Malibu Ultragear

This is a pretty cool little catalog that a friend sent me. It’s from the early days of the Ultraverse, and solved the mystery for me about how a lot of things were distributed (such as watches, shirts, standees, etc.)

It’s a single sheet tri-folded, so I scanned in all six portions. Over the years I’ve collected just about everything here (I picked up the Malibu watch just last week) but now I have a couple more things to keep looking for (two-pocket folders, license plate holders, lithographs).

Click on the thumbnails to see. Enjoy!

 

 

Malibu Flipside

Marvel used to offer up these black and white preview books to retailers called Sales to Astonish. At some point after Marvel bought Malibu, they used the back half of one of these to give the Ultraverse some love. At least that’s what I think happened. I’ve seen a bunch of different copies of Sales to Astonish but this is the only one with a Malibu Flipside. And that’s all I know about this, but at least I have a couple of pictures.

The Hardcase movie

I bought this card a while back (it’s about the size of a comic, thinner than a backing board). Like it says, it’s a promo for the Hardcase movie and is signed by director Darren Doane and writer James Hudnall. So I looked for the movie and couldn’t find it. Comic shops, eBay, fan groups … nothing turned up.

Most Ultraverse fans know about the Firearm movie that came packed with the 0 (zero) issue … I also have a card for that movie. Now that one I have seen. But this Hardcase movie … I had no idea.

So I turned to the Ultraverse Facebook group. If you are a fan of the Ultraverse at any level, that is a great group to join. Many of the original creators drop in and offer up great stories and nuggets from their days working at Malibu. Very cool.

So I checked in over there and found out that there never was an actual movie, just a 30-second trailer. Tom Mason, one of the Ultraverse creators, had this info:

Action movie star Gary Daniels was Hardcase. The short teaser was done not for us or even the direct market but more as something to show off the movie potential of UV properties. And we could also show it off on the convention circuit.

and …

Both Darren Doane and Ken Daurio were on staff, with another guy Larry Gitlin, at Malibu during that time. They had a division inhouse called “Malibu Films” that was responsible for all of our promotional videos and short films. After the division was shut down, Darren went on to make music videos and Daurio started writing screenplays.

So there you have it: A bit of a background. But I still haven’t seen an actual hard copy of this movie in person. A fellow Ultraverse collector has one, and he donated the pictures of the sleeve below. The movie itself is a regular VHS tape. It’s just one more thing for me to keep on my list.

 

Malibu Sunspots

I had always wondered what these things were. I had never actually seen one in person but I noticed a couple that were jammed in with some other things on an auction. So I bought a few books I didn’t really want just to see what was up.

 

They’re actually less interesting than I thought, although they are numbered. I’m not sure how many there were in total, but these are just pamphlets with a little bit of info about upcoming Ultraverse books. They’re not comic-sized, more like 8.5 x 11 (like a regular sheet of paper) and very thin.

I might buy some others if I see them very cheap but these were obviously just info sheets for dealers and were probably sent to comic shops all over the country.

Cheep comics

A few weeks back I found a shop in Tampa that had a ton of comics for 10 cents each. I found these in those boxes, although the only Ultraverse connection is the card inserted randomly; I’m pretty sure these are all just common cards from the first set of Ultraverse cards.

It gave me the silly idea that maybe I could put together a run of all 90 cards, still in the polybags with a comic. But when it comes to collecting Ultraverse I have first-priority books and second-priority books. This would be down around sixth priority.

Still, for 10 cents I couldn’t pass them up.

In case anyone else wanted to check out the shop (Wonder Water Sports Cards, Comics and Games), here is their Twitter feed and Facebook page. I left a lot of books there.

Polybag week continues!

Thrilling, right?

And these aren’t even Ultraverse books, just regular-issue comics from the Malibu line. My friend alerted me to these, since he likes to inform me about stuff that sends me into OCD collector-land. The bags here look identical to the price-variant polybags from the previous post, and the card that is included is just a random selection from the inaugural Ultraverse set.

 

These are the only two I have (thanks Bruce!) but I’m betting that all regular Malibu books that month had similar packages for the newsstand versions.

Malibu Signature Series

It’s hard to call these comic books, but they are comic-book sized so let’s just throw them in with the rest. These look like the kinds of things you would take to busy conventions and try to get as many signatures from the artists and writers as possible. Inside are small bios and pictures with a box underneath for them to sign.

Mine are still blank; I picked these up in auctions somewhere. It would probably freak out one of the old Ultraverse creators if I gave them one of these to sign in San Diego this summer.

 

They’re not particularly easy to find, but they’re always cheap. Somebody might try to charge a little more if it had a lot of signatures inside, though.