Defiant Comics

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The cover of Warriors of Plasm #1
Published by DEFIANT
August 1993

The DEFIANT Logo

Defiant Comics was a comic book publishing imprint of Enlightened Entertainment Partners, LP. Defiant was established in 1993 by the former Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics and Valiant Comics, Jim Shooter.

As for the all capital naming scheme for Defiant (or "DEFIANT" as some prefer), Jim has said, "All my names are all caps, the minute I walk out of the room they forgot that..."[1]

1 History
2 Unfinished Business
3 Titles
4 External links

[edit] History

Defiant was founded in the wake of Jim Shooter's departure from Valiant.

After attempting, unsuccessfully, to retain his partial ownership of Voyager Communications (Valiant's parent company) he decided to start anew. At the time, many staff members, artists and writers who worked for Valiant were either forced out or quit due to their association with Shooter; they were quickly incorporated into the new company's staff.

Shooter then teamed up with The River Group, which, along with other things, manufactured trading cards for the new company.

In early 1993, Defiant announced release of its first title: Plasm. Upon hearing the news, Marvel Comics threatened a lawsuit[2] against Defiant, claiming that the new title violated their copyright.

Jim Shooter then changed the name of the comic from Plasm to Warriors of Plasm in seeking to avoid a costly court battle with Marvel.

Marvel sued anyway.

Shooter fought back, however, noting in court that the title in question was a fairly recent and obscure publication that was published by Marvel's UK division. He also noted that Marvel's concept was very different from the one introduced in DEFIANT's title.

Eventually, the court decided in favor of Defiant. However, the legal process depleted the company's savings. According to Shooter,[3] the entire court battle cost Defiant over $300,000 in legal fees.

The sum would never be recouped and eventually would lead Defiant to close its doors before it would become bankrupt.

[edit] Unfinished Business

Jim Shooter had originally planned to publish an intra-company "crossover" featuring all the characters and titles in the Defiant universe.

The "crossover" was a concept Shooter had originally developed during his tenure as Editor-in-Chief at Marvel Comics. His Secret Wars crossover with Marvel was originally a big hit with comic fans. Shooter would later revive the idea again while Editor-in-Chief at Valiant with the Unity (Comics) crossover; another big hit in the summer of 1992.

This time the crossover was to be called Schism. However, only two issues (Dogs of War #5 and Warriors of Plasm #13) made it onto comic store shelves before the company ceased publication of all its titles.