Indomitable individuals
Image Comics celebrates 25 years of creator-owned originality this year.
TWENTY-FIVE years ago, I recall rushing to now-defunct comic book shop The Final Frontier in Petaling Jaya to get a copy of Youngblood #1 by ... Rob Liefeld(!). While both Youngblood and Liefeld are names to steer clear of these days, Youngblood #1 is a unique exception, as it is, after all, the first comic book published by Image Comics.
If you’re familiar with the comic book industry, you’ve probably heard about how Liefeld – together with fellow comic creators Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, Marc Silvestri, Eric Larsen, Jim Valentino and (later) Whilce Portacio – left Marvel to establish Image. Frustrated that any new characters they created would never truly belong to them as long as they were with Marvel, they left the company and formed Image Comics in 1992.
Initially, Image Comics was a coalition of six studios owned by each of the partners (except for Portacio) – McFarlane’s Todd McFarlane Productions, Jim Lee’s WildStorm Productions, Larsen’s Highbrow Entertainment, Valentino’s Shadowline, Silvestri’s Top Cow Productions, and Liefeld’s Extreme Studios. Each studio produced titles that were published under the Image banner but was completely independent and not subject to any central editorial control, unlike at DC or Marvel.
The fledgling company’s philosophy was simple: Image would not own any creator’s work; the creator would, and no Image partner would interfere – creatively or financially – with any other partner’s work.
“Everybody who publishes through Image owns and controls his own work, just as the Image founders did when they started the company,” said Image publisher Eric Stephenson in a recent interview with The Washington Post.
The first Image comic books to arrive in stores were Liefeld’s Youngblood, Larsen’s The Savage Dragon, McFarlane’s Spawn, and Lee’s WildC.A.T.s, all of which became massive successes.
Today, Image is one of the flag-bearers for creator-owned comic books, with bestselling titles like Robert Kirkman’s Invincible and The Walking Dead, Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples’ Saga, and of course, longtime stalwarts of the company like McFarlane’s Spawn and Larsen’s Savage Dragon.
It also boasts creator-owned titles by some of the industry’s most established comic book creators, such as Rick Remender (Deadly Class, Black Science), Jonathan Hickman (The Manhattan Projects), Jeff Lemire (Descender), Matt Fraction (Casanova, Sex Criminals, ODY-C), Mark Millar (Wanted, Jupiter’s Circle), Greg Rucka (Lazarus), Nick Spencer (Morning Glories), Jason Aaron (Southern Bastards), and more.
A quarter of a century on, we can safely conclude that the “Magnificent Seven” were right in leaving Marvel. It’s thanks to their dream of having unbridled creative control and retaining ownership of their creations that we get to read countless stories that the Big Two, DC and Marvel, wouldn’t have published – their actions benefited the comics industry as a whole.
As a tribute to the company’s silver anniversary, this week we shine the spotlight on some of the Image Comics titles that helped define the company.
Spawn
When Spawn #1 was published in 1992 as one of Image’s first wave of titles, it sold over 1.7 million copies, setting a record for highest-selling debut ever for an independent title, a record it still holds today. The king of the Image-verse was spawned from McFarlane’s arachnid ambitions, and was successful enough to get its own feature film in 1997 (though it didn’t do very well). Still an ongoing series today, Spawn is currently the longest-running Image series, and is at #274 and counting.
Savage Dragon
Second only to Spawn in terms of issues published, Larsen’s brainchild is a mix of old school comic book storytelling and new world controversies. Larsen’s enthusiasm and personal attachment to the Dragon (whom he created in elementary school) made the title a very personalised journey for both creator and creation.
WildC.A.T.s
The Wildstorm universe may no longer be under Image (it was acquired by DC Comics in 1999), but Jim Lee’s X-Men equivalents – which included characters like Spartan, Zealot, Grifter, Void, Voodoo, and Maul – will forever be remembered as the original benchmark for all super teams.
It was absorbed into the main DC universe in 2011’s New 52 relaunch, but recently, the Wildstorm imprint itself was relaunched under the guidance of acclaimed writer Warren Ellis.