1994's Batman: Saga of the Dark Knight trading cards (SKYBOX)

In today's article, we'll be looking back at Skybox's first Batman trading card set -- Batman: Saga of the Dark Knight. Released in April 1994, this 100-card trading card set focused on all the major milestones in Batman's post-Crisis comic career: everything from Batman: Year One all the way up to KnightQuest.      

magazine ad for Batman: Saga of the Dark Knight trading cards

In 1994 non-sports trading cards had become BIG business. Don't believe me? Just check old issues of Wizard Magazine and Hero Illustrated from that era -- lots and lots of ad space devoted to new trading card sets being released. Nearly every comic book company (and then some) had a trading card set being hawked to the masses. Thanks to the success of the Tim Burton Batman films, the Batman animated series on FOX, and Batman getting his back broken by Bane, interest in Batman was at all-time high. The real question was why it took Skybox so long to launch a trading card set completely devoted to Batman? Well, it was because it took THIS long for Skybox to acquire the Batman license from Topps.

This trading card set took me a LOOOONG time to complete as I rarely saw packs being sold at comic shops. According to Wizard Magazine, 13,333 cases were produced (SkyBox upped production from 12,500 at the last minute) and were all snapped up quickly by retailers. They were easy to spot with their gold foil wrapping, but very scarce to find in the wild (at the time):  

image source: ebay.ca

History of Batman

As seen in the ad above, the Batman: Saga of the Dark Knight trading card set boasted highlights from Year One to KnightQuest. Did it deliver on it's promise? Yes, it did. Was it thorough? No, it wasn't. 

In 1994, KnightQuest was just concluding and leading into KnightsEnd -- the final chapter of the KnightSaga. Actually, at the time, everything Batman-related was centered around the KnightSaga and whether Bruce Wayne would reclaim the Batman mantle or if AzBats was here to stay (I was personally hoping for the latter). To this effect, this card set mainly was divided into sub-sets that focused on storylines relevant to KnightSaga cannon. So, no mention of Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year Two, Ten Nights of the Beast, or any cross-over Batman had with the rest of the DCU, but plenty of attention on A Death in the Family, A Lonely Place of Dying, Batman: Year Three, and...of course...anything related to Azrael or Bane. The Knightfall and KnightQuest story arcs received the most attention in the set. Card #99 ended on a cliffhanger, openly questioning if Batman would confront AzBats to take back the title of Batman. At the time this card set was released, it was looking like Jean-Paul Valley as Batman was going to be the new normal. KnightsEnd only started in mid-1994, just as this trading card set hit the shelves, so no mention of that chapter.

I adored this set. I really felt that they delivered on their promise of covering everything important leading up to what was going on in the Batman mythos at the time. The cards had very apt, well-written summaries on the back and some even showed the covers of important comic books (so you can spot them on sight in back issue bins). Even more importantly, the artists who illustrated the front-facing card art were listed on the back, which took the guesswork out of trying to figure out who drew what -- this goes a long way when writing one of these reviews [ha!]. The quality of the card stock was thick and UV coated, so you knew you weren't getting the cheap cards here.

back of card #31

Original art

So, what kind of original art was being featured in this set? If it was anything like Dave Dorman's painted Batman (as seen in the ad), we were in for a real treat. Probably even surpassing the Marvel Masterpieces trading card set, which had raised the bar on how impressive a non-sports trading card could look. Well, while it wasn't an all-Dorman set, we did get some really impressive artistic teams on these cards.  

Mike Mignola, who had drawn the fan-favorite Gotham By Gaslight 1989 one-shot, contributed three cards to the 'Nemesis' sub-set. Not all of the villains appearing in this sub-set appeared in the KnightSaga. Here was his Ra's Al Ghul:

Jim Aparo, Dick Giordano and P. Pigott collaborated on all of the cards in the A Death in the Family sub-section, which was was fitting since Aparo was the original penciller for the story arc that ran from Batman #426 to #429 (1988). Knightfall often referenced Batman's relationship with Jason Todd, so this storyline was pivotal to understanding why Batman was acting so crazy/protective of Tim Drake in the events leading up Knightfall.

 

Matt Wagner, who illustrated 1992's Faces story arc in Legends of the Dark Knight as well as a few Detective Comics covers, also provided painted art for a few Bat-villain cards. Here's his Mud Pack:

Rick Burchett, probably best known for inking 1992's Batman Adventures ongoing series (based on Batman The Animated Series), pencilled and inked the first eighteen cards dealing with Batman's early origins (Batman: Year One, Shaman, The Killing Joke, The Cult and Batman: Venom):

Tom Grummet, who was drawing the new Robin ongoing series that debuted in 1993, contributed card art for all nine cards in the 'Dynamic Duo' sub-set. This sub-set was all about Batman's history with his former sidekicks:

Brian Stelfreeze, who was producing some of the most stunning Shadow of the Bat painted covers at the time, graced this set with a few bat-villain cards:

I don't think John Bolton had done any work on Batman prior to 1995's Batman: Man-Bat, but I'm glad he contributed art to a few cards in this set: 

Jim Balent (penciller) and Scott Hanna (inker) provided art for all nine 'KnightQuest' cards. Balent was the primary penciller for 1993's Catwoman ongoing series and Hanna had a long stint inking over Graham Nolan's pencils in Detective Comics in 1992. KnightQuest immediately followed KnightFall and was divided into two storylines: one about Jean-Paul Valley's trials and tribulations taking over the role of Batman, and Bruce Wayne's (somewhat dull) search for Robin's missing father. Thankfully, the few KnightQuest cards in this set focused on the former rather than the latter because they knew what the fans wanted. 

Appropriately enough, Hanna also provided the inks for all of Nolan's pencils in the 18-card 'KnightFall' sub-set. Knightfall consisted of 19 chapters (and that's not including the prelude issues setting the event up), and this sub-set managed to capture all of the relevant story points. Nicely done:

Phil Jimenez, who was best known as the New Titans penciller at the time, pencilled all the cards from the 'A Lonely Place of Dying' sub-set (presumably because George Perez was unavailable). These cards were inked by Peter Gross (who was mainly an inker for Dr. Fate): 

..and yes, there were a few Dave Dorman cards in the set. One of which was his impressive painted rendition of Nightwing:

Other prolific DC artists who contributed original art to this set included Barry Kitson (Azrael ongoing series), Kyle Baker (inker for The Shadow), and Eduardo Barreto (inker for Vengeance of Bane one-shot). The different artistic styles from the wide array of contributors made for a great effect and kept the card set visually interesting. Everyone here was at the top of their game (and probably paid quite handsomely by Skybox, too). 

Insert Cards

The chase cards in this set consisted of 5 spectra-etch 'painted portrait' cards (1 in 18 packs), and the highly-coveted Batman SkyDisc hologram card that only appeared once in every 240 packs.

The spectra-etch chase cards were named, aptly enough, the 'Portraits of the Batman' sub-set. Original art for these cards were provided by John Bolton, Dave Dorman, Phil Winslade, Brian Stelfreeze and Mark Chiarello (Batman/Houdini: The Devil's Workshop). These cards had a reflective sheen on them not unlike the foil-covered "collector's edition" comic books of the time. While the entire five card sub-set was nice enough, the only card I really coveted was the Jean-Paul Valley as Batman card illustrated by Brain Stelfreeze, which I managed to eventually obtain in a trade that weighed heavily in favor of the person I was trading with. Ah well, I still own it today and occasionally take a few moments to admire it:

The Batman SkyDisc hologram card was something I had never actually seen in person, but always wanted to own since I love holograms. Apparently, if you lay the card down flat on a surface and shone a light on it, Batman appeared to rise from the card. By walking around the card you see a complete 360-degree figure. This was next level Star Trek stuff. It was explained that this effect was achieved by filming a Batman statue from every possible angle. 

Re-sellers sold these cards starting at $75 USD and upwards, which was quite out of range for my thirteen year-old self. Several years ago I had the chance to purchase this card for a decent price, but balked out at the last minute after I realized how much tracked shipping would cost me. Maybe someday.

Promo Cards

Since it was SkyBox's first Batman set EVER, one would assume that they'd be aggressively trying to market this -- and you'd be right. Various promo cards/products were distributed through various magazines and events.

Comics Buyer's Guide promo card:

 

As we went through the base set you might've realized something was noticeably absent: no trading cards featuring Kelley Jones original art. Jones, who had illustrated almost ALL of the Knightfall covers, seemed like a pretty obvious choice for original card art in this set. Sadly, this one lone promo card offered via Comic Buyer's Guide magazine was all that we got. As of this writing, I'm not sure if it was a mail-in or simply included in the magazine, but I'm assuming it was the latter. 

Dealers exclusive promo card:

This was just a re-hash of card #1, but with the card set's logo and byline on the front. Oh yeah, and it was sent to dealers. Like the aforementioned promo card above, the back of the card just listed all of the cool features about this new trading card set and made a passing mention about the first-ever Spectra-Etch display boxes that will be individually numbered.  

Georgia Dome promo card:

This was a Superbowl XXVIII giveaway at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta on January 30, 1994. These promo cards were limited to a print run of 50,000. No clue who the artist was.

Camden Yards promo card:

This was a promo card given away at Camden Yards in Baltimore, presumably during a Baltimore Orioles baseball game. Similar to the aforementioned promo card distributed at the Superbowl, I don't know why SkyBox decided to giveaway Batman promo cards at a baseball game. SkyBox was well-known for their sports cards, so this may have been an attempt at a cross-promotion? If I were to draw a Venn diagram, how many professional baseball fans were also Batman fans? Or sports card collectors also non-sports cards collectors, for that matter? Also limited to a print run of 50,000, I have no clue who the artist on this card is.

     

Oversized SkyDisc in CD case:

image sources: ebay.ca

This was a curious promo item, and they were limited to 10,000. It was the SkyDisc Batman hologram (the same from the ultra rare chase card), but it was the extra-large version and came in a CD case [remember those?]. I don't know who got them or how. Either way, color me impressed. I would've loved one of these.

In addition, there was a binder available for this trading card set, but I don't know if it was a mail-away exclusive or if it included any special promo items:

image source: ebay.com

  

Summary

I loved this trading card set. It was perfect and couldn't have been released at a better time. A few months after this set was released, comic readers would start getting burned out by the (seemingly) never-ending KnightSaga and then DC would launch it's big Zero Hour reboot event providing DC fans with something new to have a vested interest in. However, for about a year and some change, the fate of Batman's legacy was the main event and held our attention rapturously. Jean-Paul Valley as Batman was a new, violent Batman who took no prisoners and didn't care about collateral damage or killing villains. It was a total paradigm shift from Bruce Wayne's "save the innocent bystanders first, and never kill unless you have to" values. In a way, Jean-Paul Valley's attitude was reflective of the world around him: dealing with violent crime with the intent of eliminating the original cause rather than trying to rehabilitate it. Bane was also a different time of villain: he was ultra-strong and smart (typically Bat-villains were either strong and dumb or smart and weak), which was also reflective of the new types of villains the world was dealing with in the 90s. Great memories flipping through these cards -- makes me want to re-read my Knightfall omnibus.

To me, the main selling point was being able to catch up on my Batman lore -- the internet didn't really exist back then and my Batman comic book collection was sporadic with lots of missing story arcs. Rumor has it that SkyBox was planning on releasing ANOTHER Batman trading card set, The Archive Collection Series, but the company couldn't secure the rights to various Batman licenses in time for a September 1994 release. Apparently, it was going to be released in two 160-card sets and would've covered every single thing you probably would've liked to have known about Batman (this included the movies, the cartoons, toys, gadgets and comic books). Alas, it was not meant to be. SkyBox did, however, release a fully-painted Batman: Master Series trading card set in 1996, which I hope to review in a future article.

-Justin    

DC Vertigo: The Sandman trading card set from SkyBox (1994)

With daily updates of a Sandman series coming to Netflix, it seems very appropriate to write an article about The Sandman trading card set Skybox released in 1994 -- back when just about EVERYTHING comic-related was getting it's own trading card set. The Sandman was first published by DC comics in January 1989... so there's your 'DC in the 80s' connection.

 

Comic book ad for Skybox's The Sandman Trading Cards. 1994

I don't know why DC/Vertigo/Skybox decided to release a trading card set based on Neil Gaiman's The Sandman comic book series, considering they were most likely targeting a different audience with these cards. I DO know that The Sandman was already much revered at this point and it was nigh impossible to find early issues of this series for cheap. I was late to the party and only found out about the series after it was too expensive to buy the early issues. Who was reading The Sandman? Not your average comic book fan. Actually, I'm pretty sure that collectors who read Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and X-Men on the regular stayed miles away from the series. I like to imagine the typical Sandman reader being a college-aged goth, dressed head-to-toe in black, with a big collection of Anne Rice books and Siouxsie Sioux LPs. In actuality, I think it was just anyone who liked engrossing, well-written and beautifully illustrated stories.

Originally slated for a December 1993 release but pushed back to February 1994, Skybox did something a little different with this trading card set -- these cards were released as a premium, oversized card set (each card measuring 2.5" x 4.5") -- which meant that you had to buy special, irregular-sized cardholders and plastic sheets to properly protect them. Argh, what a pain. This format of oversized cards would come to by known as widevision. What was the reason for the 3 month delay? According to Wizard Magazine, Neil Gaiman autographed 2,000 cards that were randomly inserted into packs. [A later issue of Wizard then corrected that statement and explained that Skybox delayed the set because they didn't want to release it into an already overcrowded non-sports card market. Wizard also revealed that Gaiman had only signed 500 cards, and that they would be given away free to retailers who order a case of Sandman cards via Diamond Comics Distributors.] 

In all honesty, this is a trading card set I glazed over the first time it came around. I felt it was something that would only appeal to people who were already familiar with the comic book series. In 1994 I was still very invested in the comic speculator bubble, and probably spending my money on Valiant and Image comics. If I was buying trading cards, it was most likely X-Men or Batman or whatever the 'hot' thing at the moment was.

I can't confirm if this was the FIRST widevision trading card set Skybox produced. During this same year, Skybox released a few widevision trading card sets (i.e., Star Trek: Generations, The Lion King, Superman: Man of Steel Platinum series), and then Topps appeared to have followed suit by releasing Star Wars widevision trading cards. I'm going by memory here, and I might be wrong -- if anyone who worked at Topps during that era wants to correct me in the comments section, I'd welcome it.

A sealed pack of The Sandman Trading Cards looked like this. They contained six cards per pack and retailed between $1.75 to $2.25 USD. 
Photo source: ebay.

This base set consisted of 90 UV-coated oversized cards, and the inserts were 7 gold foil cards and 1 very very rare 3-D stereo hologram card. You could also purchase a binder that included a promo card:

The Sandman Trading Cards binder. Photo source: ebay

  

Promo card

The 90 card base set is divided into two subsets. The first subset contains 50 cards showcasing cover art from the first 50 issues of The Sandman. Dave McKean's art played a very important part in defining the look of The Sandman -- his covers for this series were often surreal and abstract (usually collages comprised of photographs, paint and ink) with subjects that were out-of-focus and sinister-looking. Upon first glance, his covers made you realize that this won't be a superhero story with muscle-bound characters fighting to save the world, this will be something artistic (and possibly haunting) that will probably involve a lot of reading. I love this subset. This might be the closest we'll ever get to a Dave McKean trading card set.

A few McKean cards:

...and the reverse of the first 50 cards had a summary of the issue:

The second subset consists of 39 characters that appear in the series. Each card was illustrated by the original artist -- so that's 39 cards of original art. Mike Kaluta, Matt Wagner, Colleen Doran, Kevin Nolan, Jill Thompson, Malcolm Jones III, Mike Allred, Denys Cowan, Craig Hamilton, John Totleben, Michael Zulli and a few more I'm forgetting to name -- but pretty much everyone who worked on the first 50 issues of The Sandman have a hand in this. For some reason, Sergio Aragones (Groo, MAD magazine) even illustrated a card:

As far as character selection goes, they pretty much cover all the important players from Master of Dreams, Dream Country, A Season of Mists, A Game of You, Distant Mirrors, Convergences and Brief Lives. This set was released just as The Kindly Ones story arc was kicking off, but I was pleasantly surprised to see they were included as 'the Three Witches'. They even managed to slip in a few mainstream DCU characters that appeared in some of the major storylines:

The back of these cards contained a brief explanation of the character and the role they played in the series (probably written by Neil himself). I love that the artists are listed on the reverse of the card. Too many times have I played the 'guess who illustrated this trading card' game only to end up with no clue if I'm right or not. This is my biggest issue with this set: a small black typeface on a pink and grey camo background. I don't think it bothered me so much twenty years ago, but now I have to either strain, or hold the card really close to my face to read it:

One would presume that the most important/memorable characters from The Sandman would be included in the base set. You'd be wrong -- they were the chase cards. The chase set consisted of all seven members (including Morpheus) of the Endless. These cards are beautiful and were distributed at a ratio of 1 in every 18 packs. Each card was original art with gold foil borders. Artists included Dave McKean, Kent Williams, Jill Thompson and Bill Sienkewicz.

Which leads us to the 3-D Stereo Hologram card, found in 1 of every 180 packs. I'm a sucker for 3-D and hologram cards, and I've never seen this in person. Thanks to a kind soul on e-bay for posting this pic so I could see what I was missing:

Yup. It's Morpheus, but this image does do this hologram card justice. If you ever get the chance to see one of these in real life, take the chance. So worth it.

To raise awareness about the release of this trading card set, various promo cards were inserted into issues of Cards Illustrated magazine. Three promo cards were included in a pack, and three different packs were released (so, that's 9 promo cards in total). All of the promos re-used card art from the base set, but the reverse of the cards sang the praises of this new set rather than give issue/character summaries.  

I seem to recall two 'misprint' error cards die-hard collectors were searching for to complete their collections. The back of the card looked as it should, but the front of the card had another character card's reverse text printed on the front. Once upon a time, these cards were worth quite a bit. Now? I doubt it.

How did this card set do? According to Wizard Magazine (Wizard #35, August 1994) it sold extremely well. Retailers underestimated how well this set would do an underordered, driving the demand and rarity up. 

---

To summarize: The Sandman is a fantastic series that I tend to dig out of storage every few years and read from beginning to end. These cards bring back a lot of great memories and I really dig looking at those Dave McKean covers. As previously stated, the small font with colors that blend into the background on the character cards is a bit of a turn-off -- but it's something I can live with since I spend most of my time admiring the card art on the front anyways.

 

Reviewing the 1996 Fleer/Skybox DC Outburst: Firepower trading card set

About a year ago, while cleaning my closet, I found a dozen or so of these cards lying around in a box mixed with a bunch of other non-sports cards. DC Outburst: Firepower is a trading card set I had totally forgotten about.

Actually, when I first found them, I thought they were misplaced chase cards from another set. You see, these cards really stand out for being "DC Comics' First Totally Embossed Trading Card Set" [at least, that's what the promo card boasted], and you can feel (and sometimes see) that parts of the card are protuberant in a very slight way. For the first time ever, you could feel the contours of your favorite DC characters. (Oddly enough, Power Girl was NOT included in this set.) "The FURY of Batman. The SPEED of the Flash. The STRENGTH of Superman. FEEL them all for the first time!" is how they advertised this trading card set. This card set was slated to release for February 1996.

This is a somewhat modest-sized trading card set weighing in at 80 base cards, 20 Maximum Firepower insert cards (2:3 packs) and 2 Holoburst chase cards (1:36 packs). Cards came 7 in a pack and retailed for about $1.50 USD. Fleer non-sports cards [i.e. X-Men 1994 Fleer Ultra, Marvel Masterpieces 1994, Marvel Universe 1994, The Amazing Spider-Man 1994] were typically a little pricier, but had a nicer card stock and better card art (not to mention triptychs, 9-card puzzles and desirable chase/insert cards). Fleer had been owned by Marvel Comics since July 1992. Marvel later purchased SkyBox in March 1995. In essence, this was a merger of two of the most POPULAR non-sports trading card companies.

This wasn't Fleer/Skybox's first collaboration; they released the DC versus Marvel Comics trading card set two months prior, and the Fleer/Skybox Amalgam Comics trading card set would be scheduled for February 1996 as well.

By 1996, only 6 years after Impel's Marvel Universe Series I trading cards had been introduced, the gimmick era had seemingly hit it's apex and just about anything you could possibly do with a trading card had been done; we'd seen foil cards, hologram cards, over-sized/widescreen cards, chromium cards, pop-up cards, redemption cards, puzzle cards, 'foldees', metal cards, canvas cards, holopix cards, spectra-etch cards, autographed cards, die-cut cards, animation cell cards, embossed cards and a few more I'm forgetting. [Actually, I was pretty sure there was nothing left to be done until 'fabric' cards started popping up in the last two decades.] My first memory of any sort of embossed trading card was from 1993's Milestone: The Dakota Universe trading cards (by Skybox) in which the set's two chase cards were embossed foil cards — which, if I seem to recall, didn't inspire much excitement in me since it was the chase card of a relatively 'ho-hum' Milestone character.

So what was so special about 'embossed' cards? It's a little difficult to capture this effect on camera, but take this normal looking trading card...

card art by Rod Whigham

...and if I tilt the card in the light juuuust riiight...

...you can kind of see the embossed features of the card. Notice how the fiery orange 'Firepower DC' emblem in the left corner sticks out? And how Mr. Freeze's fist kind of protrudes from the card? You can even sort of make out the word 'Outburst' at the top of the card. This was the magic of embossed trading cards, folks. What a time to be alive.

Gimmicks aside (and I do assure you, this was a "gimmick") there isn't very much going on for this trading card set. Actually, the more I flip through these cards, the harder it is for me to justify posting this on a website about DC comics in the 1980s [since, in 1995/1996, DC comics had become more 'extreme' to keep pace with the then-current comic book market]. If nothing else, this will be a nice flashback of what was going on with DC comics in 1996.

Based on my somewhat limited memory, the 1996 North American comic book landscape was dominated by the massive DC vs Marvel/Marvel vs DC event that seemed to have taken up the better part of that year (not to mention all of the DC/Marvel cross-over books). While it was being massively hyped by Wizard Magazine, I remember being more interested in the Amalgam titles that were being published alongside the event. Actually, other than DC's Kingdom Come series (released later that year) and various Vertigo titles, I had pretty much given up on buying comics in general [but still picked up the occasional 'comic industry talk' magazine to see what was going on].

I always felt that the character selection in a trading card set is quite telling of what was going on with the comic book company at the time. As I examine these, I like to pretend I'm a comic book archaeologist digging up facts and piecing together history about a lost era in comics. Let's revisit some 1996 DC comics memories:

Card art by Stewart Johnson

Azrael (Jean Paul Valley) is the second card in this base set — which is a spot normally reserved for a high-profile character — which once again reminds us what a hot property Azrael was after the resolution of 1993's Knightfall/KnightQuest/KnightsEnd saga. His self-titled ongoing series ran from 1995 to 2003 for an impressive one hundred issues. In hindsight, I'm actually surprised that a Knightfall spin-off character could attain such longevity, considering that - to this day - I still know nearly nothing about the character.

card art by Chris Renaud

The Ray was one of those 'new generation' super-heroes that was introduced in a 1992 mini-series that was successful enough to have an ongoing series in 1994. In 1995, even with his own ongoing series, he was often a mainstay in the Justice League Task Force ongoing series or could be found teaming up with one of the other "new generation" super-heros [i.e. Damage, Kyle Rayner Green Lantern, Superboy, etc] somewhere in the DCU. The Ray's ongoing series ended in October 1996, almost six months after this card set had been released. As of this writing, there's talk about The Ray headlining his own CW animated feature — which caught a lot of fans by surprise, considering I don't think this character has crossed anyone's mind since his heyday in the mid 90s.

Starman card art and Fate card art both by Tony Harris.

1994's Zero Hour event indirectly introduced a few new 'modernized' characters to the DCU, one of them being Jack Knight as Starman (created by James Robinson and Tony Harris) and another being Jared Stevens as Fate (created by John Francis Moore and Anthony Williams). Unsurprisingly, (Chase Lawler) Manhunter wasn't featured in this card set since his ongoing series was cancelled before 1996. Fate lasted 22 issues, took a hiatus, and his adventures would be continued in the late 1996 Book of Fate ongoing series for another 12 issues. Starman's series was way more successful and would have an 80-issue run that would conclude sometime in 2001. I always kind of chuckle to myself as Fate kind of looks like Al Bundy (Ed O'Neill) from Married with Children on this card. (Full disclosure: as of this writing, I have never read the 1994 Fate v1 ongoing series, so I couldn't even tell you if it was good or not.)

Orion card art by Joe St. Pierre. Mr. Miracle card art by Ron Whigham.

Orion and Mr. Miracle. Ah yes, this reminds us when Kirby's Fourth World has a sudden resurgence in the mid 90s (Mister Miracle v2 and New Gods v3 had both ended in 1991). New Gods v4 debuted in 1995 (hence Orion being important again), and Mr Miracle got another ongoing series in 1996 (it only lasted 7 issues). Another newly created Fourth World character, named Takion, received an ongoing series in 1996 — which also only lasted 7 issues. New Gods v4 hung around until 1997, and a new title called Jack Kirby's Fourth World was published later that year. Both Orion and Big Barda (Mr. Miracle's wife) would become members of Grant Morrison's JLA in 1997 and Kirby's Fourth World mythos would stay relevant in the DCU for years to come.

card art by Rod Whigham

I don't think any DCU character has ever undergone such drastic character development changes as Green Arrow's former sidekick has. At this point in his superhero career, Roy Harper Jr had re-joined the Teen Titans and renamed himself to 'Arsenal'. When I first saw this trading card back in 1996, I'm positive I had no clue who this was and thought it was a new character DC was trying to sell to the masses. Wasn't Green Arrow's sidekick, Speedy, supposed to have red hair? This guy's got blond hair. In an interview with Bill Walko from The Titans Companion [2005], Teen Titans editor Johnathan Peterson revealed that the name change from Speedy to Arsenal was a DC trademark thing, and was out of editorial's hands (as the order came from the top). The last issue (#130) of New Titans hit the stands sometime in late 1995/early 1996, and the team no longer looked like anything I remembered it being — Starfire, Changeling and Raven were still around, and Donna Troy was still on the team (as Darkstar), but that was about it. This would probably explain why this trading card set didn't have much Teen Titans representation. Arsenal had a one-shot special sometime in 1996, Tempest (aka Aqualad) had a four-issue mini-series in late 1996, and the Teen Titans were given a new ongoing series (with all-new members) by Dan Jurgens in late 1996.

card art by Joe St. Pierre

On the topic of DCU characters who had undergone drastic alterations... we've got 'Warrior' here, but you may remember him as 'Guy Gardner: Warrior'. Guy Gardner, who was probably one of DC's most memorable characters during the late 80s and early 90s, was given a makeover during 1995's Zero Hour to become 'more extreme'. No longer needing to resort to a power ring (green or yellow), his whole body could morph into any weapon as it had been revealed that Gardner possessed alien DNA or something like that. This was another character that had fallen off of my radar since his powers had become so ridiculous that he didn't interest me anymore.

card art by Ron Wagner

Neron here was the main antagonist in the Underworld Unleashed event that DC published sometime in late 1995. Since this trading card set was released in early 1996, it could be expected that Neron was still on DC readers' minds [especially readers who were late to the party and picking up their issues several months afterwards], so it only made sense to dedicate a trading card to him. Underworld Unleashed was an event I completely skipped out on, but had the general understanding that a lot of my favorite DC villains were either jacked up with enhanced powers or altered in such a way that they were no longer recognizable. I just didn't have the heart to read this one.

Flipping through the rest of the cards:

• Man-Bat had a 3-issue series in early 1996. He got a card all to himself in the 'super-heroes' section.
• Bane, who was still a hot property for DC comics following Knightfall, also gets his own card in the 'super-heroes' section. I think his big appearance during that era was in the 1995 Batman: Vengeance of Bane II one-shot.
• Catwoman, who's ongoing series launched in 1993, was still holding strong and the series would run until 2001. Jim Balent penciled the first 77 issues of Catwoman v2, left the title and started penciling Tarot, Witch of the Black Rose for Broadsword Comics.
• The Justice League spin-off titles (Justice League America, Justice League Task Force, Extreme Justice) had all wrapped up by mid-to-late 1996. The 4 issue Justice League: A Midsummer's Nightmare was published around this time to act as a prelude to Grant Morrison's new JLA ongoing series.
• Jerry Ordway's The Power of Shazam, which began as an ongoing series in 1995, was going strong in 1996 and would continue publication until 1999. This was easily one of the more interesting DCU titles being publishing at the time — I'm sorry I didn't pick up more than the first few issues when it first started.
• Batman was still a popular seller for DC comics in 1996, as evidenced by the slew of Batman-related titles published that year [i.e. Batman: Scar of the Bat, Batman, Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, Batman: Shadow of the Bat, Detective Comics, Batman Chronicles, Batman: Black and White, Batman: GCPD, Batman: Death of Innocents, Batman: Gordon's Law, Batman: The Long Halloween, Batman: Blackgate, Batman Plus, etc.]. I'm sure this was the reason why about half the villains featured in this set were Batman villains.

I'm going to start on a positive note and tell you what I like about this set:

• the colors on the card are bright and vibrant (as demonstrated in the scans above),
• the artists are listed on the back of the card — which is always a nice touch,
• the insert cards are easily attainable (2:3 packs),
• the Holoburst chase cards are more or less 1 per box, and
• in some cases, the embossing actually enhances the card art and makes it appear like the character is bursting right out of the card. It's kind of neat, actually. 

Here are some of the reasons I'm really not keen on this set:

1) There's an incredibly limited character selection. Of the 80 trading cards in the base set, only about 20 of them are villains. It wouldn't be so bad if the other 59 cards (I'm not including the checklist here) were unique super-heroes, but we get the same heroes repeated several times over. Characters that get repeated more than once include Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Hawkman, Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern,... which makes sense, since these are DC's BIG properties, but it would've been nice to see some attention given to some of the other DCU characters being published at the time (i.e. Legion of Super-Heroes, L.E.G.I.O.N. Showcase 95/96, etc).

Just one of the four Superman cards featured in this set. Art by Norm Breyfogle.

2) The way this set was organized. The base set is divided into seven sub-categories: Attack: Full Force, Attack: Out of the Blue, Attack: Armed and Dangerous, Dirty Deeds, To The Rescue, Close Calls and FreeStyle. None of this makes any logical sense to me. The first three Attack sub-categories have all the unique super-heroes, and the last three sub-categories are various repeats of the first. After carefully examining the reverse of the trading cards, it would appear like we've 'hacked' into Oracle's private database and are reading about the characters in question.

As evidenced by the text on the reverse of these cards, the further you go into this collection as an 'unauthorized log-on', the less time you have before the file 'locks'. I can understand what they're trying to go for here, but all of this extra 'computer interface' aesthetic just doesn't work on the back of a 2.5" x 3.5" trading card. Because of all the extra real estate taken up to make it look like an 'authentic database interface', we're left with enough space for about 2 sentences to describe the character. My theory is that this set was probably planned several months in advance (mid-1995) and the editors weren't even sure what the future plans for these characters were going to be — hence they had to keep the card text pretty vague.

3) This was a terrible era in DC comics [for me, anyways]. Yes, this is pretty biased, but 1995's Zero Hour pretty much rang the death knell for my favorite era in DC comics. It wasn't Zero Hour itself that made me give up on DC comics — I actually thought Zero Hour was pretty good — it was more of the state of comic books at the time. The art and characters had all shifted to becoming 'more extreme'. The 'gimmick era' had burned me out. There were no new ideas floating around, and everything was just being recycled over and over again. That's how I felt at the time. I figured that Zero Hour would be a nice book-end if I was going to take a hiatus from comic book reading for a while. When I was picking up comics, it was either Morrison's The Invisibles (Vertigo), Neil Gaiman's Mr. Hero the Newmatic Man (Tekno Comix), The Maxx (Image) or whatever Grendel book Dark Horse was publishing at the moment.

4) It's pretty bad when the base set cards look better than the insert cards.

Spot the insert card from the rest of the base set cards:

If you picked Parallax (#2 in the line-up), then you are correct. The dead give-away was the moderately foil-stamped 'Maximum Firepower' logo on the card, you say? Funny, because that's really the only thing that really separates the insert cards from the rest of the base set cards. The 20 card insert set appears to be centered around the 1995 Parallax View story arc that ran in Green Lantern v3 #63 - 64, but skims over a few important details (such as what made this such a turning point in Hal Jordan's character development) and only goes so far as to describe each Justice Leaguer's contribution to the overall victory. Actually, this was one of the selling points of this card set: an original story penned by Alan Grant (Batman: Shadow of the Bat, Lobo) that would be featured on the backs of the 20 card insert set. I never took the time to read it. This insert set didn't even do anything cool like join up to form one big puzzle or anything. From an aesthetic point of view, there was really no reason to seek out these insert cards, as the base set cards arguably looked better. Admittedly, the Holoburst chase cards do look pretty cool, but that's mainly because I am a sucker for holograms.

5) That 'je ne sais quoi' that I just can't seem to put my finger on. By this point, I've re-written the paragraph you're currently reading about six times now. My first few versions had me blaming the card art for my dissatisfaction with this set — but that's not entirely fair. The art is actually good. Examine any individual card on it's own and you'd be quite satisfied with it. Most were illustrated by Chris Renaud, Joe St. Pierre, Norm Breyfogle, Chris Batista and Rod Whigham, with accompanying inks by Scott Hanna, John Nyberg, Barbara Kaalberg, or Chip Wallace (among others). I think the problem (for me) is that the art is very reminiscent of the Image Comics 'house art style' that DC and Marvel had started emulating [e.g. dynamic and extravagant art, overly detailed, gritted teeth and 'in your face' poses] in their books around this era. I realize that criticizing a trading card set containing nothing but dynamic, action-packed card art (in order to take advantage of it's embossed gimmick effect) is pretty hypocritical — yet here we are. Upon further reflection, I think my biggest slight with this set is that it reminds me of all the mid-90s comic book industry elements that made me want to quit comics for a while. To me, these cards are a salute to a long begone era that will (hopefully) never repeat itself again.

card art by Norm Breyfogle

I will be the first to admit that there are BETTER sets out there capturing this era of DC comics, and you'd probably be happier with the DC Legends Power Chrome set (from Skybox) that contains more characters and was released one year prior, or even the 1994 DC Master Series (also by Skybox) which is just beautiful to look at.

Why should you buy this? You were at a flea market, and you found a box of these cards for less then $5. Pick 'em up. You're a die-hard Superman fan and you want to purchase the four Superman cards in the base set? Go for it. As previously stated, these cards look pretty good on their own.

If you're a 'got to have it all' DC comics trading card collector (like me), or the DC Outburst: Firepower trading card set is just something you have fond memories of and want to own, you can pick up the entire 80 card base set for about $18 USD (as of this writing) on e-bay. The 20 card insert set will cost you another $15 USD, and the 2 Holoburst chase cards are about $10 USD a piece.


-Justin

If you're a fan of DC comics from the mid-90s, I'd strongly recommend checking out The Unspoken Decade — Dean Compton, Emily Scott and Jason Symbifan discuss and review ALL comics from the 1990s (this includes Marvel, DC, Image, Malibu, etc) and actually manage to spotlight the good ones. It's a great trip down memory lane for those of us who want to remember the "gimmick era". ;)

Some Unspoken Decade articles we recommend:

• NEVER SEND A WOMAN TO DO A WOMAN’S JOB: JUSTICE LEAGUE TASK FORCE #7 & 8 by Emily Scott
• TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY by Jason Symbifan
• Plenty of Zero Hour articles
• SUPER-BLOG TEAM UP PRESENTS-GODKILLERS: DOOMSDAY & BANE! by Dean Compton