Originally published October 8, 2013 | Updated April 2026
In 2013, we began exploring the death of shared comic universes from the 1990s boom. Over a decade later, we’re revisiting this series. Jim Shooter passed away in June 2025, and the successful Schism Kickstarter, completing his unfinished Defiant Comics story, reminded us that these dead universes still matter to creators and collectors. The time felt right to explore them more deeply: not just what they were, but why they disappeared, and what their legacy tells us about comics history.
If a time traveler leaps from January 1995 to January 2026 and walked into a comic book shop, she’d at first think very little had changed. DC and Marvel still dominate the industry. Image and Dark Horse still have their place on the shelves.
But as she browses, something would feel wrong. The universes she knew, the ones she collected from, invested in, believed had futures, are simply gone. She’d search the shelves for Defiant Comics, the ambitious shared universe launched in 1993. Nothing. She’d look for Valiant, the company that was thriving when she left in 1995, publishing multiple titles a month. Nowhere to be found. The Ultraverse from Malibu? Vanished. WildStorm’s independent run? Absorbed and transformed beyond recognition.
She’d notice other holes too. Comics’ Greatest World, Dark Horse’s answer to a shared superhero universe, left no lasting mark. The independent universes that seemed so promising in the mid 90s, all of them, collapsed under the weight of market forces, creator ambitions, or corporate acquisitions.
Reflecting on what she’s seen, it wouldn’t be the familiar Big Two titles that concern her. It’s 1995, after all; she’s used to characters being reinvented and rebooted. What stuns her is the absence. The Dead Universes. The shared worlds that once promised everything, built by talented creators, published by companies betting their futures, simply vanished.
She would want to understand how this happened. How the confident early 90s boom transformed into these dead universes. How visionary creators imagined multiple competing shared universes, and why most of them didn’t survive.
Recent events remind us these universes still matter and brought this series I wrote in 2013 fresh to my mind. Jim Shooter, who created or shaped multiple shared universes, passed away in June 2025. A kickstarter to complete Defiant Comics story, funded before his death, shows that fans and creators still believe in these worlds.
This series explores that belief. The Dead Universes of the 90s. The creators who built them. The market forces that killed them. And what their stories teach us about ambition, creativity, and legacy in comics.
