Back in 1992, seven of
Marvel Comics' most
popular artists --
Todd McFarlane,
Jim Lee,
Rob Liefeld,
Erik Larsen,
Marc Silvestri,
Jim Valentino, and
Whilce Portacio -- were unhappy with the way the
House of Ideas was treating them, so they quit and formed their own company. Image proved to be massively popular right off the bat, despite
prima donna antics, substandard stories, and
comically
late comics (Portacio's first Image book didn't ship 'til
21 months after it had originally been scheduled). Basically, it was the early
'90s, and all comics fans cared about was pretty,
pretty art -- and Image
always delivered on the
art.
Most Image comics were
triumphs of
style over substance. They nearly always looked very
glossy, but read like they were written by
crackheads. For every work of
genius like "
Savage Dragon" or "
The Maxx," Image produced
reams and reams of
crap like "
Spawn," "
Wild C.A.T.s," "
Youngblood," and "
Cyberforce." But the
rewards for being part of Image outweighed the
critical scorn -- the Image founders were featured in
Levi's commercials, appeared on
MTV, hung out with
models, drove expensive
sports cars, and made
money like no one in comics had
ever made money.
The
happy times didn't last forever, of course. The
comics biz, starved for real
talent and
bloated with
speculators hoping to make their next million by collecting comics, went
bust; Portacio
vanished fast; Silvestri left the company because of a feud with Liefeld (he later came back); Lee sold out to
DC when times got tough; Liefeld was
fired when the other
founders finally realized he was a talentless hack; and McFarlane has been sued by
Neil Gaiman and
Alan Moore for a number of
shady business practices.
But Image is still publishing, and in recent years, they've improved a
lot. They're still an
artist-oriented publisher, but they've begun to change their
focus toward better quality. They've released good stuff like "
Lazarus Churchyard," "
Powers," "
The Red Star," "
Invincible," "
The Walking Dead," "
Radiant Black," and many others. Used to be, buying an Image comic book marked you as someone who liked
pretty pictures and
ridiculously busty heroines; nowadays, you can buy an Image comic book
almost without
shame...