Hangin Tough: Boy Bands in Comics featuring New Kids on the Block and Backstreet Boys

We explore 90s era boy bands in comics including New Kids on the Block and Backstreet Boys.

Posse up, boys!

If Saturday morning in the 80s and early 90s was dominated by cartoons, Saturday afternoon was the time to hit the comic shop—at least for those of us who didn’t have a comic shop nearby and being a Wednesday warrior wasn’t in the cards.

This was a time when comic companies were trying new things, and it was always exciting to find something new on the spinner rack in the grocery store.

I don’t remember what year it was, but I remember playing one of the New Kids on the Block songs at a school concert. This was at the height of their popularity, and the song “Hangin’ Tough” was everywhere. One thing I have no recollection of, however, was Harvey Comics’ New Kids on the Block Chillin’ and Comic Tour series. We recently found a stack of these gems at a local antique store, and for only a few dollars, it was well worth a trip down early‑90s memory lane.

As I recall, the New Kids wave was not limited to a female fandom, as boys were equally enthralled by the young male entertainers before the term “boy band” was a thing. I will note the on‑brand 90s fashions, which often had the NKOTB shirtless.

These comics featured run‑of‑the‑mill, 80s‑appropriate misadventures. A rich man tries to trick his daughter and Donnie into getting married to impress his rich friends. A tornado hits during a concert. A girl writes Jonathan for help with her boyfriend—a little on the nose with that one. There’s the obligatory “New Kids go camping to escape their hordes of fans, only to run into bears!” And, of course, Joe doesn’t have a date—so the reader gets to go with him. The story is told from the reader’s viewpoint.

The comics, which had a modernized Archie style, ran from late 1990 into ’91 or ’92. Each issue featured two stories with pin‑up art, letters, and the typical fare from comics of this era. The ads are also standouts, with the announcement of a Beetlejuice comic book based on the cartoon series and a Saturday morning cartoon based on the New Kids—another cartoon I don’t remember. There was also an ad for Monster in My Pocket comics, which looked like it featured archetypes of the Universal Monsters, but I don’t remember that either.

Wassup, Y’All?

Late in the 90s, following the comics bust, there weren’t the types of comics on the spinner rack that one might have found less than a decade earlier. And so the newcomers to the music scene, the Backstreet Boys, never got an ongoing comic book or Saturday morning cartoon show. They did, however, get a special collector’s comic called The Backstreet Project, produced by Stan Lee Media (when Stan was still involved with it). It was written by Stan and Backstreet teen heartthrob Nick Carter, along with Bryce Zabel—known for several TV shows, though I remember him best as the creator of the excellent NBC series Dark Skies, born from the craze inspired by The X‑Files. Pencils on the comic were handled by Ruben Martinez.

This comic featured all five Backstreet Boys, but unlike the New Kids variety, it turned them into super‑soldiers fighting an alien threat in a more sci‑fi‑driven adventure. Hitting in late 1999 or early 2000, the book was magazine‑sized, and I recall having to special‑order it—though it eventually made its way to the supermarket magazine rack sporting a new cover. In a sign of the times, this version of the now‑superhero Backstreet Boys skipped the dying Saturday morning cartoon lineup in favor of an animated web series—again featuring Stan Lee and Nick Carter in collaboration. To top it off, the boys were also featured in Burger King Kids Meals as action figures adorned in their superhero getups.

The Backstreet craze of the late 90s was different from that of the New Kids when it came to comics, books, and magazines. While the teen magazines—think Tiger Beat—featured the same kind of junior‑high‑school fare targeted at girls for all performers going back to the Beatles or before, the Backstreet Boys had a broader reach, even appearing on the cover of the glossy gay teen magazine XY. For a broader audience, the Backstreet five also had their own individual covers of TV Guide (back when it was the cool digest version) and appeared multiple times on Rolling Stone.

The other popular boy band of the late 90s, ’N Sync, doesn’t appear to have ever had their own comic book. We did find an issue of Disney Adventures magazine that included Justin Timberlake and the others in an Archie‑style adventure, but nothing that came close to the glory days of New Kids comics. We also assumed there would be some representation of the Beatles in comics as well, but in a cursory search we only found biographical comics. Did you get your fix of NKOTB or BSB via the spinner rack or newsstand? If not, don’t worry—you can still relive the nostalgia by picking up the books for a reasonable price on eBay.