If you close your eyes and think back to a comic book shop in 1993, you can probably still smell it. It was a specific cocktail of scents: the sharp tang of fresh glossy paper, the dusty musk of the back-issue bins, and the faint, lingering aroma of cheap bubblegum from the trading cards on the counter.
For a certain generation of geeks, this was our church. But it was also the scene of one of the weirdest cultural experiments in history.
We call it the “Chromium Age.” It was a time when the industry decided that story, dialogue, and consistent anatomy were optional, provided the cover of the book was shiny enough to blind a pilot flying overhead. It was the era of the “Speculator Boom,” a period where we didn’t just buy comics; we boarded, bagged, and buried them like squirrels preparing for a nuclear winter, convinced they would put our kids through university.
Looking back, it’s easy to mock the comic book style of the 90s. The pouches. The shoulder pads that defied physics. The fact that nobody had feet. But despite the excess, there was a kinetic energy to that era that the modern industry just hasn’t managed to replicate.
The Gimmick Arms Race
It started innocently enough. Maybe a special cover here, a foil logo there. But by 1992, the “Gimmick Cover” had become the primary driver of sales.
We weren’t just readers anymore; we were collectors. And the publishers knew exactly how to hook us.
Remember X-Force #1? Of course you do. You probably have five copies of it in a longbox in your garage right now. Marvel packaged it with five different trading cards inside a sealed polybag. If you wanted the whole set, you had to buy the issue five times. And because the bag was opaque, you couldn’t even see the card inside without opening it – which, of course, would “ruin the value.”
It was a stroke of evil genius. It turned the act of buying a comic book into a high-stakes guessing game. In a way, it was gambling.
In many ways, the comic shop of the early 90s operated with the same psychological mechanics as a casino floor. The publishers were the house, and we were the punters standing at the roulette wheel, placing our bets on ink and paper. We’d walk in on New Comic Book Day, drop our allowance on Turok: Dinosaur Hunter #1 or WildC.A.T.s, not because we loved the characters, but because we were gambling that this specific issue would be the next Action Comics #1. We paid attention to publisher news just as keenly as gamblers look to a casino’s sister sites for information about how the casino itself might perform. We were convinced that if we just held onto the right comic for twenty years and took good care of it, we’d hit the jackpot.
It feels ridiculous now, knowing that they printed five million copies of X-Men #1, making it about as rare as a parking ticket. But at the time? The rush was real.
The Rise of the Rock Star Artist
If the gimmick covers were the bait, the artists were the hooks. The 90s shifted the power dynamic from the writer to the penciler.
Suddenly, nobody cared about the script. We cared about the splash page. We wanted Todd McFarlane’s spaghetti webbing. We wanted Jim Lee’s cross-hatching. We wanted Rob Liefeld’s… well, we wanted Rob Liefeld’s enthusiasm, let’s say.
This shift led to the formation of Image Comics in 1992, a moment that felt like the Beatles breaking up and forming seven different heavy metal bands. It was punk rock. It was rebellious. It was seven guys leaving the safety of Marvel to bet on themselves.
And for a while, it was glorious. Spawn #1 sold 1.7 million copies. It was dark, it was gritty, and it looked like nothing else on the rack. The Image books didn’t read particularly well – let’s be honest, Youngblood is borderline incomprehensible – but they looked cool. And in the 90s, “looking cool” was 90% of the battle.
We embraced the “extreme” aesthetic. We accepted that Cable needed a gun the size of a Honda Civic. We accepted that Batman needed armour that prevented him from turning his head. We accepted that Superman had to die, just so he could come back with a mullet and a black suit.
The “Death” of Everything
Speaking of death, the 90s loved a funeral. The “Death of Superman” storyline in 1992 was the peak of the media frenzy. It was on the actual news. People who had never read a comic in their lives were lining up around the block to buy Superman #75, sealed in that iconic black polybag with the bleeding ‘S’ shield.
It reinforced the idea that comics were serious business. If Superman could die, anything could happen. Batman got his back broken by Bane. Green Lantern went crazy and destroyed the universe. Spider-Man… well, let’s not talk about the Clone Saga. We don’t have enough time or wine to unpack that.
But these events kept us coming back. They were soap operas for boys, driven by cliffhangers and the promise that “Nothing Will Ever Be The Same Again!” (Spoiler: It was usually the same again within 18 months).
The Pop
Eventually, the bubble had to burst. And when it did, it was brutal.
By 1996, the market was flooded. Marvel filed for bankruptcy. Comic shops closed by the thousand. We all woke up and realized that our copy of Deathmate: Black wasn’t going to fund our retirement.
The “slabbing” craze – where you pay a company to grade your comic and seal it in plastic forever – is the zombie resurrection of that 90s mindset. It treats the book as an asset rather than a story.
Why We Still Dig in the Dollar Bins
Go to any convention today, and you’ll see people hunting for 90s back issues. Why? Because they’re fun.
There is a lack of pretension in 90s comics. They weren’t trying to be high art; they were trying to be awesome. They were loud, colourful, and unapologetically melodramatic.
When you open a copy of The Maxx or Savage Dragon, you aren’t getting a deconstruction of the superhero mythos. You’re getting a dopamine hit of pure imagination.
So, maybe those five copies of X-Force #1 aren’t worth a fortune. Maybe they’re worth about 50p each. But that’s not the point. The value wasn’t in the return on investment. The value was in the Wednesday afternoon bike ride to the shop. The value was in the arguments with your friends about who would win in a fight between Wolverine and Lobo.
We gambled our allowance and lost the financial game, but we won the memories. And honestly? I’d still buy a comic if you wrapped it in a foil hologram bag. Old habits die hard.
