The Dawn of the Knights
By Mario Muscar
Marvel In Trouble
The mid-1990s were a turbulent time for Marvel. In an attempt to gain readers, Marvel launched a big event called "Onslaught." The story saw Professor Charles Xavier of the X-Men turn into the evil Onslaught and seemingly kill Captain America and the Avengers, Iron Man, the Fantastic Four and the Hulk's alter ego, Bruce Banner. However, these characters were not dead; Marvel just had different plans for them. Marvel contracted the studios of two of their most famous former freelancers, Image Comics' Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld, to take these characters and create four new, twelve-issue series. Jim Lee's WildStorm studios produced Iron Man and Fantastic Four, while Rob Liefeld's Extreme Studios created new versions of Captain America and The Avengers.
While these new, alternate-universe versions of several of Marvel's most popular titles generated an upswing in sales for Marvel Comics, the success was not enough to stop the coming storm. Marvel Comics was in financial trouble, spurned mostly by owner Ron Perelman's lack of experience in the comics industry. Perelman had expanded the company during the boom of the early 1990s, taking out loans to finance ventures into the trading card and toy industries. After the speculator market collapsed, Marvel was unable to repay its outstanding loans and, in December 1997, filed for bankruptcy. Things looked grim and Marvel's future was unknown.
Marvel Takes a Chance on Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti
While Marvel was going through its financial problems, penciller Joe Quesada and inker Jimmy Palmiotti were running an independent comics company named Event Comics. Founding the company in 1994, Quesada and Palmiotti, who had previously been working on such books as Valiant Comics' Ninjak and X-O Manowar and DC's The Ray and Batman: Sword of Azrael, were having some mild success with their characters Ash and Painkiller Jane. Like their Heroes Reborn line, Marvel was interested in revitalizing some of their other properties and were considering hiring Quesada and Palmiotti to do just that.
"I'd say probably in 1997 is when Marvel came around knocking on the door," Quesada said. "They were picking our brains because Marvel obviously was in dire straits at that time, and they were looking for anything to spark the publishing division, and just comics in general; because it wasn't just Marvel that was in dire straits, the whole industry was literally in the crapper. So they came to us and started an exploratory conversation between myself and Jimmy and then-president of Marvel, Joe Calamari."
"They were in chapter 11," Palmiotti added. "The books weren’t that great and Marvel had to do something to stimulate sales and make the books better. At the end of the day, they were looking for a couple of guys to bring back the passion and quality of the books that has been there in the past and had been, up until then, lost. Marvel comics were not on top of the world when we got there, and we saw what was wrong right away. It was so obvious to us, especially myself, still working freelance there at the time and dealing with editors that were stuck in a rut with what they were producing. The excitement had left the building in a number of ways."
Palmiotti added that his friend, and publisher of Wizard Magazine, Gareb Shamus suggested them to Calamari.
"Gareb told him to look at Event Comics and what Joe and I were doing over there," Palmiotti said. "We got the call and met up twice, discussing some ideas Joe and I had and finally we came up with a wish list of titles and conditions we were looking for and we got what we wanted. There was a little back and forth with the contracts, but once it was cleared up, we got to work."
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