Apocalypse Ltd

Apocalypse Ltd was a short-lived publishing company formed out of an alliance of Pat Mills, John Wagner, Alan Grant and Kevin O'Neill. Apocalypse was an offshoot of Neptune Distribution, based in South Wigston, Leicester. Apocalypse was meant to provide titles such as Mills and O'Neill's Marshal Law (originally published by the Marvel Comics imprint Epic Comics) a way to avoid dealing with the big companies such as Marvel and DC Comics. All of Apocalypse's titles were creator-owned; the most notable title being the weekly comic Toxic!. Neptune also owned Trident Comics,[1] which printed black-and-white comics by mainly new, unpublished creators.

Apocalypse Ltd
Founded1990
Defunct1991
Country of originUnited Kingdom
Headquarters locationLeicester
Key peoplePat Mills, John Wagner, Alan Grant, Kevin O'Neill
Publication typesComics
Owner(s)Neptune Distribution

History

The first title released by Apocalypse was a Marshal Law special titled Kingdom of the Blind, published in October 1990. This was followed by the first issue of Toxic! in March 1991.

Toxic! was initially popular, although some of the material proved controversial due to subject matter and portrayals of violence. This was not the only strip that suffered problems; Marshal Law began to miss issues, and some of the material replacing it proved not to be as popular. Some strips meant to be published by Trident Comics were even used to provide filler material.[2] This hurt the title as although it had sold well initially, sales were dropping and it became clear that there were problems with Apocalypse paying creators. These problems meant many creators, such as Mike McMahon, saw work published which they had not been paid for.

Another title, Primal, created by Clive Barker, was never published, although it did later appear via Dark Horse Comics, which also picked up several of Toxic!'s other features.

Apocalypse went bankrupt in late 1991, leaving many creators unpaid; some of these people never worked in comics again.

Titles

Notes
  1. MCH. "Newswatch: Mature Comics Struggle to Survive in Britain," The Comics Journal #141 (Apr. 1991), p. 19.
  2. Bishop, David (2007) Thrill-Power Overload: The Official History of 2000 AD (Rebellion Developments, June 2007, ISBN 1-905437-22-6), pp. 142-143.

References


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