During the nineties I virtually gave up on collecting mainly due to the speculators who made first and other key issues impossible to find or on resale for ridiculous prices. When I retro collected a run of Avengeleyne during the late noughties I couldn't find the first issue in the runs and Bruce the owner of the sadly defunct Avalon Comics in Battersea went out the back and dug up a metal covered first edition and threw it in for free. Those things were expensive back then.
Other than a couple of trades Death In The Family, Death Of Superman and Zero Hour it wasn't until the boom was over and DC were published their DC One Million series that I caught the bug and returned to the hobby. I'v now collected and read quite a lot of the main image titles and frankly other than a handful of comics such as Spawn, Witchblade and the Alan Moore reboot of Supreme there was a lot of rubbish published in the nineties.
Marvels output during this period remains mostly a mystery to me me. Other than picking up the first volume of Jim Lee's Fantastic Four Reborn and Heroes Return mini-series I still haven't read much. The I saw this volume in Orbital Comics during my recent outing but at £29.50 thought it far too expensive. Found it on Amazon for half the price at just under £15 which was a lot more reasonable.
Now here I must confess I was a bit muddled in what to expect. For some reason I has Atlantis Attacks at the back of my mind and realised my error when I sat down to read it. That aside I was not disappointed. This volume collects the main parts of the crossover though not the Warlock tie-ins. I can live with that.
The story was straightforward enough. Evil witch Morgan Le Fay raises the sunken continent of Atlantis from the ocean wiping out half the Atlantean people. Meanwhile Reed Richards father manages to set off an explosion on the moon threatening to wipe out the Inhumans who now live there.
At this point neither Namor nor Black Bolt rule their kingdoms and both are exiled. It's up to the Fantastic Four then containing Ant Man and his shrinking formula to rescue Attilan and it's inhabitants. Shades of Kandor and all that.
Of course this triggers major military alerts in the USA and in NATO and the FF are invited to help out in London. The Avengers have buggered off elsewhere it would seem. They also have some odd company in toe including Doc Dooms "son" (no idea) and someone called Boris who isn't what he seems though we don't find out in this volume.
There's war brewing between all sorts including the "Genetic Council" who now rule the Inhumans though abandoned their brethren to die. Namor, Le Fay, the Inhumans and of all human nations Portugal fight over the new landmass.
It's an exiting and fairly complex adventure with repercussions which exist to this day in the Marvel Universe. Worth reading if you can get a copy of the TPB or find a run of the original issues. The influence of Image and it's "extreme art is obvious. Namors appearance looks distorted at times as do many others in this style of art. And why did they give him long hair. Superman was given long hair as well. Was it fashion then? I've had a number one haircut since my twenties due to baldness so I don't recall!
Now need to see if I can pick up what I was originally looking for!
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