Malibu

Malibu was founded in California in 1986 and spent its first years on a broad, unglamorous line before doing two things that mattered more than any of it.

In 1992 it published the first Image Comics titles. Image had seven famous founders and no publishing infrastructure whatever, and Malibu supplied it — production, distribution, the machinery of actually getting a comic into shops. Then in 1993 it launched the Ultraverse, a shared superhero universe planned in advance by a group of established writers, with Prime, Hardcase, Sludge and Firearm among its titles. It was the most credible attempt of the decade to build a third universe from nothing.

Marvel bought Malibu in 1994. The colouring operation was widely understood to be as much the point of the purchase as the characters, and the Ultraverse was shut down in 1996.