Historical Significance of Image Comics?
Hey everybody,
San Diego certainly was a convention about comic books, am I right? I happened to attend the Image comics founders panel, which featured all seven of the gentlemen who created Image comics back in the day: Erik Larsen, Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane, Whilce Portacio, Marc Silvestri, and Jim Valentino. They hadn't all been together in 15 years so the crowd was pretty charged up to see what the founders had to say about Image, then and now. The tone was predictably fratty, with Todd McFarlane especially, talking about the good old days as if it were an especially radical pledge season.
But they brought up a few interesting points: Image came about at a time when the comic book industry was in a real state of flux. They all jumped off of Marvel, bucked the system and created a company where the talent came first. On the panel, they paid a lot of lip service to the idea that Image made the industry what it is today. What do you think? how did they change comics? How would the industry be different if Image had never come about?
-Justin
With any revolution, there were positives and negatives, but I'll always have to think that the influx of new talent, concept of creator owned mainstream material, and advances in production values brought by Image Comics outweighs the detriments brought about by the perpetual delays and plethora of garbage stories that were published.
Hi I'm WIDO from Puerto Rico. PulpSecret RULZ!!!
Well I think that Image comics gave the comic book industry a really good boost back in the 90's. But everything went down when they started to care more for the money instead of the good work and care for what the fans really wanted (great stories and art work). There is no doubt that Image is part of the comic book history and they stood up to the big companies and succeeded but I think the greed for money made them forget why they got together in the first place.
-WIDO
I think most of the Image guys had swelled heads, and probably did as much harm as good to the industry. Most were incapable of doing the art for a monthly book once they were in a self regulated, boss-free environment. Wilce Portacio, total failure. Marc Silvestri, what did he do, maybe 12 to 15 issues of cyberforce, then got booted out of Image? Jim Valentino, same story 18 issues and then is relegated to mediocre manager. McFarlane, loses insterest like the others after a couple dozen issues and turns over art to someone else and buys a hockey team...Liefeld and Lee turned out sporadic work at best, and sold themselves back to DC and Marvel for mini series and solo shots rather than advance their own company. Image could have been something great, but these guys lacked the work ethic and self control to pull it off.
for those who missed it, the panel from San Diego was posted on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/SwiftGraphics
hands down best panel of the con.
PRO: use of computers
CON: bad, really bad, stories
I got about halfway thru part two of seven before todd mcfarlanes massive ego overloaded my hard drive and forced me to leave. The fact that this was videotaped on some guys handycam who was using the boom mic to blow his nose onto didnt help much either.