVERSE AT 40: A LOOK BACK AT MARVEL’S UNWANTED RELATIVE

BY MICHAEL HOSKIN

PART 3: A LIMITED SERIES

In 1989, each of the four New Universe titles concluded with Marvel’s standard limited series banner: “#32 of a 32-issue limited series” on Justice, D.P.7 and Psi-Force and “#19 of a 19-issue limited series” on the Star Brand. “We did that on purpose, for fun,” recalled Fabian Nicieza. The four-issue prestige format series The War by Doug Murray and Tom Morgan followed, depicting World War III and drawing the New Universe to a conclusion.

All four New Universe writers had known the end of the imprint was near. “I think that knowing you are going to end something not only gives you the opportunity, but I believe gives you the responsibility to your audience, to give them some semblance of closure,” Fabian Nicieza said. Psi-Force #32 opened with a text piece, written as a Playboy interview with the team’s leader Wayne Tucker set in 1998. “Me being me,” Fabian explained, “I also wanted to give them a glimpse of everything they were missing, ‘you rat bastards.’”

Mackie used similar words: “We wanted to give a sense that there was a plan and we wanted to go out the way we wanted to.”

Peter David closed out Justice by placing John Tensen in the position of judge to a paranormal community. John Byrne concluded the Star Brand by revealing Ken Connell, the Old Man and Ken’s son, the Starchild, were all the same person and together were the living embodiment of the Star Brand. Mark Gruenwald and Paul Ryan (the only team intact from the New Universe’s launch) closed D.P.7 with the cast meeting a paranormal who could remove their parabilities, offering them normal lives; as a sign of the cast’s changes since the launch, most of them realized they preferred being paranormals.

Paul Ryan said of D.P.7, “Mark and I had many more stories to tell. Mark and I had discussed a D.P.7 miniseries or graphic novel. … I think the way we finished the last issue of D.P.7 was nicely done. We started the series with seven characters. In the last panel of issue #32, seven characters, united, walk into history. Thanks, Mark. It was a great run.”

The Slings & Arrows Comic Guide called Byrne’s the Star Brand, “A sad end to a potentially strong series.” Comparing Nicieza’s Psi-Force to Fingeroth’s they said it was on a “downhill direction,” saying “The kids’ streetwise maturity with their powers dissolves any charm of the earlier issues, where tentative fumblings often produced unpredictable results.” To the follow-up The War they wrote, “It’s a perfunctory series dragged on too long and published in an unnecessarily expensive format in the hope of parting the last dollars out of the few remaining New Universe fans.”

Slings & Arrows gave positive reviews to D.P.7 from start to finish; although they called Justice “A memorable disaster area,” they said the Peter David issues were “quite readable – even funny if you followed the title from the beginning. Lee Weeks and Mike Gustovich’s art is clear and dynamic.”

“For some reason,” wrote David Peattie in Amazing Heroes, “everything associated with the New Universe came to be regarded as a synonym for ‘awful,’ and I’ve never understood why.” Despite Peattie’s regard for the New Universe, he found the sudden climax of all four titles abrupt and unfulfilling. “I had grown accustomed to having events in the New U proceed at a more leisurely pace, and then taking a month or two more to sort of get used to them before the next big event was launched.” Peattie also championed the characterization in the imprint. “From the very start of the New Universe, Marvel had told us that their intent was to make these characters as real as possible, and this is one of the ways in which they frequently did so. I want to give a special mention to D.P.7 for this, as Mark Gruenwald seemed to always be more concerned with the who and why rather than the what and how of his stories.”

In reviewing the War for Amazing Heroes, Adam-Troy Castro judged the New Universe as a whole: “Marvel’s much-maligned New Universe actually wasn’t that bad an idea. Few of its creators seemed to grasp the possibilities inherent in Jim Shooter’s essential concept: seeing month-by-month how super-powered characters would actually behave (as opposed to the way readers of super-hero comics usually see them behave).” Castro spotlighted D.P.7 and Star Brand as the best of the imprint. As for the War itself, Castro singled out a scene in which the newly assigned officer Major Blizzard dressed-down Jack Magniconte for dressing in a super-hero costume and ordered him to wear a standard Army uniform. “As rarely as the New Universe worked,” Castro wrote, “it worked because of scenes like that.”

Looking back in 2013 for the AV Club, Jason Heller wrote:

“Conceptually, The New Universe was flawed from the get-go. Shooter described The New Universe glowingly as being “the world outside your window”—in other words, it was going to be utterly like the real world, only with the addition of these few choice, carefully introduced fantastical elements. Only that’s total bullshit. A phenomenon called ‘The White Event’—basically a three-second whiteout of reality that permeates the multiverse—is the point in 1986 when our universe splits from The New Universe. That wound up happening after the first three issues of these eight series, but it was never fully realized during their original runs. It wouldn’t have mattered if it had. Syncing all the titles up to real-time chronology is a terrible idea, as it severely hampers what a writer can do in an ongoing series. In the long run, a superhero who ages with his readers is not going to fly. Realism is one thing, and escapism is another—and that disconnect does not make for good superhero comics. It’s easier to suspend your disbelief when there’s a fundamental level of unreality in the background.”

“I thought the New Universe was a brilliant concept for a universe and I will miss it greatly,” Mark Gruenwald wrote in his Mark’s Remarks column:

“I think there were a number of factors that account for the New U never quite catching on with Marveldom in a big way. Let's begin with the perhaps dubious wisdom of Marvel, a company known for its unified fictional universe, coming out with a parallel cosmos at all. The birth of the New Universe was hyped to be a way to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Marvel Universe, but it must be admitted that establishing a rival cosmos is a somewhat strange way to celebrate a cosmos.”

Gruenwald also feared that:

“…the New U was too different, too off the beaten track, for its own good-- namely, appeal to a mass audience. The New U approach to super-heroic fiction was to question and rethink every single aspect of the super hero experience, from the origin of super-powers, to the way they worked, to the necessity of costumes and codenames, to the motivation to fight crime, and so on. Certain books, when grappling with these things, came up with pretty offbeat answers-- namely, no costumes, infrequent use of codenames, and crimefighting as a rare exception to the paranormal way of life. Maybe this was too revolutionary, and readers prefer costumes, codenames, and simple motivations such as ‘He’s bad, I’m good, that makes it my duty to stop him.’ Paul Ryan’s and my DP7 were probably the worst offenders of the super hero conventions. In the 32-issue run, there are but a mere handful of archetypal hero-villain face-offs. We were making stories about people with super-powers, not about super heroes. STARBRAND was equally unconventional in its own way. If you were into Good vs. Evil, the New U was not for you.”

“STUCK IN THE NEW UNIVERSE”

Mark Gruenwald and Paul Ryan went directly from D.P.7 into Quasar, their third consecutive series together. Ryan snuck cameos by women who looked remarkably like D.P.7’s Stephanie Harrington and Charlotte Beck into Quasar #4. When Ryan moved on to Avengers and Avengers West Coast, he snuck D.P.7 characters into the backgrounds of those titles as well.

Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz reunited on Thor and even included references to a Marvel Universe version of the New York Smashers, the football team from Kickers, Inc. Peter David and Lee Weeks would eventually reteam on Incredible Hulk.

Fabian Nicieza moved on to New Warriors, where he was reunited with Mark Bagley; their editor, on New Warriors? Former Psi-Force writer Danny Fingeroth. Indeed, Nicieza’s Psi-Force can be seen as a precursor to ideas that were received more successfully in New Warriors. Both were team books of young superpowered people whose idealism (bordering on naivete) results in them inadvertently causing crises. Psi-Force’s increased militarism and gradual loss of innocence can also be seen as a predecessor to Nicieza’s X-Force, with the corrupting influence of the paramilitary Medusa Web similar to that of Cable. Nicieza would also collaborate with Ron Lim again, such as on the series Cable & Deadpool.

Then there was Howard Mackie and John Byrne, who teamed together again as the co-writers of the Spider-Man franchise in 1999 – but it proved a disaster that diminished both men’s careers.

Gruenwald recalled that at the time the New Universe ceased publishing:

“There was a movement afloat at the time to simply incorporate or resurrect the best of the New U’ers in the mainstream Marvel Universe, but I was dead set against it, issuing a memo restricting all New U usage. My reasoning was that we took such pains to keep the New U discrete from the Marvel U during its lifetime – ensuring that the fundamental operating premises were so separate from one another – that it would be difficult to make a case that the two universes were in the same multiverse.”

Despite that memo, the New Universe would indeed be brought into contact with the New Universe, starting with Gruenwald himself, who sent his character Quasar there in Quasar #31, two years after the New Universe’s end. “What am I: A hypocrite, a person with one set of rules governing the rest of the world and another for myself?” Gruenwald asked rhetorically. Gruenwald took pains in that issue to establish the New Universe existed withing the Omniverse, a concept dating back to Gruenwald’s fandom days (Omniverse was also the name of his 1970s fanzine) and he insisted it was still separate from the Marvel multiverse. Indeed, Gruenwald explained in his ‘Mark’s Remarks’ column that his original concept had been for Quasar to meet the character Mighty Mouse while Marvel had the character licensed, “But by the time I was ready, MIGHTY MOUSE had been canceled and the whole thing fell through. So I was forced to think of another preposterous multiverse Quas could find himself in. That’s when I proposed the New Universe.”

Still, despite Gruenwald’s edict, Peter David was able to bring back John Tensen from Justice in the pages of Spider-Man 2099 – although he disguised him under the moniker ‘Net Prophet’ (among the more pun-tastic of David’s creations).

Jim Shooter himself eventually resurfaced as editor-in-chief of the line of Valiant comics. Shooter felt his work on Valiant was what the New Universe should have been. “In essence, we did the same thing with the Valiant universe. I took that same idea and did it there.” Indeed, Shooter’s description of the Valiant comics universe resembles his first editorial about the New Universe:

“The Valiant universe had one conceit that was not normal. There were powers of the mind that were released. Everything about that universe was powers of the mind. Nobody had any horns or wings while I was there. There was no Atlantis under the sea. It was all this world, this planet. You could go to the streets where these people lived. And done well, it worked.”

Of Jim Shooter’s work for Valiant, he and Barry Windsor-Smith’s Solar Man of the Atom certainly invited comparisons to Star Brand – not only in the lead character, a common man burdened with immense power – but a series that even included scenes of the hero struggling to navigate while flying!

Fabian Nicieza – who later became editor-in-chief of Valiant – opined that “Valiant is what he [Shooter] wanted the New Universe to be, but it was never going to work under the Marvel publishing program the way it did under Valiant.”

In 1998, Nicieza and Dan Slott co-wrote Valiant’s Troublemakers #16, in which a reporter toured from person-to-person, interviewing them about the series’ teenaged protagonists and their encounters with same. It was rather similar to Nicieza’s Psi-Force #26, in which journalist Andrew Chaser served as the point-of-view character. So similar, in fact, that Nicieza and Slott simply used Andrew Chaser, slipping the obscure New Universe character into Valiant with apparently no notice taken by Marvel!

In 1994, Gruenwald went back to the New Universe as part of a crossover set up in Quasar dubbed Starblast in which a team of extraterrestrial scavengers learn of the Star Brand and seek out the New Universe in the hopes of acquiring it for themselves. Gruenwald explained:

“That was the great paradox of the STARBRAND series. On one hand, the Starbrand was the most powerful weapon in the universe, so powerful that everybody in the universe would want it.  But it was established that there were no aliens in the New Universe – there was only the world outside your window, where aliens were just tabloid fabrications. So here was a premise that could never be brought to fruition… in the New Universe. But in the Marvel Universe – whooie!”

Unfortunately, Starblast proved a failure and even Quasar was cancelled just three months after the crossover ended.

It took another decade for Marvel to seriously acknowledge the New Universe (outside of a brief Star Brand cameo in Nicieza’s Gambit). In the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Alternate Universes 2005, the New Universe received its first appearance in Marvel’s in-house reference guide, which normally concerned itself only with the “mainstream” Marvel Universe. As the Marvel Universe was dubbed Earth-616, the New Universe was dubbed there, “Earth-148611.” It was given such a ridiculously large number to suggest it was still remote from the Marvel Multiverse.

That same year, writer Tony Bedard and artist Paul Pelletier wrote a storyline in Exiles called “World Tour” in which the characters visited a version of the New Universe; that universe’s version of Justice wound up entering an alternate 2099 timeline, in a playful reference to Peter David’s Spider-Man 2099. Marvel’s creators had remembered the New Universe existed, just in time for its 20^th anniversary.

Concluded in Part 4: The New Universe celebrates 20 years with Untold Tales and newuniversal! Jonathan Hickman brings another White Event and Squadron Supreme celebrates the 30^th anniversary by obliterating everything!