Cancelled Comics Commentary for 1995
January 1995
Nothing found here so far, but maybe that's the best way to begin.
February
1995
Barb Wire #9 (Dark Horse):
this series, starring a female bounty hunter in a future era of
America, was sadly hampered by something that didn't happen so
commonly in creator owned stories: it was plagued by too many
connections to other stuff published by Dark Horse at the time too.
However, where it really gained some infamy was when it was adapted
to film starring Baywatch babe Pamela Anderson, and wasn't that a
real clinker. Thanks to that appalling mishap, it sunk into
obscurity and never really recovered for years. A real shame.
However, in 2015, Dark Horse announced they'd be trying the series
again, and may have their cards played right the second time around.
The Doom
Patrol #87 (DC/Vertigo): This series first began starring a
few of the people connected to the old Doom Patrol from the Silver
Age, like Robotman. But this did not catch on immediately when it
was launched in the late 80s by Paul Kupperberg, so instead, they
brought in overrated UK writer Grant Morrison, who redid the book in
his ludicrous fashion, and that's when it took off, unfortunately.
Of course, it was all done at a time when the kind of lurid shock
tactics Morrison used were considered super-duper. Today, that's all
changed.
I think what annoyed me was if Kupperberg killed off some characters
like Celsius and Scott Fischer just because Morrison didn't want to
use them, something I honestly think is foolish, but also suggests
the writer has little faith in his own creations.
Rachel Pollack's run on the remainder of the series after Morrison
left did have a few good bits though, and is probably the best thing
about it.
Prototype #18 (Malibu): there were two protagonists in this
item who got surgical implants that could enable them to
cybernetically control an armored suit. One of the leads, whose name
was Bob Campbell, was ultimate replaced by the second, Jimmy Ruiz,
during the Black September crossover when Marvel bought out Malibu
and changed much of the concepts.
March 1995
Firearm #18 (Malibu): this ill-fated series was created by
James Robinson, who long turned out to be one of the most
pretentious scribes ever to litter comicdom. The star of the show
was a British-born private eye who'd served in the UK special
forces, and left because they wanted to sacrifice some agents on a
mission to stop some superhuman antagonists. He moved to Pasadena,
California, where he took up jobs involving the bizarre and
ultra-human. And simply failed to interest anybody.
Freex #18 (Malibu): a variation on X-Men that suffered the
misfortune of being co-created by Gerard Jones (turn to the
2004 files to understand why), this series concerned a group
of teens injected with a combination of DNA and nanotechnology
called Wetware, developed by an isolated society called Fire People.
They went on adventures to find more like themselves, but the series
went nowhere, and if you know today what Jones' personality is like,
that's why it's for the best it sank into obscurity. Following the
idiotic event/crossover called Black September, which was written up
to serve as a lead-in to several series being relaunched, it may
have ceased to exist in Malibu's Ultraverse because of the
time-warping effects involved.
Marvel Comics Presents #175 (Marvel): one of the last truly
successful anthology series Marvel ever published, it ran for nearly
7 years, usually on a twice-monthly or bi-weekly basis. It featured
quite a few stand-alone stories dedicated to various protagonists in
the MCU, including Black Panther, Colossus, Wolverine and so on. In
today's editorially mandated environment a series like this has no
chance of success on an artistic level.
The Secret Defenders #25 (Marvel): an attempt to revive the
notable team usually led by Doctor Strange that ran during 1972-86,
it began well enough with Roy Thomas as a writer, but after he left
and dreadful scripters like Ron Marz came in, it lost its luster.
Tom Brevoort, now known as one of the worst people Marvel could
possibly employ, wrote the last third of the series, in one of his
few writing efforts at the time. One of the reasons it collapsed was
surely because Stephen Strange was removed from the cast when the
brief Midnight Sons imprint was published, and he was part of it.
But truly, what ruined this book was the wretched incompetents who
worked on the rest of the series.
April 1995
Conan Classic #11 (Marvel): reprints of Roy Thomas and Barry
Windsor-Smith's famous series based on Robert E. Howard's sword and
sorcery fantasy tales of a warrior living in the "Hyborian Age" that
enjoyed a long run between 1970-93. Some of those stories, I can
tell you, are great stuff for their genre. (Trivia note: Thomas also
created a somewhat similar hero when he was working at DC in the 80s
called Arak: Son of Thunder, starring a warrior who was of a more
Indian-style background that ran during 1981-85.) Since Marvel's
series ended, it was all taken up by different license holders.
Darkhawk #50 (Marvel): created by Tom deFalco and Mike
Manley, it spotlighted Christopher Powell, who'd witnessed his
policeman father accepting a bribe from a gangster much to his
dismay when he was a teenager, and during that time, he also came
upon an amulet that enabled him to switch places with a powerful
android that he could control with his mind, and decided to use it
for crimefighting. He was one of the first members of the New
Warriors when they first banded together, and quite a few other
heroes in the MCU, was a native of New York City. The premise was an
interesting one, and managed to coast as far as it did for at least
4 years.
Rune #9 vol. 1 (Malibu): starring a vampire-like character
who first appeared in another Malibu title called Sludge, which
ended the prior year. And which would be relaunched to little
success soon after with the Marvel buyout.
Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #35
(Marvel): the eponymous heroine of this series was created by Tom
deFalco and Ron Frenz in the mid-80s in the pages of Spider-Man; a
lady who ran a commando/mercenary outfit for hunting down neo-nazis
and other dangerous criminals, partly to finance Sable's
fictionalized home country of Symkaria. Her relations with Spidey
could be all over the place, as they didn't always agree on how to
handle some crimefighting details. She could be driven by anguish,
due to her mother's murder by enemies of her father, Ernst Sablinov,
from whom she acquired the job, and was at times emotionless in her
approach to carry out her jobs as effectively as possible.
It was a pretty good idea that eventually led to this series, which
did have its moments, but unfortunately couldn't sustain an audience
for long. Which is too bad, of course, because Sable was one of
those babes who could've made one of plenty of great sex symbols for
Marvel, an idea they've long had a disturbing problem of trashing
even before they had a chance.
May 1995
The Demon #59 Vol. 2 (DC): First created in
1972 by Jack Kirby, around the same time that Len Wein first created
the Swamp Thing, its eponymous star Etrigan spoke in rhymes whenever
possible, and dealt with crime involving the occult. His alter ego
was Jason Blood, whom I think was not really the same person but
rather a guy to whom he was magically bound. Although Kirby wasn't
interested in developing horror comics per se, he did agree to
create a protagonist for horror thrillers at DC editorial's request
following the cancellation of the Fourth World titles he'd written
at the time, and for a brief period, Etrigan did gain some
attention, with his original series running for at least 16 issues
(the first Swamp Thing volume ran longer). He continued to make
occasional guest appearances in various other books over the years,
including - but not limited to - Swamp Thing's second volume and
Neil Gaiman's overrated version of the Sandman. Then came along this
newer series which lasted 5 years, written by Alan Grant and
sporting quite a bit of black comedy.
I guess it can be said that with this, Etrigan certainly managed to
make a mark on the comics landscape, but since then, it's back to
business as usual, although there was another brief series that came
along in 2005.
Namor, the Sub-Mariner #62 (Marvel): this may be the fourth
time Marvel's very first superhero-style character, introduced in
1939, got his own series, although the first time in the Golden Age
may have been in anthologies, while the second was in Tales to
Astonish during the Silver Age, sharing space with the Hulk, and the
third was the 1968-74 series. Then, there came this one, lasting
about 5 years, where a guy who was portrayed as quite the anti-hero
in the past took to crimefighting solo anew. It was probably one of
the last really good takes on Subby, as come the turn of the
century, things became really bad.
The Second Life of Dr. Mirage #18 (Valiant): co-created by
Bob Layton, this was an odd series about a pair of parapsychologists
named Hwen and Carmen Mirage who investigated the paranormal and the
supernatural. One of their leading adversaries here was a supercrook
named Master Darque who'd first appeared in Shadowman, which can be
read about at the end of this page.
The Strangers #24 (Malibu): another team title featuring a
bunch who get zapped by lightning on a San Francisco cable car that
crashes and hits an automobile driven by Johnny Domino, giving him
superpowers as well, and he himself becomes Night Man, with
telepathy enabling him to read evil thoughts and such (see his own
title below).
June 1995
Armorines #12 (Valiant): this told about a special team of
armored military personnel who were initially formed to combat X-O
Manowar, whose own series appears in the
1996 files, but after realizing he was innocent, went on to
face real threats like the Spider-Aliens.
Black Orchid #22 (DC/Vertigo): the eponymous heroine of this
series, Susan Linden-Thorne, had originally debuted in 1973 in Adventure
Comics #428. She had superpowers like strength,
invulnerability, but her best talent was actually being a disguise
master. Not only that, it wasn't clear for awhile who she really
was. She would make more appearances in books like the Phantom
Stranger series published in the mid-70s among other various comics
of the times, and even in Blue Devil and Suicide Squad in later
years.
In 1988, there was a prestige format miniseries that served as the
starting base for this series. The Orchid this time was Suzy Black,
and Neil Gaiman worked out the origin for her in the mini,
eventually resulting in this series, where the background depicted
her as part of a hybrid engineering experiment. Dick Foreman served
as the writer for the ongoing. It may have had potential, but never
caught on in the end.
Since that time, the new Black Orchid's turned up on occasion, but
unfortunately had to make do with some very bad misuse, like in an
abortive series called Shadowpact.
Geomancer #8 (Valiant): the title was also the name given to
a number of other characters in the Valiant line, a society of men
and women with psionic powers who existed as early as 3500 BC. It's
probably the shortest-lived of the Valiant line, but was still an
interesting premise.
Harbinger #41 (Valiant): one of the first
series from Jim Shooter's Valiant line, which he co-wrote himself
with David Lapham doing the drawing. It spotlighted a group of teen
outcasts, some with superpowers, others without, called the
Harbingers, who formed themselves after the machinations of a
crooked tycoon called Toyo Harada who's plotting to conquer the
world out of misguided intentions, and a young teen named Peter
Stanchek, a former disciple of Harada's who's developed psionic
abilities and after discovering the truth about Harada's plans
following the murder of his best friend, Peter forms the title group
to stop him. His ladyfriend here was Kris Hathaway, who, while not
possessing serious superpowers herself, was quite intelligent and
this is what provided her with a formidable advantage. One could say
these type of stories were inspired to a degree by the X-Men, and it
figures since Shooter was Marvel's editor-in-chief at the time that
franchise was just gaining momentum. Interesting note: the first 6
issues came with a special coupon (rather awkwardly published as the
"pink mail away variant") you could use to order the prequel story
that told how Peter Stanchek got involved with the Harada company
and came to oppose his operations, and these coupons even came with
special panels from a mini-strip Shooter conceived that told the
origins of Toyo Harada.
Valiant Comics was later bought by video game developer Acclaim who
also made some computer games out of some of the creations of the
comics company, and Harbinger was one of them.
H.A.R.D Corps #30 (Valiant): first appearing in the 10th
Harbinger issue, the name of the strike force featured in this book
is acronym for Harbinger Active Resistance Division, and appears to
have focused on the crooked syndicate led by Toyo Harada. Their goal
was to try and control all the Harbingers using normal humans who'd
been comatose as the members and reviving them with a special brain
implant that gave them some special artificial superpowers via an
operator called "softcore". The implants would explode when the
members of the strike team were captured or killed. I can't say I
can see much mileage to get out of a story like this though, unlike
the main book which has better advantages.
Nova #18 vol. 2 (Marvel): star Richard Rider was introduced
to the MCU by Marv Wolfman in 1976 (he may have first featured the
idea in the Super Adventures fanzine a decade earlier), as a teenage
protagonist who was recruited to a galactic police force called the
Nova Corps. He acquired superhuman strength, flight, and better
physical endurance. Rider was intended to evoke some of the
Spider-Man dynamic combined with a premise that was vaguely
reminiscent of the Green Lantern Corps. His first series ran about 3
years, and there were some unfinished plotlines that Wolfman
completed in Fantastic Four and even ROM: Spaceknight. Since that
time, while he didn't appear much after the first series, he did
gain more notability after he became a member of The New Warriors in
1990, and there was one more series that was run during 1999, a note
of which appears here.
Psi-Lords #10 (Valiant): they first appeared in the Rai
series featured below, and were a team of super-beings living in the
41st century who were descended from H.A.R.D Corps in the present.
Rai #33 (Valiant): the first original hero created for the
Valiant line, it was set in the 41st century and featured several
protagonists serving as spirit guardians for Japan under the title
role. It was initially published as Rai and the Future Force.
July 1995
Guardians of the Galaxy #62 (Marvel): this notable group of
galactic heroes originally debuted in 1969, and similar to the
Legion of Super-Heroes at DC, it was set in the 30th to 31st
century. Some of the cast members were survivors of the 20th century
and there were some new characters featured as well. This series
later served as the basis for a movie around 2011, and it's probably
one of the last really great uses of a notable futuristic creation
at the House of Ideas.
Mortal Kombat: Battlewave #6 (Malibu): one of the most
disgustingly gory video games I've ever seen in my life was turned
into an equally worthless comic book. I don't know how bloody this
could've been compared to the "fatality" techniques seen in the
one-on-one fighting games Midway was producing at the time with
digitized graphics, but if that's what they think qualifies as
"creativity" that's why I'll have nothing to do with this failed
item.
Interestingly, Midway's fortunes actually began declining when they
came up with the Mortal Kombat series, and one of the live models
who played Johnny Cage/Sub-Zero for them did an advertisement for
another vulgar game creation called Time Killers/Blood Storm by
Incredible Technologies while wearing the Cage outfit, and it led to
his being fired by Midway. When the Mortal series switched to more
animated graphics, gaming interest dropped even more, and in 2009,
they went out of business and sold their properties to Time Warner
Interactive. A very disturbing side note: Geoff Johns, one of the
most pretentious comics writers today, once told how he was an avid
player of the game series, one more clue to just how awful his
writing ended up being.
The Punisher #104 Vol. 1
(Marvel): Back in 1974, Gerry Conway created Frank Castle, a Vietnam
vet whose family had been murdered by mobsters after witnessing one
of their assassination attacks. Frank survived, and swore to get
even with violent criminals by becoming a vigilante. He would wipe
out some of the deadliest of mafia operatives, and even confiscate
and use petty cash they had to help bankroll any extra ammunition
and other weapons he'd need for his crimefighting career. His main
supplier was an old friend who went by the nickname Microchip. Frank
debuted in Amazing Spider-Man in 1974, at which time he was just
warming up to become the really formidable fighter he'd be known as
later on. He'd be famous for wearing a jumpsuit with a skull on it.
The Punisher made several appearances over the course of a decade
since his debut, later leading to a miniseries in 1985 and finally
this ongoing in 1987, written for starters by Mike Baron, and later
by Chuck Dixon. It was often very stand-alone from the rest of the
Marvel universe, but did get to feature occasional guest appearances
and team-ups with other superheroes who were more of the street
level variety like Daredevil, Wolverine, and sometimes Spider-Man's
series too. And he even got at least 2 more spinoff series featured
below.
But eventually, this apparently became too much, and so they were
all canceled and a new series volume would take their place. It's a
shame it all had to end, but with the way Marvel's going disastrous
in quality these days, it may have been for the best.
Punisher War Journal #80 (Marvel): this spinoff could feature
Frank traveling to foreign countries, mostly fictionalized, outside
the US, and combating more criminals there like drug barons. And the
writer here was Carl Potts, who created Alien Legion in the mid-80s.
Overall, it was pretty entertaining too.
The Punisher: War Zone #41 (Marvel): this
series came along a bit late, but had some good moments, and I think
Dixon wrote some of this series as well.
Savage Sword of Conan #235 (Marvel): this was a black and
white spinoff of the official series that Marvel published between
1970-93. I think their license for publishing Conan tales expired
around this time. Dark Horse would take up the rights to publication
later (similarly, Dynamite Entertainment took up publication rights
for Red Sonja).
Ultraforce #10 vol. 1 (Malibu): another superhero team
co-created by the awful Gerard Jones for the Malibu brand along with
the late George Perez as artist, its whole premise was about a group
tasked with protecting the public and keeping other, presumably bad
Ultras from committing evil. And as noted above and below, there's a
reason why this book is unlikely to age well. It sounded awfully
dull as a story anyway; a total waste of Perez's talents. It'd be
relaunched in a secondary volume that ran another year, as noted in
the 1996 files, following the "event" called Black September. This
may have been adapted as an animated cartoon series, which no doubt
gathers dust on the shelves today, mainly because of how Jones
tainted the whole creation.
August 1995
Mantra #24 vol. 1 (Malibu): created by Mike W. Barr, this
ludicrous series oscillated around an eternal warrior named Lukasz
and his compatriots who'd been fighting a villain called Boneyard
for centuries. And the weird premise was that, whenever an
individual soldier dies, his soul would be placed in a new body, and
take up the fight once more. In the 1990s, Lukasz's leader Archmage
was betrayed and captured, leading to the permanent death of most of
the warriors and a final reincarnation for one, Lukasz himself, who
was put into the body of a woman, Eden Blake, much to his shock.
Yes, it was apparently some bizarre gender-bender tale, though if
memory serves, Barr was the writer of Camelot 3000 in the early
1980s, so maybe it's not that strange he'd work on something like
this too. This was another Malibu concept rebooted after Marvel
bought them out, and ended after a shorter run.
The Night Man #23 (Malibu): the solo series starring one of
the main characters from The Strangers, Johnny Domino (see above),
who had the usual superhuman abilities like telepathy, and it was
later adapted into a TV show that ran for 2 seasons, developed by
the late producer Glen A. Larson, known for his roles in creating
Knight Rider, and co-creating Magnum PI. But from what I can tell,
it was nothing special, and come to think of it, neither was the TV
show, whose producers just had to write in a guest starring role for
the abortive, embarrassing Manimal series' own lead from 1983.
Prime #26 vol. 1 (Malibu): If you'll check the data now
available on the
2004 files, you'll see why this series written by Gerard Jones
won't age well, and there's no telling if it'll ever be reprinted,
if at all. It was a Captain Marvel clone (the Fawcett creation, if
that matters), featuring a young teen who gained the powers to turn
into an adult superhero, and some of his first adventures in
crimefighting included going after child rapists. But, as noted,
after what Jones was discovered doing years later in 2017, that's
why this series is not only tainted badly now, it loses all impact
it might've once had to boot. I never read the Malibu line save for
a few excerpts on the internet, and after what Jones did, I'm just
too discouraged to care. It was followed soon after cancellation by
a secondary volume, since Marvel made the unlucky choice of buying
the Malibu properties in 1994.
Ravage 2099 #33 (Marvel): one of the weaker entries in the
2099 line of titles from the mid-90s, it chronicled the adventures
of a futuristic garbageman, if you can believe it. And the writer
was Stan Lee; one of his not too many writing efforts after the
early 70s. His scripting talents, alas, really declined by the time
this was thought up.
X-Men Classic #110 (Marvel): this may have been a reprint
title, but it earns a special mention here for the fact that, in the
first half of its run, there were newer stories published as backups
along with the older material! Well, up until issue 44 in 1990, but
they certainly did have a flattering, clever idea in mind when they
thought of that, during the tail end of Jim Shooter's tenure as EIC.
So then, for newcomers, it could serve as an interesting way to draw
them in to check out brand new short stories along with the
reprinted tales. Nearly all of which have been reprinted in
paperbacks, so now there may be an even better way to check them all
out.
September 1995
ClanDestine #8 (Marvel): a creation of Alan Davis, best known
for some of his work on Batman, the Outsiders, Uncanny X-Men and
Excalibur, it starred a family of British superhumans who'd first
appeared in Marvel Comics Presents in 1994. They would later appear
again in a 5-issue miniseries in 1998.
October 1995
Web of Spider-Man #129 (Marvel):
when first launched in late 1985, this served as a replacement for
Marvel Team-Up, the semi-anthology series where Spider-Man would
join forces with various other heroes from around the MCU (there
were a few issues though, where he didn't appear, but rather, the
Thing from the Fantastic Four did, his own semi-anthology title
Marvel Two-In-One notwithstanding!). The reason for this replacement
was probably because Mary Jane Watson had come back into Peter's
life after an absence prompted by the late crooked scientist Spencer
Smythe giving our wall-crawler a hard time by chaining him along
with J. Jonah Jameson to a bomb in 1979 before he committed suicide.
When MJ did come back, she also let Peter know she'd figured out his
identity as Spidey, and this helped them to smooth over some of the
roadbumps in their relationship.
An interesting aside, this also came at the time when Peter was
wearing the black costume he'd acquired during the original Secret
Wars crossover, which fortunately didn't hurt as badly as later
attempts to change costume designs for publicity stunt's sake did.
The black costume was wisely dropped altogether by 1988, and things
went back to normal for a while.
As one of the most notable spinoffs of the flagship series, this
stood out as one of the better, but towards the end, thanks to the
infamous Clone Saga, it probably fumbled big time, though when
canceled, it was replaced with the Sensational Spider-Man, so it's
not clear if it was ended just because the Clone Saga hurt sales.
November 1995
Animal Man #89 (DC/Vertigo): when the title protagonist first
appeared in the mid-60s in Strange Adventures #180, it was in a
short story by Dave Wood and Carmine Infantino about a guy who
achieved the power to communicate with animals and even mimic some
of their moves. Later on, in 1988, Grant Morrison reworked the
concept into an ongoing starring Bernard "Buddy" Baker, who bore
this power and used it as a crimefighter. He was a family man too,
and that's the good news. The bad news is that he was also
characterized absurdly as a vegetarian advocate and even ran the
gauntlet of upholding animal rights at the expense of human rights.
After Morrison left, Peter Milligan took over the writing, and it
got a bit better. This series, it should be noted, was where
Morrison also introduced the new Mirror Master, Evan McCullough, who
came from a Scottish background just like he did. Sadly, this new
master of mirrors wasn't well utilized over the years, culminating
in Geoff Johns' overboarding attempt to provide an origin for him in
the pages of the Flash #113 in 2004, where it was revealed
that in his youth, McCullough had almost been sexually assaulted by
some thugs at the orphanage where he grew up. (Even more
unfortunately, Morrison had no problem with this kind of origin
being provided either. But then, considering just how poor and
excessive his own approach to storytelling really is over the years,
it shouldn't come as any surprise.)
Ninjak #26 vol. 1 (Valiant): a spy series about a British
playboy named Colin King who moonlights as a ninja, this was a
co-creation of Mark Moretti and Joe Quesada, and because of the
latter's awful track record as EIC of Marvel, that's one more reason
why I'd rather skip this particular series. The 2012 remake from the
revived Valiant, however, might be more worth the ticket, but will
still need some caution.
Outsiders #24 vol. 2 (DC): this ended the
notable team series which first began in 1983 as a replacement for
The Brave and the Bold, which Batman had pretty much taken over
halfway through its run and served as a semi-anthology where the
Masked Manhunter could appear in more sci-fi oriented stories that
his own flagship series didn't typically run. Batman had formed the
team after the evil Baron Bedlam took over the fictionalized Balkan
country of Markovia (which was where Terra in the New Teen Titans
came from), and one of his company employees, Lucius Fox, was taken
hostage by the enemy forces there. The Justice League, already in
disarray at the time, wouldn't help him, so he broke off and rounded
up his own partners in crimefighting and together they succeeded in
destroying the evil Baron and restoring some order to the war-torn
country. Batman's teammates included Geo-Force, Black Lightning,
Metamorpho, Katana, and Halo. Later on, Looker would be added to the
cast. It was a series that featured allusions to the Cold War in its
waning days, and their adversaries included the Masters of Disaster,
the Bad Samaritan and to a lesser extent, the Force of July. During
the first 5 years in which the original series and the Baxter
spinoff ran, former adversary Windfall also joined the team. Even
former Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev turned up in the pages of
book!
In this later series however, creator Mike W. Barr all but took
apart the team, as in the case where Looker ended up being turned
into a semi-vampire. But it did have a decent ending, with the team
managing to free Looker from the control of the vampire king who was
influencing her, though Halo was cast into a different body. The
ending also saw the marriage of Geo-Force and a girlfriend of his.
Interestingly enough, the son of Felix Faust was a cast member here
too. The material published up to this point was certainly a lot
better than what would follow in the next century, which can be read
about in the 2007
files and the 2011
files.
December 1995
Shadowman #43 Vol. 1 (Valiant): one of the most notable
series in the universe Jim Shooter helped to form when he founded
the company, it was about a lineage of heroes who went by the name
of Shadowman, the main one being a jazz musician named Jack
Boniface, who, following an attack by a vampire, found he could see
better in the dark, and decided to go out and fight violent crime.
He actually first debuted in X-O Manowar, another of Valiant's
notable publications from the time, and went on to acquire his own
solo book.
It was one of the most successful of the Valiant line, and even got
some video game adaptations made. Another series would be produced a
short time later by Acclaim, the maker of the games, and is
mentioned in the 1998 files.