Long before streetwear brands were collaborating with luxury fashion houses, skateboarding had a much more rebellious relationship with mainstream pop culture. In the 1990s and early 2000s, skate brands didn’t ask for permission to use iconic imagery—they just took it, tweaked it, and waited for the cease-and-desist letters to arrive. These were the iconic 90s skate bootleg graphics.
This era of the “bootleg graphic” turned skateboard decks into subversive pop art. Brands like World Industries, Blind, and later, Almost Skateboards, made a habit of ripping off everything from cereal boxes to comic book superheroes. It wasn’t just lazy design; it was a deliberate middle finger to corporate copyright, repackaged for the kids hanging out behind the local convenience store.
No skater embodied the technical revolution of this era quite like Rodney Mullen. The undisputed godfather of modern street skating—the inventor of the kickflip, heelflip, and 360 flip—Mullen’s pro models were always highly anticipated. When Almost Skateboards dropped their comic-inspired series, they mashed up Mullen’s legendary status with the ultimate symbol of invincibility: Superman.
Finding these original, era-specific boards today is incredibly difficult. Because skateboards are inherently meant to be destroyed, surviving examples are treated like rare comic book variants. Finding an authentic, heavily worn Almost Rodney Mullen Superman deck complete with period-correct grip tape and original Spitfire wheels stickers isn’t just about finding a skateboard part—it is about archiving a piece of street heritage from an era before corporate collaborations sanitized the industry.
Today, these bootleg graphics belong on gallery walls just as much as they belong in a skate shop. They are a reminder of a time when skate culture was untouchable, irreverent, and completely hijacked the mainstream.