What was Marvel's 'Heroes Reborn'?

The TV show Heroes is being reborn as Heroes Reborn. Almost 20 years ago, Marvel had its own Heroes Reborn experiment, which was one of the oddest and most disliked eras in its history.

After a period of intense profits fueled by speculation, Marvel Comics was on the verge of bankruptcy after the bottom fell out of the comics market in the mid-‘90s. To cut costs, in 1996, the company agreed to outsource several of its longstanding titles to Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld, former Marvel superstars who had jumped ship to work at Image Comics.

To outsource the titles Marvel first had to find a way to get its most popular heroes out of the picture and that took the form of the Onslaught story. Onslaught was a very powerful villain that originated in Professor X’s consciousness when his brain was corrupted after he shut down Magneto’s brain. The Avengers, Fantastic Four and other heroes seemingly sacrificed their lives to stop Onslaught. They vanished, while the X-Men remained behind. A lot of people didn’t like this story but I liked the team-up of all Marvel’s major teams.

The next month, Marvel relaunched Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Captain America and the Avengers to varying degrees of success. These comics basically started from scratch and retold team origins in an updated way. I had no problem with Fantastic Four or Iron Man. However, Captain America and the Avengers titles were disasters. The Avengers consisted of a weird lineup of Cap, Hawkeye in a brown costume, the Swordsman, the Scarlet Witch, the Vision and Hellcat, all of whom discovered a barbaric Thor frozen in the ice. Captain America had horrifying art (Google “Captain America Liefeld” if you want to see some questionable anatomy). These were both Liefeld titles but he was soon off both books. Avengers rallied a little toward the end of the run after the great Walter Simonson started writing but Cap’s title never improved.

All four titles ended in a year with an interconnected story of Galactus eating their world. But there was a 13^th issue of each that was a team-up of the heroes with characters from WildStorm, a rival publisher. This confused me because I didn’t know there was a deal between Marvel and WildStorm and didn’t know the WildStorm characters. The whole Heroes Reborn thing confused me because at the time, I didn’t know the backstage drama of Marvel’s bankruptcy.

The heroes later returned to Earth 616 in the Heroes Return miniseries. It turned out they were not dead but Franklin Richards used his immense powers to spirit them away into a pocket universe that was inside a blue ball he was playing with. Anyway, the titles were better from thereon out, with Avengers starting a critically acclaimed run.

Comic fans do not remember Heroes Reborn fondly. I have been gradually putting my loose comics in plastic bags but the Heroes Reborn titles sit unbagged and at risk of damage. I just can’t justify the expense or time of treating them better.