According to Wikipedia, Impel Marketing was a southern U.S. company founded in 1989, which changed its name to SkyBox International in 1990. Unsurprisingly, I have to wonder about the accuracy of the site, since it was under the Impel label that the hideously designed 1991/1992 DC Cosmic Cards were put out. I guess by 1993 they wanted to turn over a new leaf (no relation,) so the debut DC set as Skybox offered a really nice '90s design that still holds up today.
Unlike the anachronistic first set, Cosmic Teams was as cutting edge and modern as DC would ever get. For instance, while the triptych series returned, rather than having three different artists rendering the same classic character across eras (and inconsistent backgrounds,) these were all about hot up n' comers. Travis Charest, the most technically accomplished of the Jim Lee clones, was introduced to fans through his too short stint on Darkstars. Here he drew the rarely seen Bloodwynd and Superman foe Weapons Master II, the blue moon threat Starbreaker, the rarely cool Royal Flush Gang, the rightly forgotten JLE nuisance Deconstructo, and Despero. Charest became quite a respected name before falling off a few years back, but only Despero seems to have really prospered out of this class of '93.
2 comments:
Skybox sounds really, really familiar to me. I'm thinking they made baseball cards at some point.
Gee, I thought I was the only one who found the Royal Flush Gang a bore.
Yeah, I had a lone later issue of WildC.A.T.s with his art when I was a young lad (still do, actually) and rather like Mr Charest ever since.
Jurgens era Justice League international, not so much.
Post a Comment