Thread 149139629

I feel like ridiculing and laughing about the early image comics

They were so terrible!!!!!!!

Majority of them were X-Men expys, except Savage Dragon and Spawn

>>149139629 (OP)
You are too late

>>149139665
for what?

>>149139629 (OP)
that is the most "we had the uncanny x-men and x-force at home." ever

>>149139853
every single team. has anyone counted them? Freak Force, Brigade, Wetworks, Shadowhawk, Youngblood, Wildcats, Stormwatch, Berzerkers, New Humans

Jim Lee is only good at character design when he's got an existing base to work on
Jim Lee's Maul might be one of the laziest designs he ever made. He looks like something from a "draw superheroes" book.

>>149139629 (OP)
We have worse shit right now.

>>149139892
it's basically hulk

>>149139904
Pic unrelated?

>>149139883
Shadowhawk isn't a team

>>149139819
For mocking them

>>149140039
but it's a wolverine expy

>>149140089
never too late for that

>>149140031
Pic very related.

>>149140141
no he's a batman/punisher expy

>>149141161
dude looks like Wolverine though
>>149139998
>>149139853
I suspect most of them were made up from Marvel sketches they had around that they reworked into OCs

>>149139904
100%

>>149139629 (OP)
>things are worse now than they've ever been
>let's ridicule comics from 30 years ago instead
Even the worst of the early Image books were more entertaining than most of Marvel and DC's output now, OP. No heroine in cape comics today is even allowed to be as hot as Diva was back in early Stormwatch, too.

>>149139883
They're clearly not all X-Men knockoffs, though it's a fair accusation for Wildcats and Cyberforce.

Youngblood was Avengers (though half the team originated as a pitch for a Titans spinoff book), Berzerkers was Forever People.

Shadowhawk isn't a team, and he's a Batman knockoff.

The basic premise for each of Freak Force, Brigade and Wetworks don't have an obvious parallel to any Marvel or DC team book, and outside of Freak Force having two character designs recycled from Larsen's failed X-Factor pitch, most of the characters aren't obviously X-Men-derivative over and above any other superhero team book.

By 'New Humans' I assume you meant New Men, which was Extreme Studios version of X-Men, but initially had much more in common with teen team books like Generation X and Gen 13.

>>149143003
This

>>149139629 (OP)
I've seen worse.

>>149139629 (OP)
i swear valiants earlier stuff was somehow more 90s extreeeeeeeme

>>149139629 (OP)
I liked them unironically. High energy as fuck, and WildStorm had solid world building. Lots of fun to collect and read.

>>149145246
Valiant always looked corny. It felt like they were trying to be Image without realizing what made it cool. Colors also looked cheap and washed out.

>>149145392
well yeah anon thats the point of the thread lol

>>149145423
But it didn't feel legit extreme. It was more like trying to ride the coattails without really getting the style. Like when older artists at Marvel and DC would try to imitate those artists and not feel right

>>149139904
pic unrelated btw

I feel like there was a lot of black ops wet works teams back then

Here's the thing I want to give a lot of image and the 90s credit for as a whole, While you can certainly levy A LOT of criticism towards them, and while a lot of it would be valid, they always had this energy where they were coming in swinging like this was all gonna be the coolest shit ever. Was it? Probably not. But they were trying to be. They had moxi. And they at least wanted to make comic books. You look at creators now and they're either embarrassed of the material or just using it is a stepping stone for a potential netflix deal. So Cyberforce, Young Blood, Wildcats? They all get a fuck yeah! from me.

>>149145392
>It felt like they were trying to be Image without realizing what made it cool
qrd? I didnt get into Image until Invincible started so I didnt follow them in the 90s (nor Valiant for that reason)

>>149146623
I already said it's very related.

>>149145392
>It felt like they were trying to be Image without realizing what made it cool.

They predated the formation of Image by about a year

>>149139904
I have to agree with you.

>>149139629 (OP)
"Nigger" - Anon, 2025

>>149139641
>Savage Dragon

That was the worst of them all by far.

>>149139892
>Jim Lee is only good at character design

This is the falsest sentence ever typed.

>>149147765
Not really. The only people who think that are just assmad about whatever outrageous thing Larsen says or does in the last ten years

>>149139629 (OP)
>big lunk guy
>cable guy with box guns
>stern pretty boy with cyclops hair
>flying witch psi chick
>masked guy who is like snake eyes or diehard
it was derivative and by the time I realized image wasnt in it to make long standing properties I stopped giving a fuck. they didnt even keep their main books out in an orderly fashion, there was no way Id invest in a NEW SERIES XNJCFJASWKL again. it was like when sega released too many new consoles and add ons, it tainted their company

>>149145392
>>149145545
they all looked, and had the pacing of sleazy 70s comics but set in the 90s, replete with xtreme stories and characters.

>>149146949
yeah they cornered the market on cool. derivative, but cool nonetheless. that artstyle was money and drove kids into buying comics. bright colors, tough looking guys and hot babes. claws, guns, grit. its better than todays stale newspaper comic strip style theyre using, and better than most manga.

I keep forgetting Gen13 isn't an Image property

>>149147807
It's easy to look at this in cynical hindsight now or even understand the views of the older generation who knew the score better but for a younger reader just starting their comic collecting life it was easy to get caught up in the hype. This was, at least as we knew, something new and shining and perhaps more importantly not our grandads superhero. And I don't mean that in the marketing slang sense but yeah when you have the launch of a new line of books on the ground floor thats all yours? It's exciting.

>>149147830
It KIND OF is. In a way. Top Cow was kind of a separate label under the Image one. Sort of like Vertigo. At least as I understand it.

Was their any Kino to come out of this era of image?

>>149148047
yeah I remember scouring for Spawn #1 and it being sold out. I wanted to get in on the ground floor too, but I still wasnt completely sold on them, I stuck with my marvel and few DC characters while eyeing image from afar. I bought a few, my friends did too but aside from the cool art you could see these were knock off characters. I think when pitt, and later union came out, and when shadowhawk was on its fifth gimmicked cover, I saw the grift too clearly. too much in terms of issues 1s and not enough steady output for everything else. friends were buying them but I thought, lol if everyone was buying, how were these going to be valuable in the future? I wish the market didnt tank in the 90s, but it was a bubble waiting to burst

>>149148173
There was a pretty good Spawn movie and an ok but dragging cartoon. Too much of both was about Spawn moping in an Alley.

>>149148508
>I wish the market didnt tank in the 90s, but it was a bubble waiting to burst
qrd?

>>149148617
marvel went bankrupt, dc had their moment with batman and superman 'dying,' then fell off a cliff, image ruined comics by making everything about well drawn edgy caricatures but failing to live up their promise, valiant was always overpriced and goes away, then everything turns into consolidated crap with the first signs of digital art creeping in. comics werent found in your local stop n go or rite aid. the movies flopped because none of them could keep the level of batman 89 and we got increasingly disappointing films and properties on the silver screen. with comics, it collapsed because it couldnt sustian its growth, it went from newstands, the schoolyard, television coverage and new comics stores opening, to losing all of that. Im of the belief that a lot of that had to do with the increasing costs of comics, how they ditched the cheaper paper in favor of the more expensive paper. even comic cards came and went. the cartoons came and went. everyone had their moment and then it just fell off. speculative collectors overbought and tried to oversell their stock, while the kids missed out on comics they wanted. it really felt like everyone in the comic companies started to go in for the quick grab due to all the competition. crappy rebrands, false deaths, bringing back old creative teams who didnt have it anymore, the star artists getting LAZY, theres more to it but others could explain it better.

>>149147775
Wrong.

>>149148678
You're wrong again

>>149147830
>>149148074
Almost everything Image makes are creator own, so technically, nothing is an Image property.

But Gen 13 was an Image published book, same as Spawn, WildCATS, Prophet, Youngblood, Shadowhawk, Savage Dragon, Bone, Groo, Invincible, Walking Dead, and many others.

Jim Lee sold separated his work from Image when he sold his IPs to DC in the 00s.

>>149148173
1963 was the best EARLY Image and it wasn't even that good.

>>149148617
Well, a lot of shit happened, but basically people cottoned on that those comics weren't gonna pay for college. This wouldn't be so bad in itself really except Marvel was buying up trading card companies and toy manufacturers left and right and when the crash hit they couldn't pay their debts. They sold some film rights and here we are.

>>149145392
Valiant was before Image, dumbass.

>>149147807
Objectively false. Image tanked after the speculators left. Spawn was the exception because it was the ONLY one that had actually cool designs.

>>149148555
the spawn movie was trash

>>149147807
>that artstyle was money and drove kids into buying comics
>>149148772
>Objectively false.
Im objectively right. image sold like gangbusters because of the art style. speculators leaving doesnt change that fact

>>149148688
False.

>>149148664
>how they ditched the cheaper paper in favor of the more expensive paper
people downplay this but it had a greater effect than they realize. in pursuit of superficial quality they did more damage than good

>>149148692
pretty sure DC owns all WildStorm properties right now including Gen13

>>149148664
>image ruined comics by making everything about well drawn

The Image guys couldn't even draw basic perspective. They were terrible, regardless of your personal taste.

>>149148692
>Almost everything Image makes are creator own, so technically, nothing is an Image property.

This is less than 100% true.

>>149148786
Art style was still there after the early issues. The sales were not. NO ONE CARED ABOUT IMAGE'S COMICS. NO ONE WAS EVEN READING THEN. IF NOT FOR THE SPECULATION CRAZE THEN EVERY BOOK EXCEPT SPAWN WOULD HAVE FLOPPED.

>>149149005
it really did. it made me as a kid not able to get all the comics I used to. that means less money for more creative teams. also I used to pick them up at random when I was at corner stores, book stores, pharmacies, etc. they were CHEAP. that comic rack meant a lot. getting rid of it was weak. way to go, comic industry
>>149149081
>They were terrible, regardless of your personal taste.
it sold well and people liked it. so it was a success, regardless of your personal taste
>>149149087
youre exaggerating. image had a ton of early success with many titles. in fact, they continued to do well after that initial run. they also did so well that theyre still around. funny, huh? ha ha funny, in fact.

>>149149081
Todd couldn't even get basic anatomy right when drawing Spider-Man, but it didn't matter because he made him look fucking cool while swinging. appeal matters more than accuracy

>>149149380
It was widely hated and outside of the early speculator boosted issues it actually sold quite poorly. Spawn was the exception.

>>149149380
>>149149479
And yet those guys presided over the industry crash.

>>149145392
>>149147492
>>149145545
Valiant was a universe created from combining some licensed 1950s legacy characters (Turok Dinosaur Hunter, Solar Man of the Atom and Magnus Robot Hunter) plus their own OC characters, some of whom are obvious homages (XO manowar is like iron man + Thor, Harbingers is like Xmen but Professor X is an evil CEO, Rai is like Frank Miller's Ronin, Bloodshot is every 90s edgy character with a healing factor). Some of the things looked derivative but the strong editorial and continuity of stories they had at the beginning made it feel like a consistent universe with a history, and they actually became a strong #3 in sales for a while.

>>149148772
Spawn survived because Todd was smart enough to outsource the writing and art to other guys

>>149145545
this is extremely based and if you think its something worth mocking, i think you're looking at *comic books* with the wrong eye

>>149149083
So what's an Image property?
Spawn, because Todd is so ingrained with the company? Because i don't think even that is Image's.

I'm sure there's some SHARED/whollyowned IPs in Image, hence "almost everything", but i really can't think of anything.

>>149149690
Then they forced Shooter out, and Valiant has been seven kinds of shit ever since.

>lets ridicule the 90s comics lol

do you really think today's comics are better?

you wish today's comic creators brought this much energy and enthusiasm to their work. you wish comic artists in america had as much leverage as the image crew.

don't forget: PAD and Mark Waid hit their strides in writing b/c they were bouncing off/reacting to the work the early image guys were bringing to comics.
joe mad, JSC, todd nuack, humberto ramos, bachalo all blossomed because of the early image guys paved the way.
even things like The Maxx and The Tick and Scud got to breach the mainstream because of the early image guys generated so much hype and sales. a rising tide lifts all boats

>>149139629 (OP)
That cover is still cool af. stfu

>>149150298
NTA but the legal battle between McFarlane and Gaiman over Angela is one example of it not being strictly true. Image's whole thing was that if you create something, it's yours, but Gaiman creates Angela whilst doing some guest writing for Spawn and then McFarlane claims Angela is his because Spawn is his. Thought I guess that's less to do with Image as a business and more to do with Todd being a scumbag.

>>149150341
it's stupid because the whole reason Image was founded was because every creator owned their runs and couldnt interfere or influence another creator's runs. if Gaiman was gonna break that by doing "guest writing" then he shouldnt try and claim ownership of her again. it's also Image's fault for defining boundaries so poorly in cases like this

>>149139629 (OP)
It's surreal these are technically DC characters now.

>>149150909
why did Marvel never try buying up smaller imprints and comic publishers the same way DC did?

>>149151322
They did though. Look at Malibu. The thing is, they bought those small imprints to absorb more of the market, not to keep them alive.
DC was buying up other competitors to try and grow their own market share and edge others out of the market. But Marvel managed to be successful in spite of having a smaller line initially( and limited by sharing a DC owned distributor), by the time they left that, they had grown enough titles to not really need to buy anyone else up.
The other thing is a lot of those DC purchases were facilitated by having editors who used to work at other companies. Dick Giordano handled the Charlton superhero line, so he helped push DC into absorbing them when he was at DC, for example.

>>149150909
This late 90s must be weird in comicbooks. I just read early 90s stuff a few years ago.

>>149147544
>>149148758
But not before the Image creators were working at Marvel and becoming superstars. Granted early Valiant comics didn’t look much like them, but by the time characters like bloodshot and Ninjak go full swing, Image existed.

>>149150270
It just looks ugly and unappealing. Poses look boring, linework looks technically fine but stiff. Colors just look sickly and weak.
Yes the subject matter is pretty wild and cool, but the art isn't selling it to me as cool. Meanwhile look at how
>>149146949
>>149139629 (OP)
has these big, bold, wildly posed figures just jumping at the viewer. It may be less technically sound, but it just looks more unique.
I love extreme, exaggerated art, and that Valiant cover is
Simon Bisley is in the upper echelon of how wild and extreme you can go. His characters can look ugly, but there's an appeal to how he draws them. his style is unique but cool.

>>149147772
>This is the falsest sentence ever typed.
Cause you didn't read the full sentence, silly.
If you give Jim Lee an existing design, like Cyclops, or this Paul Smith(or BWS?) Rogue design, he can tweak it and come out with something pretty cool that emboldens the existing costume.
But if left to make a character from scratch, he makes some pretty bland and forgettable ones.
Though I admit that's more in the past- his New 52 redesigns really weren't anywhere close to his X-men redesigns.
That's not speaking to his skills as an illustrator, just more on his character design.

>>149150341
>>149150811
The whole thing about. McFarlane doing the same thing to Gaiman that he got done to him by Marvel is the stupidest fucking gotcha attempt people try to pull.
Gaiman had a handshake deal, was paid upfront more than most creators EVER got in payment+royalties for a derivative character. His big issue was not getting regular payments for Angela toy variants, and Todd would've likely been happy to pay him that on request.
Alan Moore was perfectly fine with McFarlane's deals and payments, and he's one of the most hardline strict with how his payments and contracts are handled
Angela and the others were always a matter of co-ownership, since Todd designed them anyway.

>>149147777
To be brutally honest, it was mostly the trend of ripping off the X-Men what never took off (I know not all these examples are Image, but is still part of the point), one or two teams COULD had worked, is hilarious how barely legally disntinct Cyber Force was, but still, there was the tamplate. But many of these books came from artist who drawed for X-Men rather than WRITH for X-Men, so even if they could come with a decent design here on there, writing about it was another thing. They would had been better off focusing in one or two characters, rather than trying to make a full team compelling. Sticking by Cyberforce here, yeah sure I still could get buy you Ripclaw, Velocity and even Striker (I like Cyblade, but just for how hilariously blatant of a rip off of Psylocke she is). But the Book then has to force a "Cyclops like Leader" with Heatwave just because you "need" a straight forward leader (even if they clearly wanted Striker to fill the role) and Impact is there just cause you also "need" a Big guy. Similar issues plague all these books, like how in Youngblood, even if Badrock is another blatant rip off, at least he got enough personality to get some use out of him in other books for a little while.

Is no wonder that after a while, the series that actually stoock around where Spawn, Savage Dragon, and eventually Witchblade. They are all flaw as hell (like, really, really flaw specially early on their runs for some), but having a more concrete focus on a single character and what that character is about, made for a far more solid foundation.

>>149151322

This >>149151534 But also, lets not forget that Marvel was a little to busy going bankrupt on the 90s

>>149139904
Cope and seeth

>>149148173
Badrock/Violator
Pretty much all of Shadowhawk.
1963
Liefeld kino was all published under Maximum Press, with Image dollars.

>>149148173
If you take it as it is, that being, kind of a joke take on comics in general, Savage Dragon can be rather fun. Again, if you try to take it remotely seriously, you are doing it wrong. The biggest issue with Dragon is that, though is fine as satire, over the top comic... is also a joke that probably didn't need a 200 issues and still going, run.

And hey, Spawn may be insuferably moppy during this age, most issues being him crying on the alleys. But is also true to that all the bases of what some (like me) still like about Spawn, all came to be during this era. Todd knew what the character and settign was about... he just dragged the hell out of it from issue 1.

>>149139629 (OP)
Linkara, why are you posting here?
>>149145392
You do realize Valiant colors are the raw colors printed as and not processed that's how colors look before getting processed back then, I think they look pretty good on some titles but yeah Valiant basically printed raw color guides as the colors.

>>149152679
I thin the fact that Moore is perfectly okay with his Violator mini series being reprinted and sold to this day, with his name STILL attached, speaks volumes as it is. We are talking the man who refuse to let his name be on any reprint of Excalibur/Captain Britian out of his partners on the book being screw over by Marvel, here.
https://imagecomics.com/comics/releases/spawn-violator-tp-vol-1

>>149153229
Don't forget Morrison characters are still used in Spawn and he almost came back for a run.
https://bleedingcool.com/comics/grant-morrison-plans-todd-mcfarlane-spawn/
Gaiman just a petty little bitch.

>>149153164
I like Savage Dragon up to issue 100. If falls apart really fast. The satire and joke stuff was in there, but I never felt like it really overshadowed the story until later. I have most of the trades of the later stuff and they are tough going, with an occasional flash if what the comic used to be.

>>149153211
>You do realize Valiant colors are the raw colors printed as and not processed that's how colors look before getting processed back then,
Yes, and it was a bad decision. You ask a lot of
It had great intentions, BWS was art directing and his own work coloring that way was beautiful, but it didn't fit most of that art of the direction they were heading in. And immediately gave them an older, dated feel.

>>149151538
it's a colorful mess

>>149147772
maybe because you deleted half the fucking sentence retard

>>149153229
Gaiman may be the single most coddled creator to ever have worked in comics. He got one of the sweetest deals from DC ANYONE has ever gotten.
Him disliking Sam Keith's art for Sandman meant Keith had to redraw the whole thing and lead to him having self-confidence issues that would plague him for the rest of him career.
Before this whole rape thing went down, he could have guaranteed work from the Big Two anytime he wanted.

>>149154749
I'll never forgive Karen Burger and Gayman for treating Keith like they did.

>>149154301
Ninjak was an great looking book when Joe Quesada drew it and the colors looked good.

>>149151534
>They did though. Look at Malibu.
Malibu is the only smaller publisher Marvel has ever bought, and as you mention, it was solely because of the market share tied to that very specific situation. It's not really accurate to say Marvel have tried buying up smaller imprints.

"pop quiz, hotshot.", which one of these titles where the first to show titties... (this is not a legitimate quiz, as I don't know the answer.)

>>149155113
Savage Dragon, probably

>>149152872
just looking at those covers you can see the life in them. its a pity that they were still derivative an inconsistent. if only the characters had as much personality in their writing that they had in their art style. if the image guys swallowed their pride and got writers to help them flesh out and write a coherent story with a bigger picture outlined, they could have done a lot more. on top of that, get guys to help out the artwork. get things out quicker. instead like you said, these guys were so bitter at marvel they went 'oh yeah? I cant do what I want with x-men and spiderman? Ill make my own characters!' and then proceeded to rip marvel and dc. some direction in terms of writers could have made the moment last

>>149154851
fucking joe quesadilla. if only he stuck to illustrating and inking. fucking bitch

>>149154301
the washed out look works for fantasy and detailed artists like BWS, and even retro styled characters like solar. but seeing HARDCORPS, Harbringer and Bloodshot look like stale 70s comics wasnt working for them too long in the 90s. the order of the day was bright superhero comics with extensive lines and manga influences.

>>149154749
>lead to him having self-confidence issues that would plague him for the rest of him career.
Boohoo hoo

>>149152872

>To be brutally honest, it was mostly the trend of ripping off the X-Men what never took off (I know not all these examples are Image, but is still part of the point),

Ex-Mutants was supposed to take place in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by mutants. Five mutants were transformed back into humans to fight against evil mutants. So the idea was there to distinguish itself from everything else, but then things got kind of crazy when Malibu decided to give them powers and integrate the series with Protectors and Dinosaurs For Hire, which aren't really compatible. Imagine trying to make a shared universe of I Am Legend, The Ultimates, and Spaceballs and that's what that merging almost feels like.

>>149155933
yeah we lost a chance at more work from an interesting and unique creator. It's a sad thing.

>>149145392
What made Valiant great is they had, in the beginning, a razor tight to the minute continuity which made following all the books fun.
>>149147830
It is. Each creator at Image owns their own characters, when Jim Lee left Image he took his characters with him and DC published his books under Wildstorm for a while before DC outright bought line and lazily integrated them into DC Universe
>>149148074
Top Cow was Mark Silvestri's publishing house after he left Image, he would also self publish but eventually went back to Image to run the business side that he still does today with Larsen, Kirkman, McFarlane and Valentino

>>149155819
I get what you're saying, but on the other hand I do appreciate just getting the artist's creative vision, completely unfiltered by someone else. We saw what happened later on when they started hiring outside writers, including big name ones for credibility. Some actually cared about what they were doing, but some of them were just doing it for the money, and it was a job they didn't really care about. Others were literally taking the Image guys' money to dump on their creations, or push their own OCs instead.

Artist-driven comics were a lot less likely to be a vehicle for The Message than writer-driven comics, too. It happened occasionally, but not as often, and the specific messages didn't tend to be as cringe. Artists didn't seem to be as obsessed with that stuff as a lot of cape comics writers are.

>>149152872
Cyberforce was literally using the term 'mutants', and in the exact same way as Marvel. To be fair, Silvestri has admitted that the book started life as an X-Men spinoff he was trying to pitch to editorial, just before he found out that the other star artists were planning to leave and form Image, and some of them were trying to get his attention and stop him giving the book away to Marvel.

And let's be honest, the 'team build' of "leader guy, big strong guy, hot babe, melee guy, gun guy, etc isn't uniquely X-Men. It was the most popular team book of the time, but most other team books also used some variation of those archetypes already as well.

>>149152008
>Though I admit that's more in the past- his New 52 redesigns really weren't anywhere close to his X-men redesigns.
The 90s aesthetic that he was good at was 20 years in the past by then, and the superhero costume aesthetic of the time when New 52 started was 'realistic tacticool', and overdesigned with too much detail. If he'd come up with some 90s looking stuff that were actually good designs they would have been rejected for looking dated, so short of coming up with an entire new superhero costume aesthetic on the spot and getting everyone to like and embrace it, he had to work within the style of the time, which was so bland anyone would've struggled to come up with something exciting that visually revitalized those characters, and it was well outside his own wheelhouse. I'm not sure many people in the industry would've done well with the task of doing the New 52 designs.

>>149153309
sincere action stories that take themselves seriously. What's not to like?

>>149157215
True in both accounts. My point was that it wouldn't had bee too difficult to workout Cyberforce into a more unique team and concept, just by foccusing more on the Cyberpunk aspects of the setting. I focussed most of them as an example as they are the group I'm most familiar with. And yeah, I know the team build you see in these covers isn't unique to the X-Men, but the comparison is still near impossible to ignore with some of them. And still, I feel that sticking to hard to that team compossition was the biggest flaw these books had from the getgo. I may only be familiar with Cyberforce propper, but gathering what I know of say, Younblood and Wild Cats, you can clearly tell each writer had those two to three characters they REALLY wanted to write about, but they then fill their team with a lot of characters they barely gave a second thought just because "they have to fill the X role" (and hopes of merchandising of course). No joke, just on Cyberforce, and base only on the original Mini Series, you cut ONLY Heatwave to smige a little more of time for Striker's and Velocity plots, and that story can only benefit, as they were the characters with more focus (on that run), yet still competing for screentime with everyone else. Also, no hate, is not like I readed much pass the mini series, but I insist, at the time if given to choice betweet legally dinstinc Wolverine, Psylocke or a Cyclops without any of the previous decades of attachement... yeah, Teemu Cyclops will loss everytime. I don't have anything to say about Impact, other than... yeah, I guess filling the role of the big Brucer is still more important than a "second milk toast" leader (as I insist, the book already gave Striker that leading vibes)

>>149150341
I'm confused. I was saying that there is no real Image property, because it's all owned by their creators. IE, Todd owns everything from his Spawn comics. Jim Lee own/ed/ everything in his Homage/Wildstorm comics. Rob Liefeld own/ed/ everything in his Extreme STudios Comics. Marc Silvestri owned everything in his Top Cow comics.
Obviously, there's a ton of other artists and writers who created shit for these studios, but i think it was understood that the owners for these studios also owned everything that was created FOR them. Even the way the lawsuit worked for Gaiman proves that (through co-ownership).

But this is besides the point, which is, nothing is actually a Image property (unless there's some shared character or something fell through a crack). Image is just a publisher. Like how Bantam prints the Game of Throne books, but George R R Martin has ownership of it.

Also, since Gaiman's lawsuit was with McFarlane, this also shows that Image is legally separate from the studios.

>>149149015
Yes, Jim Lee sold his Wildstorm studios to DC in the early 00s.... and after looking it up, that actually happened in the 90s. Man, the 90s were rough for comics.

>>149157592
the writing not being as good as their work with writers at Marvel, for one.

>>149157126
>Artists didn't seem to be as obsessed with that stuff as a lot of cape comics writers are.
Neal Adams says hi

>>149157925
Makes you think, considering how explosive their collective debut was, how big Image could had been today, if Todd would had pouch some actual writters with him, instead of just the artists. Like, I know that's what they did after the fact, but I mean, having them on the project from the getgo.

>>149157817
Fair points. Silvestri really seemed to like Ripclaw, but there's a reason Stryker and Velocity seemed to be the most popular Cyberforce characters, they weren't as obviously derivative of an X-Men member in appearance AND powers. Stryker does have Cable vibes in being a cyborg gun guy, but he's visually distinct from Cable, and Cable wasn't part of the main X-Men team anyway.

>>149157834
I don't remember how it worked with Wildstorm and Top Cow, but Extreme did credit non-Liefeld creations as being the property of whoever else did create them. This is how during the whole mess the Youngblood rights got into, Joe Casey has been able to do stuff with some of the Extreme characters that Rob didn't create or own, first with a mini for Dutch from Team Youngblood, and now the Blood Squad 7 book is intentionally Fake Youngblood, but uses legacy versions of characters from Infiniti.

>>149157974
Cherry-picking exceptions to a rule is always a dick move, anon. You're better than that.

>>149157992
They could've had a bunch of workhorse, solid writers back then, they just had terrible attitudes about working with writers, or the importance of writers. There were far more solid writer at the time than now.
Brandon Choi was one of Jim Lee's friends and he got to write books with no prior experience because the art was their priority

>>149158065
citing the Image guys in general is cherry picking because they're pretty far-removed from typical artists who were creating their own work. They were barely writers for one.
the indie scene is FULL of writer/artists who are incredibly opinionated.

>>149155819
>>149157817
the problem is, to work with good writers, you have to accept that you can't draw a page full of pinups and poses to get the maximum possible resale value on original art.
That's not what the Image guys were trying to do. They didn't want to draw boring, mundane, everyday stuff that carries a story. They wanted to go 100% on cool pages.

>>149158032
I think the non-Liefeld stuff happened after he left Image. So Liefeld was acting as the publisher for those comics.
But you're talking about Dutch stuff, so I'm not really sure now.

Also, the Youngblood mess is just from Liefeld partnering up/selling his shit.

And now that you bring it up, Whilce Portacio's Wetwork comics were done under Wildstorm/Homage, and i think they're owned by Whilice.

>>149158157
The indie scene isn't really that relevant to a conversation to superhero comics and early Image, and the types of artists who worked on them. The indie scene of the time may well have been full of writer-artists that were literal globohomo communists of color, but most of them wouldn't be working on Image books or Big 2 cape books. The Image guys weren't really outside of the norm for superhero comic artists who tried their hand at writing being generally less prone to using their comics as a soapbox for their views on social and political issues than writers are. Guys like Neal Adams and Frank Miller are the outliers, not the norm.

>>149158219
Not just that, "good" writers or "bad" writers or anywhere in between, they'd still be drawing someone else's story, still doing what someone else told them to do, defeating the whole point of leaving Marvel to go do their own thing. Even when their own thing was derivative versions of existing superheroes, it was still THEIRS, and nobody else was telling them what to draw.

Posting a page from Hush makes it worth pointing out a lot of star artists LOVE working with Loeb because he actually asks them who and what they want to draw, and he builds a story around what they want to do. It's surprising not many others seem to have learned that trick.

>>149158240
The Dutch mini and Blood Squad 7 are modern comics, anon. BS7 is currently running. Liefeld isn't involved as he doesn't own the specific Extreme characters these books have used, and Joe Casey is creating obvious expies for Liefeld characters he can't use, like Badrock, Diehard and Giger.

>>149155819
WildStorm was doing that from the beginning. They had very tight world building.

>>149145392
Valiant is the best the 90's had to offer.

>>149158219
for the money they had, they could have told the writers to fit that in. splash pages, fold outs, action scenes with minimal writing, they could have done it. the image guys were 100 % into themselves and arrogant about their input that was rejected by marvel.

>>149158433
>It's surprising not many others seem to have learned that trick.
because it becomes diminishing returns. I'm not even going to criticize Hush because that's been done to death, but his 2000's Marvel stuff was also that and none of it was any good.
Most artists would just choose to draw a lot of pinups and every big selling character they can

>>149158102
Choi was responsible for their solid and consistent world building. He was a good choice to lead, actually.

>>149146949
him and his buddy warblade were weird.

>>149158923
The 90s loved blades.

>>149158526
lol no

>>149145392
this is excellent linework, inking and coloring. this cover is awesome as fuck what are you talking about

>>149145392
looks like a cheap indie from the 70s

>>149158923
>>149158943
Honestly, I do like Ripclaw's design, her may be "the Wolverine" for Cyberforce, but is more his character than his design what makes him derivative. The thing, there is a chance that would had started this sentence with "Actually I really like Warblade..." IF I would had readed Wild C.A.T.S before Cyberforce. As to this day, still weirds me out that Lee and Silvestri were just cool with releasing virtually the same character design wise for their respective comics. On their own, either Rip Claw or Warblade could had lived as the "edgy, Wolverine like of Image" and nobody would had cared, just as nobody care about Spawn being Batman with a Symbiote. But the two of them existing together, kind of disminished their impact. Still, I do still like Ripclaw none the less... And I do preffer him over Warblade in general.

>>149159339
Purely in a design aesthetic way I'd go with Warblade over Ripclaw, but also like Killrazor, as early Image blade guys go.

Lee and Silvestri actually got a WildCATS/Cyberforce crossover out of Ripclaw and Warblade being connected, and both having the same villainess ex.

>>149159239
the characters look like KB toys bargain bin fodder.
Yes it's technically well executed. But it's also not exciting. given what it was competing against, it just didn't feel fresh or modern.

everyone likes sword girls without pants

Speaking of Valiant and Image, the illfated crossover Deathmate has such a comedy of errors behind it
> Jim Lee is friends with the owner of Valiant, decides they’d do a crossover with
>No one else on Image is on board with the idea except Rob Liefeld, Larsen outright says his reason is he thought Valiant books were awful and saw no reason to crossover with them.
>Valiant, who worked on a consistent, solid schedule, figures they can split the work with their artists
>Jim Lee and Liefeld both evidently decide they didn’t want to work with the artists they considered lesser than them at Valiant, and didn’t want to hit the deadlines valiant was expecting. and likely didn't want to share original pages with artists outside their studio. They stall and delay the work for so long Valiant's art director Bob Layton has to go to Liefeld's house and ask for the pages so he can ink them, which Liefeld tries to get out of, implicitly because he didn't want anyone from Valiant inking him.
> It messes up the solicitations to the point all hype was gone and people were left sitting on books they ordered when these were hot titles; now they're not- even allowing retailers to cut orders they were still sitting on a bunch of expensive books
I don't think Vaiant was totally innocent , I'm sure they saw hooking up with Image as a huge payday and wanted to get to work on big selling pages.And I do get wanting to be inked by specific inkers. But ultimately its a series of bad decisions stemming from Jim Lee promising more than he could deliver(which also killed the 1963 annual)
>>149149563
more so due to not producing the material the market demanded than anything else,though.

>>149160106
You know the more I hear about the industry the more it became apparent that the creators were always massive drama babies they just didn't have the platform to whine on.

>>149158923
Warblade got a lot weirder.

>>149159239
>blah blah blah fresh modern
you sound like a faggot marketing executive

>>149159699
Nemesis was more popular and she wore pants.

>>149160106
If the industry was in a place where two guys missing deadlines tanked the whole thing it was a house pf cards to begin with. The were just the last guys in a long line.

>>149160194
Peter David and Erik Larsen had a decades long feud. Each of them took shots at the other inside their comics and out. It was shamefully petty.
Their conflict is unique in one significant way, however: They buried the hatchet when, in a thoroughly unexpected move, Larsen helped David figure out how to pay his back taxes.
One day the feud was on, and then, just like that, it was over.

>>149160776
this is a happy story : }

>>149139641
what is Savage Dragon even about, I see it here and there but I never bothered to check if he was just another Hulk expy or what

>>149161481
Amnesiac dragon man become a cop to fight other freaks

so I'm kinda new to this, how exactly do imprints and other similar shit work? are they separate entities, just labels, or what? wikipedia says Jim Lee founded Wildstorm as an independent company, then that they "publish through Image Comics", then they became an IMPRINT of DC Comics, then it got shut down and folded into DC's New 52 multiverse.

>>149160776
RIP Peter David :(

>>149161481
The best way I would describe it is an R Rated take on the TMNT Cartoons. Not the comic, the cartoons. Dragon is, at face value, a Amnesiac Super Mutant, in a setting where super mutants and freaks are extremely common and causing chaos on the city. So, Dragon, having nowhere else to go, becomes a Cop to bring order to Chicago (which is indeed, infested with these "Freaks" as they are call). The short of it is that the Freaks are an full legion of C-Tiers, maybe D-Tier villains, the worst of the worst in design and powers, and yet that's the point, as they are so many of them, they do have power in numbers, and the "moster of the week" premise gets wacky as hell with the kind of freaks that can appear. Now, they are arcs, and story going on with Dragon's past, and his personal life, and it can take itself seriously, but it's surrownded by the nonsense of the whole setting, and the Freaks, but in general, is the comic is suppose to be about the Daily Life a literal Super Cop, in a world full of superpowered mutant freaks, demons, aliens, and in genereal just crazy people. As mention above, as satire, not meant to be taken seriously, is rather fun for around 100 issues, but it probably should have ended or at least rebooted itself (for real,as it had it's soft reboots in universe) a long time ago.

>>149139904
You are just salty because "muh politics"

>>149154794
What comic is thia from?

>>149162283
The Maxx #4

>>149161651
An imprint is basically a subline of a company. How it's handled can depend, sometimes for example an imprint is made to handle kid's comics, or licensed comics. In this case, Image's imprints just grouped together all the properties owned by the creators. Image published them(and even more complicated, initially through Malibu comics). The creators were free to come and go as they wanted(and conversely, they could vote others out.)

>>149162206
No, I've been reading Camp's work for some time now, admiring his early efforts and wanting to see him improve. I had kind of given up on mainstream comics until I found out about him.
I think his Ultimates run is a massive setback. The execution is so poor. There's no passion in it, not like there was in 20th Century Men, at least.
Camp's gotten lucky with Morian, Bratukhin, and Rodriguez, but unlucky with Frigeri, who's just awful.

>>149162206
there's genuine criticism to be had about the comic but most of the whining online is just "commie propaganda reeeeee"

>>149154749
>Gaiman may be the single most coddled creator to ever have worked in comics
and now we have a successor in the form of Tom King

>>149162376
so comic companies can buy imprints of other companies? considering WildStorm was "under" Image before being bought by DC

>my thread still alive
good

The biggest surprise for me ever, was to learn that Jim Lee is jewish. Jewish Asian - HOW THE FUCK DOES IT WORK?

>>149154794
>>149154749
more about Sam Keith? Give me some dirt, so I can hate Gayman even more