New Men (Image Comics)
New Men (Image Comics)
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New Men (Image Comics)

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New Men (Image Comics)

New Men is a comic book series published during the 1990s by Image Comics. It was one of the many titles co-created by Rob Liefeld, and released as part of his Extreme Studios imprint. After an initial launch the series underwent a re-design and revamp by writer Eric Stephenson and penciler Chris Sprouse.

The New Men debuted during the Extreme Prejudice imprint-wide crossover in Brigade vol. 2 #8 (March 1994), written by Rob Liefeld and Eric Stephenson, and illustrated by Marat Mychaels. Following the end of the crossover story, they were given an eponymous 5-issue mini-series. This was a commonly used technique within Image, not just by Liefeld's Extreme Studios, but by most of the co-founders and their imprints. Many notable and top-selling Image titles including The Savage Dragon, Cyberforce and Gen13 started in this manner.

The 1994 mini-series was written by Eric Stephenson with art by character designer Jeff Matsuda. Matsuda, Stephenson and Liefeld were also credited as 'co-plotters'. New Men was then granted an ongoing series. Matsuda did not take up the art duties and most of the first 20 issues were penciled by Todd Nauck.

Both mini-series and ongoing series kept a much better schedule than a number of Extreme Comics titles, notably the imprint's 'premiere' title Youngblood. This could be attributed to the minimal role that Rob Liefeld played in the production of the series. Like all of the Extreme titles, a number of issues were taken up by the various imprint-wide crossover storylines, such as Extreme Sacrifice and Babewatch, and the characters, though not the series, were an integral part of the Extreme Destroyer crossover.

The series was put on hiatus with issue 20 for the Extreme Destroyer story and was replaced by a 4-issue mini-series, New Force, which starred the same characters and began their revamp. Nauck and Stephenson were again responsible for this.

The series resumed after this mini-series via Liefeld's Maximum Comics and received a further revamp, both in plot and style, by Stephenson and Chris Sprouse. With issue 22 the series was renamed Adventures of the New Men but despite improved reactions the title fizzled out, possibly due to the problems Liefeld was having with Image Comics and the subsequent problems following his resignation.

The title was not one of the books revived by Awesome Comics.

The New Men were 'Nu-Gene' positive teenagers who had banded together supposedly for their own protection under the guidance of a middle-aged mentor. 'Nu-Genes' were Extreme Comics' universe's equivalent of Marvel's Mutants, and were also the in-universe explanation for mythical beasts such as fairies, centaurs, vampires and werewolves; initially thought to be a generic 'default' like the Mutant Gene, it was later revealed to have been the result of genetic tampering by a race of aliens (The Keep) as a way to sort the weak, and increase the strong. The New Men's mentor was also later revealed to have been a worshipper of this alien race, keeping the Nu-Genes for their eventual return to harvest them.

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