Short answers, pulled from the story.
Malibu Comics was launched in 1986 as Malibu Graphics by Dave Olbrich and Tom Mason, with private financing from Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, who was running a distribution company called Sunrise Distribution at the time.
Marvel purchased Malibu on the 3rd of November 1994 primarily to prevent DC Comics from acquiring it. Because Malibu held nearly ten percent of the American comics market, a DC acquisition would have given DC enough share to surpass Marvel's position.
The Ultraverse was Malibu's flagship superhero line, launched in June 1993 and built around tight continuity and crossovers across its many titles. After Marvel acquired Malibu in 1994, it briefly re-launched a handful of Ultraverse series during the Black September event in 1995, then canceled the entire line shortly afterward.
Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada stated in 2005 that the structure of the original acquisition deal made it next to impossible to publish those characters again, citing a larger undisclosed reason beyond logistics. Writer Steve Englehart suggested in 2012 that a clause requiring five percent of profits to go to living Malibu creators was a factor, though Marvel editor Tom Brevoort denied that was the deciding issue.
In early 1992, Malibu served as the publisher of record for the first Image Comics releases, giving Image access to distribution channels by making it part of the Malibu Graphics Publishing Group. This arrangement lasted until early 1993, when Image was financially stable enough to publish independently.
Malibu established itself as the first comic book company to use digital coloring across all its titles, working with Adobe Photoshop and employing colorists including Andy Walton, Mickey Rose, and Shahid Brown, as well as a coloring team called Violent Hues.