The History of Venture Comics!

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Well, it finally happened. I accidentally clicked on the “solution” button and turned a random post into a “solution” to this creative thread. Whoops.

Putting a pin in this to maybe do in-depth demon discussion later in the week, along with the noodle incident question, but yes, the Five Deadly Elements were based on the Wuxing. Which are not technically elements, they’re complex metaphysical symbolic agents, but these days that’s how we tend to use the Greek elements too.

I know Musashi’s elemental set - he based it on the yogic elements, which are common in India and China. I don’t know what the third one is, though! Any chance you have it available to share?

For the Sharborn question - I didn’t back the original Kickstarter, so I still don’t have access to the Gen Con adventure. For the purposes of this setup, if it becomes available to the general public in PDF soon enough after Gen Con I would possibly swap Mutliverse with it. Multiverse is something that doesn’t quite line up with how dimensions in Venture work, I haven’t gotten it yet, and it overlaps a lot with Extradimensional and Cosmos while also being fairly restrictive and kind of weak. I don’t think I’d just add it in, because until I build a huge complicated randomizer I cannot have more than twenty options.

edit I just discovered that you can just uncheck the solution box. Problem solved.

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I have usually seen air included and then either wood or metal as the fifth
again, western writers with a western bias so they/we have to build off the Greek paradigm.

I have a copy of Go Rin no Sho in a box somewhere but most of my knowledge of that ideology comes from AEG/John Wick. I also have at least 2 copies of Art of War somewhere.

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I’ve seen Musashi’s void (sometimes misnamed as spirit) more often than the Greek quartet + one or the other of metal/wood in gaming. There was also a divergent approach from Costikyan’s old Dark Emperor, where you have the quartet plus metal being sort of “descended” from earth + fire and wood from air + water as well as several other sort of random additions, but that was more the framework of the game’s magic system than an attempt at philosophy. He was just cribbing ideas and mashing them together for a (rather odd but innovative) hex & counter wargame.

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Alright! Still time to ask questions - I’ve just got two right now, for today and Thursday, but I’ll be happy to fill in more. For today:

The First Deadly Element was Tu, the Earth Demon. He was a super-strong monster that could disguise himself as a hulking human, who ran the protection rackets in Charlie’s neighborhood. He had killed the previous Lion Dancer, and was unprepared for a replacement.

The Second Deadly Element was Shui, the Water Demon. She was a fish-like demon who could dissolve into mist and commanded a refitted cargo ship full of sailor-martial artists, who came to the city to investigate Tu’s disappearance.

After Shui’s defeat, the other three demons arrived at once: Huo, the Fire Demon, who could command and shape flame; Jin, the Metal Demon, who could create and fire blades and shields from his skin; and Mu, the Wood Demon, who could change her size at will and heal from any injury. They agreed to work together to defeat the Lion Dancer, but as they had him on the ropes, Mu betrayed Jin and absorbed his powers for herself. In the fourth issue, Huo and Lion Dancer worked together against Mu, overwhelming her new powers, but this was also a ploy, and Huo was secretly gathering the lost power of Tu and Shui during the confrontation; when Mu was defeated, he gathered all five powers to become the ultimate demon.

Didn’t help, and he was beaten. If Lion Dancer had persisted, he might have returned as the Fivefold Deadly Demon.

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ZeroSine, on the other forum, wrote: Were the four heroes featured in Hidden Depths the only characters from the Cryptid publications to cross over into Venture? Did any villains make it over and stick around? Perhaps from your villain thread?

Cryptid Publications likely had about 10-12 heroes in their roster, plus a handful of one-and-dones. The ones other than Hidden Depths would be Golden Age and Silver Age designs, so probably not any of my existing Hero Project. A couple of them may have appeared in small roles in the early Iron Age; all of them appeared in some way in Broken Mirrors #37-40, a storyline in which those heroes were the Champions of Truth instead of the more standard ones. The most popular of those, Moon Angel, ended up becoming a member of the Remnants, if not a particularly popular one.

A number of Cryptid villains definitely also made their way into Venture Comics. Landgrave and Juliet were core villains for the Hidden Depths miniseries; they had originally been Artificer villains, but the writer adapted them to Runesword’s backstory. Other than that, I don’t have any particular notes.

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The last question I’ve received (so far!)

There were two! Starshadow had “that Time At The Aquarium,” which was mentioned twice in the first twelve issues. In Issue #2, Starshadow is off somewhere and Skybreaker’s not worried - then Solace mentions “that time at the Aquarium” and Skybreaker immediately gets very worried and goes looking for her. Later, when Brineskimmer is about to destroy the port and only Starshadow and Cloudskimmer are there to stop her, we get the following exchange:

CLOUDSKIMMER: “Okay, fill me in. How bad’s the situation.”

STARSHADOW: “It’s bad.”
CLOUDSKIMMER: “As bad as that time at the aquarium?”
STARSHADOW: “Well, not quite that bad.”

The Champions of Truth also had a Noodle Incident, albeit a more serious one. The “Uxos Incident” was some kind of major event that took place about a year before the relaunch, which involved a very near miss. The Champions mention the Uxos Incident only in passing, and the only thing that’s known about it is that it was Fly Boy’s last deployment before he decided to become the team’s Man In The Chair.

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Three mini-questions today from the other forum:

Alright, I’ll go for three mini-questions today and mull on the last one tommorow:

Scuttlefish said:

Also did Knightgrave stick around ad a character after his series was canceled?

Yes, he definitely did, because I already have at least three appearances by him listed post-90s. In the late 90s he’s not around much; Venture’s magic heroes fade a bit there, with only Twilight Carnival as a dedicated magic title. He appears in a popular six-issue arc for Twilight Carnival around 2000 or so, which reminds some people that he’s kind of neat, and then he’s got a one-shot as part of the Shattered Mirrors crossover in 2002. In the Plutonium Age, he shows up every year or two, popping up mostly the pages of Twilight Carnival, Heretic, and Cryptic Trails but also in one or two Champions of Truth stories; he’s part of the Merlin story for Twilight Carnival in 2016. And he’s one of the heroes who faces off against Robin Redcap in 2019 in World of Wonders, so he’s around post-timeskip as well.

kingkasara said:

Especially on a re-read, I found Stutter very compelling - what was her scariest storyline? And her silliest, if there was one?

Since I only have twelve issues of the Diamond Age listed, Stutter hasn’t had a silly story yet. Her scariest early story is in Issue #3; right after she’s starting to think she’s gotten the hang of frozen time, Stillmaker starts targeting seemingly-random people, leading to an issue that’s heavily focused on the daily lives of people thrown into a horrific hellscape. Stutter shows up to help, but she can’t save everyone, and the comic drives home her attempts to do so.

kingkasara said:

I may have missed it, but has there ever been a future group of heroes hinted at beyond Paradox’s original future? Marvel 2099, or the Legion of Superheroes - style? Or even the way some Golden Age and Silver Age comics would entail heroes meeting their future descendants from hundreds or thousands of years in the future?

Not in a big way, but there are a few.

Venture’s strong editorial stance against time travel, plus the company’s relatively small size, means that we don’t get a big time travel story with hero descendants or a comic line taking place in the future. There are definitely a few Golden Age comics that do it, and probably one or two Silver Age one-shots, but none of them are recurring and they’re largely footnotes. There is one exception, but I’m going to hold off on discussing it because I’m halfway through drafting it and it’ll appear soon.

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Always had a soft spot for time travel shenanigans in comics, despite not liking them much in other media (comedy like Bill & Ted being an exception). I like dis-timed characters, contradictory versions of the future (or past), and the often hilariously wrong prediction of what the distant future of (say) the year 2000 will be like. Good excuse for ludicrously over-the-top epic stories too - DC One Million was one of the things I actually enjoyed about the 90s, and one of less than a handful of big “event” stories that I regard as worth reading.

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kingkasara said:

Another question: I recall Grovedale, Ferristown, Lostwood, Havenwood, and Santa Juanita, but are there other fictional cities or even countries on Venture Earth that have popped up (perhaps in issues we were not previously privy to?)

Deflare said:

Related question: Is there a single place in the Ventureverse that has an over-abundance of costumed characters, the way NYC does in Marvel and Gotham does in DC? Or are characters more spread out?

Great questions, and as it happens, I was in the middle of workshopping the answer because I noticed that I was missing a location as I’ve been figuring out where things are!

So, discounting for a moment the various magical or magical-adjacent places like True Rome or Anima: there are five major fictional cities in the Venture version of the United States. None of them have quite the congregation of heroes that Gotham (or definitely New York) has, in part because Venture is a smaller publisher and in part because it has more heroes who don’t have a home city to operate from (Drifter, the Twilight Carnival, Penitent, the various space heroes that don’t base on Earth, etc.) But in order from most to fewest heroes, they are:

Ferristown and Ferrisville, the Sister Cities: Initially one city, then two, then back to one in the Silver Age and then back to two in the Bronze Age, Ferristown and Ferrisville are located on opposite sides of a fictional bay in Lake Huron, Michigan. Ferristown is generally under the control of Mr. Ferris, while Flatfoot disrupted his control of Ferrisville and he spends a lot of time trying to take it back. The cities mostly stand in for Chicago and Detroit, and it’s implied that Detroit is a much smaller place in the Venture setting because Ferristown and Ferrisville ate its industrial production. The Sister Cities have the biggest concentration of heroes by far: Ferrisville is home to Flatfoot, Wonderer, Reverie, Protean, and Professor Integrity, and Ferristown is home to the Revenant, Fly Boy, Paradox, and the Rogue Agents (and later Stutter).

Grovedale: Located somewhere on the New England coast, Grovedale usually serves as a Boston-like city, although some writers make it more New York-like. Grovedale is the centre for a lot of Venture’s more magical heroes, acting as a base for Skybreaker (and later his family), Greenheart, Veilwalker (prior to her moving further west to Lostwood) and briefly Thelema.

Neulyons: (Pronounce newly-on) Located in the American southeast, somewhere between Washington D.C. and Atlanta, Neulyons is a major government town, and the home base of both the Vanguards and Covert Tactics, and later Vanguard Academy. It doesn’t get a lot of definition early on, because neither team actually spends a lot of time there, but it later becomes the centre of power for AEGIS as well.

Santa Juantina: Located on an island in the Gulf of Mexico, Santa Juanita is technically part of Texas, but it often stands in as a Puerto Rico-alike (even the name is close to San Juan.) It’s never a major location; there aren’t generally two heroes operating out of it at the same time. But it gets some play, with the Reactors, Power Flower, Half-Life, and the Remnants all using it as a base of operations. I’m not sure it has any major active heroes post-2000.

Havenwood: Located up the coast from Los Angeles, Havenwood is a little bit San Francisco and a little bit Seattle. It was created for Lion Dancer, and then used as the primary base of operations for Earthwatch, and later for Heretic.

There are small nations that get made up, but there aren’t any that get tied to major villains or heroes the way that Latveria or Biyalia do - at least, not ones that aren’t magical or extradimensional. The closest is probably Juristan, the former home base of Dr. Roach, which gets used as a “country being invaded” fairly frequently. Because Venture started by just using France and Germany for Madame Liberty, their European stuff tends to take place in real cities (and also, New York City explicitly exists since both Kid Liberty and Irogane are from there.)

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Update: On reflection, there has to be some kind of Eastern European or Central Asian nation that Madame Liberty deals with regularly, serving as a major secondary antagonist throughout the Silver Age and into the Bronze, then getting more complex. I do not have a name for it or its ruler yet, but she’ll be a villain if I do another round of those.

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The latest Comics Archeology post has a couple of candidates by way of World’s Finest. “Slavia” is perhaps a bit generic, but the apparently random “Moglavia” from the Italian translation has a nice ring to it.

Little more dubious about Premier Rastinyak as the ruler, but I suppose he could be deposed. Hmmm. Premier Kaynitsar seems okay…

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I’m not fully flashing it out yet, but I am putting a pin in the ‘neutral’ nation of Granlavia, located around the Yugoslavian-Greek border and ruled by the Grand Duchess Gloria Mantalos, also known as the supervillain the White Mantis.

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I do not know what any of these words mean, but I find them very exciting when all put together :smiley:

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a summer cold kept me from being able to brain for a week so here we go
from the Cooltopian embassy-
Madam Liberty had a boyfriend named Rick Wilson was he often retconned to be a constant or just who she was with in WW2? Since she existed before and after the Comics Code had her and Rick been intimate? did he know it was her? was she willing to sleep with enemies for intelligence/espionage reasons?

in the dreamtrap world created by Scion of secrets Cooper Cullen and Rhonda Rhodes were married with a baby. had there been romantic tension or casual flirting between them earlier or did Cu Chulainn have too much to think about?

During passing the torch you said that Protean graduated college and finally started dating Cassie, had there been subtext of romantic confusion when they were in high school or was it an obvious development after aging the characters to over 21?

during Night of Lost Souls did Sky Breaker 2 get to meet Lewis Lamont or Wayne Alton? did Night of lost souls reveal that some character not seen in a long time was not dead?

super meta-meta question- The Venturers were forgettable D-Listers since they were functionally the same character as problem solvers and in dialogue if Friv-Yeti was brought in as a new writer to give update them and give them unique powersets from an accident/experimentation what would you pick?

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Well, I’m starting heroes again tomorrow, so… lightning round!

Rick Wilson was a consistent supporting cast member, and was implied to be a paramour in the Golden Age. He was deployed to Berlin following the end of WW2, and ended up falling in love with an East German scientist that Madame Liberty helped him extract, leading to her quietly thinking about how her life didn’t alllow her to love. In the Bronze Age, when timelines were adjusted, he started being drawn with grey hair and became a contact in Washington for both Madame Liberty and Covert Tactics; in the Iron Age, he was a retired spy whose son (Rick Jr.) was an informant for Madame Liberty within AEGIS. He eventually died of natural causes during the timeskip, and his grand-daughter, Rachel, remains a contact and friend of the Champions.

Madame Liberty was never shown sleeping with enemies for espionage, although she often pulled the “flirt, draw them to a secluded location, knock them out, shapeshift to look like them” trick.

Oh yeah, they had tons of romance going on. There was “will they or won’t they”, then they dated for a little bit, then something went wrong and they broke up, then she was interested in him but he was dating someone else, then he was interested in her but she was dating someone else, then her fiancee turned out to be a supervillain… just absolute hijinks, which only ended due to the Scion’s wish-granting.

There was no intentional romantic tension in the early years, but many readers read tension into the situation, and when those readers started to become writers in the early 2010s they added romantic tension, which ultimately grew to real dating.

Lewis Lamont was definitely one of the resurrected heroes who helped defeat Greyheart, and he also helped Skybreaker recover his powers and talked with him about heroism, yeah. It was a very touching scene.

Wayne Alton… was also present for the event in a moderate role.

I don’t think enough people were revealed to have a “they’re not actually dead” reveal. Definitely, at least one of the minor villains whose ghosts lent a hand was then used elsewhere a couple years later by a writer who forgot they’d been confirmed dead, and then someone had to do a hasty retcon that it was actually a clone or an imposter.

I mean, it’s got to be loose elemental theming, right? But less direct. So:

  • As team leader, Seamus is the Voice. His loosely air-themed powers let him understand and speak all languages, including the more complex animal ones, and also makes it so that his words are always understood - villains can’t believe that he’s lying when he’s telling the truth, his words aren’t taken out of context, and he can give complex orders with very simple and quick phrases.
  • Loretta, surprisingly to some, gets Friction. Her loosely earth-themed powers let her stick to walls and ceilings, increase her speed by gliding across the ground, and hit hard by taking advantage of her momentum.
  • Peter, the team’s creative genius, has Precision. He can make tiny adjustments to machinery or artwork, hit precise weak points on enemies, and shift his body to ensure that hits don’t land properly and he’s fine.
  • Finally, cold-hearted Jane having the power of Purity is too good to ignore. Her loosely fire-themed powers let her read people’s corrupt intentions, purge disease and poison from her body, and see through even the most dark or obscured environment.
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wow, once again we have picked up the same wavelength.
while adapted from a friend i have NPC heroes in my game called Word and Deed modern superhero reinterpretations of enlightenment from the Buddhist Eightfold Path tenants of “Perfect Speech” and “Perfect Action”
Word also has a disorient attack where he overwhelms you with the perfect insult.
before moving to Sentinels, I was going to run my game in Mutants and Masterminds and I had a great COMUNICATION power with rapid, and by others so that other people can give him more information in less time. someone runs up and says “help” and he knows everything about the situation.

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Randomizers:
Approach: 6, 2, 8 [Options: Skilled, Disruptive, Mastermind, Overpowered, Ninja]
Archetype: 5, 3, 9 [Options: Bruiser, Indomitable, Inhibitor, Loner, Thief, Domain]
Upgrade: 1, 10, 12 [Options: Mook Squad, Calming Aura, Brainwashing Zone]
Mastery: 5, 3, 7 [Options: Conquest, Mad Science, Mysticism]

The Consul

The Consul
The Consul400×575 314 KB

Real Name: Consul Gaius Maximus, First Appearance: Into the Green #263, Feb 1985
Approach: Skilled, Archetype: Bruiser
Upgrade: Calming Field, Mastery: Conquest

Status Dice: Green d6, Yellow d8, Red d10, Health: 35+5H (Upgraded 45+5H)
Qualities: Conviction d10, Close Combat d10, Leadership d8, History d8, Alertness d8, Born A Champion d8
Powers: Absorption d10, Animal Control d8, Presence d6

Abilities:

  • Call to the Green [A]: Hinder multiple targets using Leadership and use your Max die. If you roll doubles, also Attack each target with your Mid die.
  • Entropic Punch [A]: Attack using Absorption and use your Max die. Either Hinder that target with your Mid die or Attack another nearby target with your Mid die.
  • Nature’s Bounty [A]: Defend using Conviction and use your Mid+Min dice. Recover Health equal to your Max die.
  • Show of Force [R]: When Attacked, Defend yourself by rolling your single Conviction die. Deal that much damage to another target.
  • (U) Unnatural Superiority (I): The heroes act as being in the Green zone for status die, access to abilities, and for the purposes of all abilities. Heroes may remove this ability with three Overcome successes. If a hero takes a minor twist, you may use a reaction to Hinder them by rolling your single Absorption die.
  • (U) Master of Conquest (I): As long as you are in command of your own forces, automatically succeed at an Overcome involving seizing an area or capturing civilians

Common Scene Elements:

  • Legionnaires. D8 minions. Legionnaires get +1 to all Actions when taking the same action as a fellow Legionnaire.
  • A Fellow Champion. Another villain empowered by the Green, with some variation of plant and physical powers.
  • Nova Roma. An environment with semi-mystical technology on the verge of failure, citizen unrest, and the ability to summon new Legionnaires to support the Consul.

In the aftermath of the Sovereign’s attack on the world, new directions were proposed for several of Venture’s popular, but not outstanding, titles. Into the Green had always occupied an odd middle ground; despite the general public popularity of Greeheart, her solo titles were constantly on the verge of cancellation, and the line’s new writers came up with a brilliant new plan for her - take her back to her roots.

Consul Gaius Maximus was the result of this plan. Established as the surviving leader of the highest house of True Rome, Gaius Maximum had succeeded the Trials of Gaia and developed a tremendous control over animals and influence over the emotions of humans that made them view him as more powerful than themselves, along with the ability to drain life force from anyone he touched. After two issues to establish Greenheart’s post-Sovereign situation, the Consul took over the True Roman empire in Into the Green #263, declaring that he would restore the Empire to its rightful place in the world. He began by consolidating his power, imprisoning political rivals and declaring that Greenheart and Aquila were enemies of the state - rebels whose actions had led to the fall of True Rome, and whose defeat was necessary for the nation to rise again. He began to send champions after Greenheart, confident that as a woman, she was the weak link who could be cast down.

Fans were bemused at the idea that True Rome, which had previously been portrayed as a few thousand people with minimal access to the Trials after Greyheart’s assault, could suddenly assemble a full legion of soldiers and dozens of mystically-powered supervillains, and those fans that had been interested in Greenheart’s slow reforming of her homeland were particularly annoyed to see it immediately revert to its worst self. The Consul himself was a sneering, arrogant misogynist, and while it was satisfying to see Greenheart beat him, his ongoing placement as a major villain was met with yawns.

In the end, the “Consul of True Rome” arc lasted just under two years, and ended with Greenheart and Aquila overthrowing the Consul, with Greenheart killing him in single combat and Aquila taking his place and moving away from superheroing in order to safeguard True Rome and its people and help them recover from this latest disaster. The numbers and power that the nation had marshalled were quietly forgotten, although the idea that the nation had recovered some of its magic following the worldline shifts created by the Sovereign would persist into future storylines.

The Consul himself stayed dead, but his ghost would briefly return twice - one in the mid-90s, as part of a larger arc, and once during the Night of Lost Souls event, in which he chafed under the command of Greyheat and tried (and failed) to betray her.

Behind the Scenes

Spoiler: Hide

Always good to have a “this storyline was supposed to be the new normal, but it didn’t take and the main villain from it really didn’t have a place once it was gone.”

I actually created this because I noticed that I’d said that the Iwanesaku tried to steal True Rome’s magic in 1987, but I’d earlier said that True Rome was wiped out by Greyheart and just had a handful of refugees, which would seem to imply that their sacred caverns with their magic were gone. So here’s the patch.

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Those sure do happen, but it’s also kind of amazing how often RL publishers will insist on following their road map straight off the half-built bridge and wind up crippling or killing a book while blaming the readers for not grokking their creative genius.

Hope you had a nice vacation!

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Thanks, it was pretty good.

The Randomizers:
Background 1, 7, 7 [Options: Blank Slate, Law Enforcement, Struggling, Interstellar, Anachronistic]
Power Source 9, 8, 7 [Options: Relic, Powered Suit, Radiation, Genius, Cosmos, Extradimensional]
Archetype 4, 6, 5 [Options: Marksman, Blaster, Armored, Elemental Manipulator, Robot/Cyborg, Sorcerer]
Personality 9, 1, 1 [Options: Lone Wolf, Natural Leader, Inquisitive, Stoic, Nurturing]

Horizon

Horizon
Horizon400×575 326 KB

Real Name: Aurelia Xur, First Appearance: Broken Mirrors #21, Dec 1986
Background: Anachronistic, Power Source: Cosmos, Archetype: Armored
Personality: Natural Leader, Principles: Outsider, Indestructible

Status Dice: Green d6, Yellow d8, Red d10. Health: 32 [Green 32-25, Yellow 24-12, Red 11-1]
Qualities: Close Combat d10, Technology d10, Leadership d8, Child of Two Worlds d8
Powers: Size Control d10, Strength d10, Gadgets d8, Intuition d8, Plant Control d8

Green Abilities:

  • Enhanced Physique (I): Reduce any physical or energy damage you take by 1 while you are in the Green zone, 2 while in the Yellow zone, and 3 while in the Red zone.
  • Wade In [A]: Attack using Strength. Attack a second target with your Min die.
  • Plant Shield [A]: Attack using Plant Control. Defend another target with your Min die.
  • Reflection Field [R]: Double the damage reduction effect of Enhanced Physique against one Attack, then deal damage to a nearby target equal to the total damage reduced in this way.
  • Principle of the Outsider [A]: Overcome a local problem using knowledge from your home and use your Max die. You and each of your allies gain a hero point.
  • Principle of the Indestructible [A]: Overcome in a situation where you charge headlong into danger and use your Max die. You and each of your allies gain a hero point.

Yellow Abilities:

  • Into the Breach [A]: Attack using Size Control. Boost all nearby heroes taking Attack or Overcome actions using your Min die until your next turn.
  • Natural Immunity (I): If you would take Toxic damage, instead reduce that damage to 0 and Recover that amount of Health.

Red Abilities

  • Growth Through Adversity [R]: When you are Attacked, roll your single Size Control die as a Defend against that Attack. Also Boost yourself with the same roll.
  • Enhanced Technologist [A]: Overcome using Technology. Use your Max+Min dice.

Out

  • Boost an ally by rolling your single Technology die.

In December of 1986, after a handful of relatively direct storylines, Broken Mirrors decided to look to the future. More precisely, it explored an alternate future set in the faraway year of 1999, in which a new generation of Champions defended the Earth from external threats. The team’s leader was Horizon, the size-changing daughter of the Steward and Greenheart.

In this timeline, the two heroes had fallen in love in the 1960s, and had lived together for some time; when Cassandra was just a baby, however, the Steward had finally succumbed to his illness and passed away. Cassandra thus grew up in True Rome, displaying powers from a young age. The Steward’s genetic illness and Greenheart’s mastery of nature combined within her, giving her an immense mastery over her own physical form and an immunity to toxins and disease; it was only natural that she would, once she struck out on her own, take up the mantle of heroism herself.

Over the course of three issues, the Drifter met the Champions of Tomorrow, Horizon’s team, and helped them overcome the nightmarish seed that had been planted in the heart of their world - a threat composed of a techno-organic monstrosity constructed by a team-up between Dr. Freak and Hive-Minder that had consumed both villains. This was meant to be the end of the story, but the possibilities of a future world resonated with readers, and in May 1987 Venture launched New Horizons, meant to be a Horizon-focused ongoing title.

Despite initial anticipation, New Horizons began to lose sales within a few months of its release. The writers chose to play it safe, introducing nothing but legacy characters who were essentially the same as their prior incarnations, and while Horizon herself was interesting, her initial storylines were not. Fan support managed to keep the series running up to twenty-four issues, but it was ultimately cancelled in 1989. A few of the concepts from New Horizons endured into the Venture universe: Skybreaker’s son becoming the hero Cloudskimmer was ultimately used in the 2019 timeskip, and some of the ideas in New Horizons were taken up by Paradox’s own future in Company Town. But overall, Horizon and her adventures became no more than an interesting footnote in the history of Venture Comics.

Behind the Scenes

And that’s what I was mentioning in the Q&A!

This is Venture’s thrust into alternate realities as a full comic; if it had succeeded, they might have tried to make it two or three things. But they didn’t go hard enough, and the rest of the line was moving in a different direction, so it sort of petered out instead.

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Twenty-four issues isn’t half bad, really. The closest equivalent to this concept I can think of IRL would be Marvel’s late-90s MC2 experiment, and most of those got 12 issues or less. Horizon did better than J2 and A-Next…and very few characters can compare to Mayday Parker with her 100-issue run (which is apparently still a record for Marvel books with a female lead - boggling) and later series and minis. Spider-Girl was quite a standout success, but Horizon didn’t do bad for herself either.

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