No this isn’t about how kids daydreaming about their favourite Superheroes grew up to be the writers of Marvel today (which is most likely true). No this is about the short-lived super team from the 90’s.
I originally got the idea to write about this team as a movie pitch after seeing Into the Spider-Verse. My thoughts where after seeing that movie other than astonishment as to how good it actually was, the inevitable attempts by another studio to recreate an animated movie based on an eclectically mismatched Superteam was “what team”. I quickly realised which team the short-lived Daydreamers, but looking into them I realised there was a secret hiding behind them all about the structure of Marvel comics at the time. But first WHO are the Daydreamers and HOW in the comics did they join up.
The Daydreamers initially spun out as subplot in Generation-X 20-25, the first 3 members to join together where; Artie Maddocks a mute young mutant with telepathic powers, Leech a former Morlock (a group of Mutants who live in New York sewers) with the power to shut off other superpower and has trouble with pronouns like Elmo from Sesame Street and Franklin Richards the recently orphaned son of Reed and Sue Richards of the Fantastic Four. The next recruit was Howard the Duck who was working as a trucker in the Mid-West who gave a lift to Skin and Chamber (members of Gen-X) back to Massachusetts (The Generation-X team where not based at the Xavier Mansion) , after returning the teen-heroes back home (and having a fe bar brawls) the kids introduced Howard to the fifth member of the team. Rigellan Warrior and former Thor villain called Tana Nile hiding on school grounds. Tana Nile is like a female invader Zim who has learnt what empathy is and now an outcast from her species because she doesn’t believe Rigellans are superior to all other forms of life. Lastly joining the team is the mysterious Man-Thing, the guardian of the Nexus of all Reality and the responsible for bringing Howard from Duck-World (although this was a point of contention from the stories original writer and Howard’s original creator Steve Gerber. Who believed Howard came from a world full of different anthropomorphic animals).
The Day-Dreamers had their own Mini-series although it was short-lived and it’s one weird trip of a story including references to Dr Seuss. But the series was short-lived due to legal issues as Steve Gerber and Jack Kirby’s lawsuit over creator rights was cropping up again as Steve didn’t like them using his character without his permission. Marvel however didn’t know that Gerber and image Comics founder Erik Larsen hatched a plan, Gerber wrote an issue of Spider-man Team up (5 to be precise) where the Web-head would team up with Gerber’s webbed-foot creation and Gambit from The X-men for some reason. Meanwhile over at image comics Gerber and Larsen would create a comic that told the same story but from the perspective of their own characters, Larsen’s Savage Dragon and Gerber (and Jack Kirby’s) Destroyer Duck, but the Savage Dragon/Destroyer Duck story as well as having some minor curse words had an extra twist. In the story Creaux the villain of the story does a voodoo ritual that makes copies of the pale-yellow Duck, the Marvel story ends with Spider-man, Gambit and “Howard” having defeated Creaux and Tombstone but the image version has something different. Savage Dragon and Destroyer Duck grab the real Howard and his girlfriend Beverly Switzler (no copies of Beverly are needed I guess as there are lots of long-legged redheads in Marvel universe I guess). The heroes of the image Comic now place the most popular write-in candidate during 1977 US Presidential Election and his girlfriend into witness protection in the Savage Dragon universe, renaming Howard Leonard and Beverly changing her name to Rhonda Martini.
So how exactly did this team save Marvel Comics? Well in the 90’s was actually 4 different publishers, “Marvel Spider-man” focusing on all things Spider-man, “Marvel-X” focusing on all mutant related books, “Marvel-Dark” which was Ghost Rider, The Punisher, Daredevil etc and “Marvel Classic” (sounding a lot like a soft-drink) which was The Avengers and Fantastic Four. Marvel Classic was entirely outsourced to Jim Lee’s Wildstorm (which produced Fantastic Four and Iron Man) and Rob Liefeld’s Extreme Studios (which worked on The Avengers until he missed too many deadlines and Windstorm took it over as well), to coincide with this transfer of character was Onslaught which killed off both teams and then the 2 teams re-emerged in a newer version of the marvel universe called “Heroes Reborn”. But there was more to Marvel Classic than those 2 teams and Scott Lobdell and Chris Bachello decided to take some of the lesser used features and fold them into Generation-X. With this action the Marvel universe became less disconnected which was always the point of Marvel Comics, and while short-lived it did mean Franklin was still around in the Marvel Universe to bring back the classic versions of the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Thor and Captain America after the lacklustre response to “Heroes Reborn”.
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