Cliffhanger (comics)

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Cliffhanger was an imprint of Wildstorm, publishing creator-owned comic books. It was founded in 1998, when Wildstorm was still part of Image Comics (the studio has since been sold to DC Comics), by three of the most popular comic book artists of the time: Joe Madureira, J. Scott Campbell and Humberto Ramos.

The imprint ended in summer of 2004 when it was merged with Homage Comics line to form the Wildstorm Signature Series.

[edit] History

The imprint's first release was Campbell's spy series Danger Girl in March 1998, followed by the first issue of Joe Mad's fantasy series Battle Chasers a month later and Ramos' teen-vamipre series Crimson in May.

While Danger Girl and Battle Chasers were very popular and on top of the charts every time an issue shipped, both series suffered from extreme lateness, with its artists seemingly unable to meet deadlines: There were only 8 issues of Battle Chasers between its April 1998 launch and its move to Image Comics in 2001 and the 7-issue Danger Girl miniseries took almost 3 years to be completed.

On the other hand, the third Cliffhanger title, Ramos' Crimson, became the longest running series of the line, going on for 24 issues before its conclusion in February 2001.

In spring 2000, Chris Bachalo and author Joe Kelly created the imprint's fourth title, Steampunk. It was followed by Ramos' second Cliffhanger title, Out There, in May 2001.

While there were constantly new miniseries published by the line, like 2002's High Roads by artist Leinil Francis Yu and writer Scott Lobdell and 2003's Arrowsmith by Kurt Busiek and Carlos Pacheco, The Possessed by Geoff Johns and Kris Grimminger with art by Liam Sharp and Kamikaze, written by Humberto Ramos with art by Francisco Herrera, the imprint had lost most of its initial charm and star-power when the original founders stopped their titles.

Editors' decisions to publish a title under the imprint were often hard to understand by fans. For example, when two miniseries (Tokyo Storm Warning and Two-Step) written by Warren Ellis were published in 2003 at Cliffhanger while a couple of his other titles were published under Wildstorm's Homage Comics imprint at the same time.

In late 2003, the imprint was also used to publish Epicurus The Sage and The Maxx trade paperbacks with material that was previously published by Image Comics, before it was finally merged with Homage Comics in 2004 to form the Wildstorm Signature Series.