History of the Marvel Universe: Behind the Scenes
Fabian Niceiza and Scott Lobdell were working on
X-Men, the then biggest book in the country and Tom DeFalco was nearly fired during
The Clone Saga. Terry Stuart approached Nicieza for his marketing side of Marvel to help control the sales and marketing and presented an Org chart that gave DeFalco more control. This was the Marvelution, the publishing of more things and the buying out of Malibu Comics for their printing equipments. This allowed them to actually make and release comics with Marvel owning everything down to the wood pulp to maximize prophets.
The higher ups wanted
The Clone Saga to continue but DeFalco still fought back.
Spider-Man #400 saw Peter Parker's life change forever. Mary Jane was pregnant and Aunt May was dying. Her old age finally catching up with her. Spider-Man appeared before her but she told him to takeoff is mask so she could see her nephew. Peter was shocked to learn that she knew. She explained that she had found out some time ago. Peter and Aunt May said goodbye and she finally passed on.
Mark Gruenwald
Sales and Marketing wanted the story to continue but DeFalco refused to undo the death of Aunt May. DeFalco told Mark Gruenwald, his soon to be successor, about his plans in case he was removed. Sales and Marketing was looking at
Age of Apocalypse and wanted that but for Spider-Man. A successful event with a lot of tie ins.
The Clone Saga was finished, and fans were responding well to the two Spider-Men. Someone proposed that they introduce more Spider-Men but instead of clones they look into other Universes, thus the concept of the Spider-Verse was born. An event was to threaten the Spider-Men of every reality. Spider-Man was never intended to be such an important universal figure so the antagonist would have to be someone with a grudge on Spider-Man himself, and so it was decided that the antagonist would be...Spider-Man. More Specifically a version of Spider-Man merged with the Carnage symbiote. This allowed Tom DeFalco to use some of his clone saga ideas as this Peter Parker went insane from the revelation that he was actually the clone, allowing the Carnage Symbiote to bond to him after the death of Mary Jane in childbirth shortly after Aunt May. The fact that he had discovered a way to travel between universes was revealed to have occurred when the Fantastic Four tried to take the Carnage Symbiote off of him, allowing Spider Carnage to escape and find a way to travel across universes, where he was now murdering Spider-Men across the multiverse, warranting his defeat.
Tom Lyle had been promised a Spider-Man title and he was given his own alternate universe title, which worked as he was an inexperienced writer. Dan Jurgens was also brought in as writer on the Spider-Man book with Bob Budiansky. Both disliked Reilly and so chose to write Peter. Peter was still acting as Spider-Man though it was written that he would retire. The Final issue having Mary Jane give birth. Editorial wanted Mary Jane to miscarriage but the creators fired back sayings "I am not going down in history as the one who killed Spider-Man's baby ". That idea was scrapped. In the cover of Ben Reilly someone had randomly inserted a scene of a skeleton in a Spider-Man costume being found in a smokestack. This single action nearly threw a wrench in the entire saga of Ben Reilly, but it was quickly revealed to just be a fake and a ploy from the returning villain the Jackal to manipulate Ben Reilly. The Jackal cloned Norman Osborn and while many creators were adamant about reviving the character after such a definitive death. This was subverted when the clone was actually friendly due to lacking the influence of the Goblin formula and helped Reilly, only to die in the process, saving him from the true mastermind, an alive Harry Osborn. Reilly decided his origin didn't matter, being a hero did. Mark Gruenwald finally did succeed DeFalco as Editor in Chief in 1996.
Mark Waid had been on the X-Men book and was working on Onslaught at the time, revealing the villain Onslaught to be a dark manifestation of Xavier's psyche which was defeated(fortunately there is no Heroes Reborn situation ITTL).
Valiant released their latest event,
Chaos Effect in 1994, which repeated the Valiant strategy. The first issue "Alpha" was free and the series concluded in Omega. The event had better than OTL marketing and was more successful. There was a problem with Marvel UK. During the trip in Europe which Shooter had paid for the staff to travel to, they had bolstered the sales fo the company. Marvel UK had a different release schedules and rather than importing American Comics, they created their own. One of the creations of these British artists was Death's Head. Marvel tried to keep Death's Head, including having him cameo in
Doctor Who comics. Despite this Death's Head soon came to be owned by Hasbro and became a Transformers character. Without him Marvel UK started to slump.
Valiant was writing a story set on the Org of Plasm which needed to be fed and so its people became conquerors. Earth is attacked but one warrior Lorca, turns against his people and allows humans to gain abilities to fight back. The series did well and there was also merchandise, including a card game. Other titles included
War Dancer, Charlemagne, Dark Dominion and more which crossed over. The name Shooter registered for his idea "Plasm" triggered a copyright battle with Marvel UK over the character of Plasmer, which had not yet been introduced but the trademark had been registered. Valiant was also making a deal with Mattel for toys. Unfortunately, Marvel UK pounced on the opportunity and rushed out a Plasmer book to support their legal case and battle Valiant. Valiant offered to change the name to one of several options, preferring "
Warriors of Plasm". Marvel UK intentionally held off choosing one and when Valiant went with "
Warriors of Plasm" they sued. The Judge scolded Marvel UK for this shameless act.
Liefeld's infamous Captain America Sketch
On the Image side they partnered with the Video Game company Akklaim due to sharing the same demographic. Akklaim bought Image. Todd McFarlane's
Spawn was the most popular character. He was the top choice for Video Games and for toys. McFarlane had created his own company McFarlane Toys and then McFarlane Entertainment. It should serve as no surprise when he formed McFarlane games. As inexperienced as the film studio may have been, a
Spawn film was made and an Emmy winning animated series. Then Marvel came to Image to make a deal. A tradeoff. Such an idea was not a first. DC and Marvel had traded characters and it was decided that such stories would be non canon regardless. McFarlane disliked the idea but Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld did like it and so it went through. Gruenwald's favorite character was Captain America. He'd worked on the character for 14 years and was not about to give it up. Liefeld wanted to write Captain America and the two fought over it. In the end, Liefeld would never write Captain America.
At Image, it was discovered Liefeld had been in charge of finances, which was odd as he was notorious for sleeping during important meetings. He was found to be using Image resources including money to pay off personal debts and not paying his employees. Silvestre nearly pulled Top Cow out of Image as a result until there were plans for Image to fire Liefeld. Liefeld. asked for a week's notice after being told and was granted it. He then quit and claimed to be parting with Image on good terms of his own choice. Image corrected the statements and said he was fired, not that he quit. Liefeld intended to form his own company Awesome Comics, but it was never to be. Liefeld was in Afghanistan, gaining material for what he imagined to be a story retelling Captain America's origin story and setting it during the war in the Middle East. He was not meant to see combat but the base he was present on was attacked. Reports say a soldier was shot and killed in front of Liefeld, who donned the deceased soldier's uniform and weapons and charged towards the enemy, firing wildly. he was killed almost immediately. He was 29 years old[1].
The Rest of Image mourned the loss of Rob Liefeld. McFarlane seemed to subscribe to the idea that Jim Shooter had him murdered, including an image in the
Spawn comics of a likeness to Shooter himself on a black screen and simply the word "Shooter?". While Liefeld had impacted the medium of comics, for better and for worse, the Image empire seemed to continue to grow after his passing. All of Image was seeing success from McFarlane's
Spawn Empire, Silvestre making
Witchblade into a live action series, Valentino had become the head of Image and was turning it respectable. Jim Lee was brought in to replace Liefeld. Outwardly Image seemed fine but inwardly it was falling apart. Before every internal problem was solved by talking it over, this was due to each having so much creative control. Lateness was a problem, including the often reliable Erik Larsen. McFarlane rallied against the gimmick cover idea he himself had started with
Spider-Man: Torment and so stayed on. Larry Marder was brought in to fix the Image problem by Valentino and he succeeded by introducing new rules such as only finished books could be advertised. Akklaim wanted to reboot all the Image characters but this was shot down by Valentino. Instead new writers and artists were brought in and the release of books reduced.
Valiant began to attempt to move once more into license territory, including
Sliders and
Magic: The Gathering. The cards for
Magic: The Gathering were released in Comic shops and the world was large enough to provide a great deal of exploring. Fans of the game were also comic fans, including the creator Richard Garfield. Garfield was now working on the next expansion and Ice Age, followed by an Arabian Knights expansion. In Valiant's original books were
Quantum and Woody, created by Mark Bright, who had created the famous Shockwave cover for the
Transformers, and Christopher Priest, one of the creators of Milestone Media, which published through DC. Issues sold well despite the flooded marketplace and no recognized names. Mildstone's biggest success was
Static Shock, who was absorbed into the DC Universe.
Isaac Perlmutter
During this time, with the Comic book industry recovering that a new figure entered the scene: Isaac Perlmutter. Perlmutter had bought Remington Products, which the previous owner Victor Kiam had popularized with the slogan "I love this shaver so much I bought the company". Evidently the love had gone and Kiam sold to Perlmutter. Perlmutter owned Toy Biz along with Avi Arad, which wasn't doing so well. Perlmutter realized that licensed products outsold all others and set out to buy a company to produce toys. This is how Hasbro and Mattel had stayed afloat. Perlmutter offered Gruenwald a partnership and Gruenwald negotiated a deal. Marvel was doing fine, recovering, but still fine and so there was no need to sell the company. Toy Biz got the rights to make Marvel toys. This allowed for the chance for Marvel to find a bigger media focused company to buy them out in the future, which is what they wanted to do as many, including Stan Lee, wanted Marvel to make movies.
Carl Icahn
That's when Carl Icahn enters this story. One of the inspirations for Gordon Gekko in Wall Street, Icahn suspected something about Marvel and that there was a secret plan. Icahn began trying to buy Marvel as well. Perlman also wanted to buy Marvel but this time Icahn outbid him, leaving him with nothing. Icahn was outbidding all others including Perlmutter. This was not a good thing as he was actually one of the worst people who could have bought Marvel, being one of the first google results for the term corporate raider. Icahn cared more about short term prophets, intending to introduce several projects to destroy a company and then leave with his money. He had done this with TWA, an airline company which he was ousted from for selling shares to their companies. His clauses led TWA to bankruptcy. If he won control of Marvel, he would most likely run it to the ground, establish legal clauses digging it into permanent bankruptcy and then left. At the same time, no one wanted Perlmutter either. This was an Alien vs Predator situation. Whoever won. Marvel lost.
There were three competitors, Icahn, Perlmutter, and Perlman. Perlman called on the banks which he had a good relationship with. Perlman eventually backed out and made a deal with Icahn that when Icahn won(if Icahn won), Perlman would have some control but would face no legal punishment for the illegal actions he had undertaken in his efforts to buy Marvel. This left Icahn and the team of Toybiz, Perlmutter and Arad. With Icahn backing Perlman, the former could now buy Toy Biz, which is what Perlman wanted. If Icahn won, Toybiz would be transformed into a shell company existing solely to sell Marvel products. Hoping to avoid this, Toy Biz entered as a fourth contender in the Marvel Wars. No one trusted Icahn. In order for the bank to consider Toy Biz, they needed to put up $545 Million Dollars as a starting bid, which they did. This was something that Perlman hoped they wouldn't be able to do when he got the banks involved, using the money to scare away any other would be buyers, as even Stan Lee was in talks with Disney to buy Marvel, seeing them as "The Devil You Know" in this situation as Stan Lee and Walt Disney had gotten along well and Lee thought Disney would at least do a better job than Icahn or Perlmutter. Time was running out as the deal would expire. Matters were hampered as all the lawyers involved happened to be jewish. This meant that when the Passover was coming up, and with most of the people involved being Orthodox, they would not work for that week. If the deal was delayed for the week the deal would be lost. The race was on for the deal to passover before passover(something entirely factual to OTL despite seeming like something in a Mel Brooks comedy).
Apparently Ike Perlmutter was less devout than the rest because when everyone else stopped for the Passover, he went in to sign the deal behind everyone's backs. This forced everyone to return after Passover and immediately go into trying to start a deal that put a restraining order on Icahn. This wasn't about Marvel anymore. It was a matter of pride. Icahn didn't want to lose to the owners of a small Toy company. So Toybiz made a deal with Icahn and they formed a partnership instead. Perlman was unaware of the deal. Icahn in his pitch for Marvel in the meeting with Perlmutter, declared his intent to close down the company and start completely over with new characters, finding a new company he called "NewCo"(somewhat close to his plan OTL complete with the "NewCo" name for a new company). Unfortunately, for Icahn and fortunately for everyone else, Perlman, while unable to attend that particular meeting due to a scheduling conflict, had told Stan Lee about the meeting and provided him with access. Stan Lee was no longer involved at Marvel but he wanted to see the faces of just who was buying the company and entered the meeting. Neither Icahn nor Perlmutter recognized him as he sat there being the quietest he had ever been and the angriest.
Icahn's lawyers managed to overturn the restraining order between Icahn and Marvel but by now the Judge in charge of the entire case declared in anger that the money used to keep Marvel afloat could not be used to pay lawyers. The restraining order was later reinstated.
Let's take a moment to look at Marvel's Distinguished Competition. DC was doing well with events like the
Knightfall event and were creating Mature stories, mature as in complex such as
The Sandman that asked though provoking questions and were well written. This led to the creation of Vertigo, an independent imprint. It seemed like Marvel's situation was no concern. DC was still doing well. Holding onto the rights such as they had when they nearly sold to Marvel worked and they had gotten themselves out. That was when DC pitched an idea to Marvel as they realized that Marvel's collapse could either damage DC themselves as it harmed the entire industry, or they would see success due to their fall, at which point DC would likely be able to snatch up their characters. The Previous effort in which Marvel and DC had switched characters had been a success for both, so it could have been a success, plus that event had helped DC out at a time when it was struggling(though
Crisis on Infinite Earths was really what helped DC get itself out). It was now their turn to return the favor and help Marvel out. They pitched the idea to finally do Marvel vs DC. Fans would vote on some of the fights. Peter Parker was even brought back as he had been Spider-Man on and off at this time and he was seen as THE Spider-Man to feature in such a historic event. A new imprint was also created: Amalgam Comics, merging both universes. The two competing companies had come together while behind the scenes Marvel was falling apart.
Icahn had usurped Perlman and replaced everyone on Perlman's board. Perlmutter stepped in and pointed out that Perlmutter had made a deal with Perlman previously that if Perlmutter took over the staff would not be changed and Icahn had done that. This clause was actually instated by Shooter when he feared Perlman would takeover Marvel and fire all his employees to replace them as he wanted his staff to have jobs. Perlmutter pointed out that this applied to anyone who replaced Perlman, meaning that he now legally could takeover since the deal was Perlmutter would get Perlman's job if anyone on the board had been replaced. Icahn refused that logic and Perlmutter refused Icahn's own logic. With both being in charge of Toy Biz, the company broke apart and the two started fighting.
This left Avi Arad, the other head of Toy Biz besides Perlmutter and now Icahn, alone and he decided to switch sides and go to Marvel. Arad and Stan Lee wanted the same thing, to see Marvel characters on the big screen and this had been accomplished but both had a sense that something bigger was coming and so with the two of them in a handshake agreement, Marvel Films became Marvel Studios. Arad shared control with Jerry Calabrese. While Calabrese had been behind the failed Marvel Mart, he was genuinely making strides to repair the company after its decline. It was Marvel Studios that would takeover the production of the 90's Marvel Universe and films like Blade. The reason for the films was because any deals made with Toy Biz applied to the comic characters not any versions of the characters from films. Arad was a passionate supporter of Marvel, not a corrupt businessman. He was in Stan Lee's words "a true believer". Now he was planning on going against his own company. The
Marvel vs DC event had expanded as DC now owned Wildstorm and so that universe was brought in as well.
Chuck Rozanski
Retailers were struggling to survive following the dip in the mid 90's. These were the people who loved comics, even if love was sometimes expressed through rage. One of these comic store owners was Chuck Rozanski of Mile High Comics. Rozanski called himself a Counter Culture Capitalist and sold comics independently, possibly being the first to do so, opening his first store in 1974. Originally, comics weren't looked at too closely. They cost six cents after all but now the easier distribution meant the real money came from back issues. When Marvel nearly went under in the late 70's, before being saved by the success of their Star Wars tie in comics, Rozanski had written a book on how the problem had started and even attempted to warn people about it. As a result he was brought into a meeting with Marvel executives to discuss how to prevent such a fate from occurring again. It was at that meeting that Rozanski had met Jim Shooter, who was helping turn everything around, had looked at Marvel's problems and championed Rozanski's ideas. Rozanski believed the health of the Comic Industry was tied to Marvel and he still believed that in the 90's. Razinski did admit that he was part of the problem as he had pushed the formation of Comic book shops, leading to a move away from selling comics on Newspaper stands, which is where new readers came from. This also applied to Comics at the Grocery stores and pharmacies. As such Razinski championed bringing those back in style so long as they offered kid suitable comics. After all Archie had continued to do this. Even Icahn agreed with this, saying the books should be back on the newsstand for 60 cents, though this was not feasible in the modern market. Magazine distributors hated comics, as they cost as much to make as anything else but were worth a fraction of the price and made a fraction of the money.
Marvel decided to bring back Howard the Duck. This was difficult as Steve Gerber, Howard the Duck's creator, was seen as the only one who could do him justice. At the time Gerber was doing a
Howard the Duck crossover with
Savage Dragon which involved the multiverse. Gerber's idea was to have a panel in which the two briefly encountered each other. Not a crossover in the usual sense but more of a panel in each showing the two meeting. While this went off without a hitch. An editor at Marvel, Bob Harras, wanted Howard the Duck to be in everything which Gerber refused as he saw this as a one time thing for the sake of nostalgia. This was referenced by Gerber in the same story in which Savage Dragon and Destroyer Duck rescued Howard from an army of clones, pulling Howard out of the Marvel Universe and into the Image universe and leaving a clone of Howard who believed he was the real one in the Marvel Universe. In other words, Gerber rescued Howard from Marvel and the Marvel one was just a clone, a clear jab at
The Clone Saga.
The Spider-Man Issue
The Savage Dragon Issue
The wrong Howard gets sent to the Marvel Universe.
Perlman had dropped out of the race and so Icahn and Toy Biz now faced off. Each gaining bank support. Toy Biz was less likely but Icahn was the worse option. However, Icahn began to actually look into Marvel. He was provided with evidence that Perlman hadn't been playing up Marvel's problems but downplaying them. Icahn didn't care. He needed to recover the money he lost and refused to lose to a toy company. Perlmutter had made a fortune buying out smaller companies. If he had taken over Marvel he would have insisted on things such as recycling paper clips, and a mandatory drug test. He had done this when he bought out dollar stores, and ignored the argument that several creators took drugs and rejected the idea that Award winning comic writers shouldn't be treated like Dollar store clerks. Perlmutter was the safer option because of Avi Arad. Arad loved the Marvel Universe and wouldn't hurt the company for prophets. Toy Biz started buying shares and settlements of Marvel to prevent Icahn from getting them. Icahn retaliated, declaring war and bringing Perlman back to blame him for the chaos. He wanted Perlmutter's business dissolved.
This is when Joe Calamari came in. Calamari had been responsible for getting Shooter's Marvel children's show idea off the ground. Now Icahn brought Calamari onboard. At a party, Calamari met with comic creators and artists Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti. The two had their own studio that they wanted to distribute Marvel Books. They promised real talent and state of the art technology for the creation process. Calamari convinced Gruenwald to go with this as their previous endeavors such as
Marvel vs DC had been successes. However the names given where small ones. They were given:
Daredevil, the Inhumans, Black Panther and
The Punisher. With these names they formed
Marvel Knights. Kevin Smith wrote
Daredevil. Quesada did the art. The resulting storyline is considered to be the best one since the days of Frank Miller. Christopher Priest, the man behind
Quantum and Woody, took the helm of
Black Panther and became "The Best title you're not reading". The
Inhumans by Paul Jenkins and Jay Lee made a miniseries that won an Eisner and became mainstream.
The Punisher was written by Garth Ennis and received much acclaim. Marvel was saved. In the office, the Marvel Editors disliked the loss of control.
The Court brought in Attorney John J.Gibbons to find a way to settle the dispute between Icahn and Perlmutter. Keeping Marvel together was the best choice. It was then that Rozanski got a call from Jim Shooter. Shooter and Rozanski made a deal to turn Marvel around. Rozanski didn't want to run Marvel, just keep it alive and so he reluctantly got involved if only so he could return to his comic book shop and farm. Rozanski and Shooter looked over the documents as did Gibbons. The trio pored over legal documents before discovering how absurd the Toy Biz contract with Marvel to make toys had been. It was thorough. Marvel action figures were top priority but the list also prevented kites, lunchboxes, play-doh, card games and just about everything under the sun. This was why Perlmutter wanted Marvel so much. Icahn wanted to destroy Toy Biz by preventing them from making any money. Both were in too deep and could not be reasoned with. Gibbons had to decided if Perlman had acted criminally. He had not, just stupid in making terrible decisions and creating the current situation. Fortunately Icahn would shoot himself in the foot.
Icahn put forward a proposition to have Gibbons removed as one of his firms had previously worked for Chase Manhattan, one of the debtors or Marvel. This was laughed off. Gibbons was decided by a judge to be allowed to continue to study the matter. Toy Biz was going to takeover and Gibbons agreed to that. Icahn wanted a deal to save face and get his money back. Gibbons agreed to settle the matter. Rozanski and Shooter had also joined.
In the end, Marvel lived. Icahn was given a 3.5 Million Dollar settlement. He and Toy Biz continued to hate each other. Perlman was hit with problems with his bonds. He shifted to owning different companies and now owns SIGA Human BioArmor, a government defense company. A government defense company ran by a man who ran a Comic Book company and nearly destroyed the entire industry.
Even in Death, Liefeld remained a controversial figure when Jack Kirby's widow revealed that Rob Liefeld had tried to buy the rights to Captain America. It is often said that Liefeld created Agent America when he could not do so, leading Marvel to sue him for the likeness to Captain America. This is not true. Liefeld had approached Captain America creator Joe Simon and Jack Kirby's widow, Kirby having died three years earlier. Liefeld tried to get legal permission to write Captain America first from Jack Kirby and then his widow, both refused. The asking price was too much and so Liefeld created Agent America to attempt to force Kirby's widow into a better settlement. Both she and Marvel sued. Agent America was cancelled.
Another creator with grievances towards Marvel was Steve Gerber. Gerber had created Howard the Duck as a one off gag but the character became unexpectedly popular. Howard the Duck appeared in a back up story in
Giant Size Man-Thing before getting his own series, which was M-Rated at Gerber's request and featured plenty more Man-thing. The series was a cult hit and even appeared in newspapers. Disney asked for changes to Howard's design but Gerber refused due to being the rare Writer-Editor that had complete control of his own book, meaning Gerber parodied the request in the book and then ignored it since no one was looked over his shoulder. Shooter granted Gerber ownership of Howard, preventing his appearances in Marvel until the 90's. Gerber even got Jack Kirby to create comics of Destroyer Duck alongside him for absolutely free, Kirby having his own grievances with Marvel at the time. Gerber was however, brought in to help on the Howard the Duck animated film by Ralph Bakshi.
Gerber kept working for Marvel until he moved for Malibu, including the Ultraverse. Ironically, Marvel would buy Malibu soon after. Gerber also heard of Jerry Calibrese and the failed Marvel Mart. Gerber jumped into mocking Calibrese. The question was now how Gerber could get along with the new management. Of the deal with Disney to buy Marvel, Rozanski later said "you know things are tough when the big corporation is the hero of the story." The victors, with the unexpected rescue from Disney, was Avi Arad, who had made peace with Rozanski and Shooter. Arad ousted Perlmutter from Toy Biz as he had taken a beaten with his idiotic idea to give a share of Toy Biz to Icahn. He had also made the mistake of attempting to cancel the half a Million Dollar payments made to Stan Lee every year, a decision that didn't win him any friends as Stan Lee had supported Marvel throughout, even supporting Toy Biz. Lee was still working on the promotional side, work that was seriously needed due to how Marvel had nearly been brought down. The attempt backfired so badly that Stan Lee got a bigger payment deal. This caused Perlmutter to hold a grudge against Lee. The Man who had founded the company that he had almost bought.
Footnotes
[1]This is where things get a little somber. I don't personally hate Liefeld. However, at this time OTL, Mark Gruenwald took a copy of Captain America by Rob Liefeld home. Marvel had been failing and forced to give Image the use of their characters Gruenwald had been writing Captain America for 14 years. After leaving on Friday with the issue, he did not come in for work. He had died of a heart attack. He was obsessed with health, never drinking, never smoking, never taking drugs. The day before he was doing cartwheels in the office. As such in the words of SF Debris and quite literally with no hyperbole: "ROB LIEFELD MADE A COMIC SO BAD IT MAY HAVE KILLED A MAN!"....so with all that said. It seemed like a type of cosmic balance was required to avert Gruenwald's death and in this case that was Liefeld due to the seemingl Karmic nature of the OTL event.