Spasm (Parody Press)

    (Parody, 1993)
™ and © Parody Press

This one requires a bit of explaining…

Back in 1993, Marketing king Jim Shooter was starting a new comic company called Defiant, and was determined to introduce even more marketing innovations than he had during his tenure at Valiant. You may recall that that was the company the pioneered zero issues, retailer premium variants, all-black covers, gold covers, and made an art of the company-wide crossover.

Defiant’s first title, Warriors of Plasm was launched with a trading card set which, if assembled correctly in the proper binder, became a coherent comic book story—a sort of trading card zero issue, if you will.

Parody Press! smelled blood immediately and decided to issue their own, premium-priced trading card set which, if assembled correctly (or just flipped through in order, and read front and back) became a parody of the bizarre mythology and marketing that was going into the making of Warriors of Plasm. It even came with its own holo-foil covered box!

All in all, it’s a true oddity both in the world of trading cards and in comic books.
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