There’s a great thread over at Millarworld about the debt that the comic industry owes the original Image Comics founders:
Looking back on the founding members of the Image 7 it is easy to dismiss what a monumental moment it was in the medium. As a direct result of their actions creators are in a much better position financially and creatively. Despite this fact I have yet to see any of their peers or notable predecessors thank them for their boldness and courage.
What is most striking is that the most creative of the seven is the most hated. That being Rob Liefeld. Despite the jokes and the scorn his legacy is clearly established in Previews every single week.
So, just what exactly is the debt that current creators owe to the Image founders?
The thread that follows runs the gamut from “They created a viable alternative to the Big Two” to “No-one owes them any debt, they’ve all sold out,” but it’s an interesting point: The founding of Image Comics nineteen years ago – God, I’m old – was a major shift for the mainstream industry, and one for the better, but it’s one that doesn’t seem to really get the attention or respect that it deserves. Is that because we’re still too close to it, or that it gets lumped in with the rest of the 1990s craziness? Or maybe it’s just that fandom as a whole really can’t get over the fact that, of the Image Seven, only Todd McFarlane and Jim Valentino didn’t eventually go back at Marvel in one way or another.
September 21st, 2011 at 12:07 pm
Because MOST of the comics they created were shitty. I’m not trolling either. That’s why. Most of them sucked. Yeah, when we were 10, they ruled, but they actually did suck. There’s your answer.
September 21st, 2011 at 12:08 pm
Or maybe it’s because the superhero comics market is dominated, still, by work-for-hire material on corporate-owned properties. The Image founders had very little effect on the overall market from that perspective.
SRS
September 21st, 2011 at 12:16 pm
19 yrs?!! Don’t think I can remeber that far back. I think the reason for their lack of impact was simply that the market were not ready for them. They had not been around long enough to truly establish a strong fan base and there wasn’t any newsarama and the likes to help,them build up the hype. Wrong timing.
September 21st, 2011 at 12:31 pm
I’ll freely admit that Liefeld gets an inordinate amount of grief from the customers in my shop, but their criticism is not without merit. Yes, Liefeld was part of a sea change in comics, but when it comes to his actual work the criticisms concerning his lack of knowledge of anatomy (Captain America anyone?) as well as his supposed inability to draw feet are not without merit(okay, the feet thing is just fun to joke about). Then a few years ago he was at Baltimore Comic-Con charging people $20 to sign the first appearance of Deadpool (but not for any other issues). It came across as a real jerk move and it made the rounds of our shop as well as the web boards.
When it comes to McFarlane, he too should be considered a groundbreaking talent, but he seemed to retreat into his business and was no longer a true creative force in the same way he had been. Then there was the kerfluffel over his differences with Neil Gaiman over some property rights. He came out of that situation with a whole dozen eggs on his face and a reputation for being a real jerk.
And when you look at the Image 7 those are really the only two who have courted actual scorn. And I would argue that it has everything to do with, not only the talent of the other 5, but their attitudes as well.
Look at people like Jimmy Palmiotti, Amanda Connor, Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, J. Scott Campbell, Jeff Smith, Todd Dezago and others like them who are amazing ambassadors for the comics industry. I am more likely to push a book for an author or artist who not only loves their work, but appreciates the fans who make that work possible by buying it. This is a small enough industry that when you make an @$$ of yourself, people will know about it.
Should we appreciate what the Image 7 did to shake up the comics world? Absolutely. Should we deify them or raise them up on a pedestal, exempting them from legitimate criticism? Eh, not so much.
September 21st, 2011 at 1:04 pm
@ben – yes – 100% agree. i just cleaned out my old collection and at least50% of everything i bought at age 10 was terrible image shit. worse than marvel’s worst shit. which was pretty shitty.
the image 7 did a really good job at getting more money for the image 7. they opened some doors for creator owned work but so did dark horse, eclipse, comico, etc. at least most of the stuff put out by those companies wasn’t abominable tripe with foil embossed chromium covers.
September 21st, 2011 at 1:16 pm
I think the main issue is that they didn’t have a “Stan Lee”-type guy who was widely loved to be the face of Image. If they had formed earlier and gotten Kirby to be the “Chairman Emeritus” then they
The whole “issue #2 comes out a year after #1″ and the “that Image guy looks remarkably like the Hulk/Woverine/Cable/Superman” didn’t help either. I figure Death of Superman and X-men #1 were bigger ’90′s excess than anything Image did, but they weren’t innocent of that type of activity either.
September 22nd, 2011 at 8:30 am
You know, Rob, for all of his fan-hate is actually a nice guy who tolerates a lot of crap. Todd is a businessman who has worked hard and prospered.
All of the Image 7 are great talents who have really helped the industry with the exception of Jim Valentino.
Ask anyone who has worked with him or for him; people like Kris Simon (who wasn’t paid toward the end of her run with ShadyLine) or Dwight MacPherson who never saw a dime off the initial sales of of his work published by ShadyLine. He’s such a shady @ss em effer that the other Image 7 guys will tell you (behind his back, of course) to NOT SUBMIT YOUR WORK to Shadowline if you want it to succeed and to get paid anything! Hell, he basically hijacked Howard Wong’s story and wrote himself into the credits!
I’ve personally had at least two different Image 7 guys say to me, “Just ignore Jim, everyone else does…”
It’s even been whispered that he was pushed out of Image Proper because he was caught embezzeling!
Who cares if a dude can’t draw feet?! This SOB is a straight up criminal and Rob Liefeld could out-draw him blind-folded with his hands wrapped in duct tape.
Youngblood > ShadowHawk