How did they go from a collection of edgelord shit to the best publisher in business...

How did they go from a collection of edgelord shit to the best publisher in business? What are you favorite finished and ongoing series?

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fantagraphics.com/series/hiphopfamilytree/
fantagraphics.com/amsterdam/
fantagraphics.com/patience/
fantagraphics.com/boysclub/
tcj.com/a-modest-proposal-more-crap-is-what-we-need/
drew-moss.tumblr.com/
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

Have read at least 4 issues of all of the following, but read up to the current issue of most of them:
Alex + Ada
Black Science
Chew
Invincible
The Manhattan Projects
The Maxx
Nailbiter
Rat Queens
Saga
Sex Criminals
Spawn

Nailbiter has been the most disappointing for me so far. Started out really strong, but now the pacing is all over the place, characterization is garbage, it reads more like bad fanfiction than an Image comic.

What do you guys think?

They were founded in the 90's, which we all know was edgelord central.

>best publisher in the business

good
fucking
joke

Image is literally just a receptacle for failed TV pilot scripts and failed movie scripts. That's it. Pretty much everything they have ends up running out of steam within 10 issues and mindlessly trudging along if it continues past that point.

(This isn't to say that there's nothing good. Just that, if you're talking about Image as a *brand*, then it's no better than Big2 or their imprints.)

This might be wrong, but didn't they offer a better deal when it came to film & tv deals and that's what started everyone running to them a few years back now.

I try to only read complete stuff so I've not read any of the new lot that are still going:
Butcher Baker, The Righteous Maker
Fatale
Fear Agent
Glory #23+
Godland
Luther Strode
Proof
Supreme Blue Rose
Umbral
Zero

As bad as their early period was, the two series from that era that are still running (Spawn and Savage Dragon) are in general a lot better than your average Big 2 schlock.

They've always offered that great deal, it was part of the idea for founding Image in the first place. Liefeld, Lee etc were sick of working on properties they'd never make more than a page rate on so they started it so the writers/creators would own the rights to the comics. It never was a big deal as the stuff they did in the late 90's was hacky supehero garbage and was only when Walking Dead took off (and Kirkman earned a gajillion dollars) that it started to attract all the top tier creative stuff.

they should only publish stuff if the writer intends to finish it
the list of titles that are in limbo is ever growing

Aside from Spawn and the Extreme stuff their 90s material wasn't even edgy by and large. They are probably publishing more edgy comics right now, except they're sex edgy instead of violence edgy.

Shit, I jus realised I buy a fuckton of Image right now.

Saga
Wicked & Divine
Chew
East of West
Manhattan Projects
Mythic
Deadly Class
Sex Criminals
The Goddammed
Manifest Destiny
Southern Bastards
Wolf
Ringside
Trees
Descender
Paper Girls
Injection

hasn't trees gone full SJW schlock and discarded important plot elements for the sake of covering more liberal garbage?

Its one of those books I don't even know why I'm getting anymore. I don't mind some SJW stuff in books but Trees is absolute garbage sometimes. Like right from the start having that Chinese farmer kid enter this community where gender didn't matter or whatever which had nothing to do with the plot was like "What the fuck is this..". Did laugh when they were blown up after having zero to do with the main plot.

There are people at Image who work in comics because they love the medium and not because they want Hollywood money. Brandon Graham is a good example. You just have to look harder.

But really though,
>Creators shouldn't make film/tv pitches! Creators shouldn't make tons of money off their creations! Creators should be poor, starving art-eests who die in the gutter!
Shut up, your shit is getting old.

>It never was a big deal as the stuff they did in the late 90's was hacky supehero garbage

Did you actually follow Image's stuff during the late 90's? By 1995 they had Bone, Astro City, and Strangers in Paradise. By 1997 Jim Valentino turned Shadowline from being the part of Image that had Shadowhawk into the "non-line" of usually non-superhero stuff. Meanwhile Mage, A Distant Soil were getting published by Image. Bendis was doing his crime comics then, too. Sure, there was still Spawn and Witchblade and similar stuff, but Image was already getting diversified by the late 90's.

You're partly right in that Walking Dead taking off is part of the reason people went over to Image, but the other reason is that Vertigo's contracts changed somewhere in the 00's that made Image's deals look far more favorable.

I was actually going to mention Vertigo, you're correct there. They changed the contracts for books so much there and basically froze out Karen Berger after the shift toward the New 52 launch in 2010. As soon as she lost control as editor there Vertigo just tanked in quality and people looked elsewhere.

>wasn't even edgy by and large
Yeah Savage Dragon has always been pretty self aware how goofy it is without ever going complete "wink wink" at the audienc

Spawn at least can be the fun kind of edgy, I tried reading Youngblood and it was surprisingly boring

Yeah Youngblood was pretty bad. Bloodstrike and Brigade were probably better honestly. Liefeld aped Marvel's early 90s X-Men line note for note, right down to the main title being a messy clusterfuck and the spinoffs being more focused and interesting.

It was a weird hybrid of X-Men and Teen Titans, in fact Liefled claims it was a Teen Titans pitch DC didn't pick up. I mean Shaft is 100% Red Arrow/Speedy

All of this
It's really easy to spot someone who had never read Image before Saga or the Walking Dead tv show

Dark horse is better

DH really needs to bring in new blood. Comics like Sabertooth Swordsman and Harrow County show that the company can do more than just the old guard ( Mignola, Sakai, Powell, etc) and all the licensed media comics for Alien, Buffy, etc

>What do you guys think?
About Nailbiter? You're spot-on. It never really recovered from the time they stopped the entire narrative just to have Bendis visit the town.

>Trees
Didn't even bother past the first "trans people will be the first victims of the apocalypse" arc.
>Ringside, Paper Girls
Never read.
>Everything else
worth reading.

You're strawmanning. Lots of Image titles clearly have no direction beyond the elevator pitch....because that's all they are: a proof of concept that hopefully gets them a movie deal.

>Sabertooth Swordsman
I'm glad there was a storytime recently. It's way too underrated for being effectively "James Stokoe's Usagi Yojimbo"

Part of it was over the books but another part was also that they changed it so that WB would get first exclusivity to adaptation rights or something like that for some number of years. The problem with this is that they could stall or make a really shitty adaptation and it means a lot of time is wasted and no money coming in.

Read DHP, they do plenty of new shit, quote a bit of those creators get their own books

it's still edgelord shit
the only difference is that they phased out almost all of their bulging muscles and pouches

DH is full of idiots. They had this property for a year and nearly did nothing with it.

They only have a few decent series. They're literally a corporation that publishes film pitches. How you could consider that "the best" is beyond any conceivable reasoning.

THIS. Their back catalogue is one of the best of any publisher in history. They have literally put out hundreds of quality minis, one-shots, and ongoings.

They do ship out lots of new series, some of which are really awesome, it's just that they have no marketing and so everything dies after 4 issues.

>All of Image is Millarworld

>best publisher in business
>One (sometimes two) series that actually continues.
>Everything else peters out due to creators losing interest or finding out it's not successful.
WEW LAD

they got plenty new blood but the only way to find their comics is read the solicits because they don't advertise anything

Edgy is an infantile aspect of storytelling. But look like all infants, of it lives it grows into something wonderfully complex

>best publisher in the business
>when Fantagraphics exists

Feel free to tell us which is best then

>Pretentious hipster shit

name 5 titles from fantagraphics I should be reading right now

>They were founded in the 90's, which we all know was edgelord central.

Nah Image was the single largest collection of fucking dick heads in the comics industry

Images was the primary force behind the death of Comics in the 90's

DHP should be given away for free, since it's pretty much just advertisements.

Fantagraphics mainly doesn't do ongoings, they do one-shot releases instead.

Here is an ongoing that they offer:
fantagraphics.com/series/hiphopfamilytree/

Some recent releases:
fantagraphics.com/amsterdam/
fantagraphics.com/patience/

A new publication of an old Sup Forums favorite:
fantagraphics.com/boysclub/

And of course, Love & Rockets.

>fantagraphics.com/amsterdam/
>They need Owl to come and help them save their relationship. But why does he have a suitcase full of glass dildos?
Wow.

Are you the Fantagraphics poster?

Best Image book and one of the GOATs coming through.

Currently, I try to avoid any Image book with a Big Two writer name attached to it because there is just so much garbage it's not really worth it. Exception is Jason Aaron because Southern Bastards is the closest to a spirtual successor to Scalped as it gets.

>Images was the primary force behind the death of Comics in the 90's

> Not Bob Harras driving Marvel to bankruptcy
> Not the speculator market killing comics book shops
> not Death of Superman
> Not all the bullshit gimmick covers from Marvel and DC

Avatar out-edged them so they had to start publishing good stuff?

Are those receipts meant to resemble 40k purity seals (and various seals in other media)?

Don't know if it is the best, but it is damn good. Got the comics because of the short-lived animated series from when MTV had quality stuff.

Kind of makes sense

I think its largely in part cause big names like Morrison, Remender, and Hickman started using them to publish their creator owned works. It's now a haven for bog established and new writers. Image also has an insanely lax policy to where all you have to do is make the first issue and an outline for the first arc and they will publish it if they think it sounds good.

I read almost exclusively image titles.
Alex + Ada
Birthright
Black Science
Casanova
Chew
Deadly Class
Death Vigil
Genius
I Hate Fairyland
Invincible
Invincible Universe
The Island
IXth Generation
Legacy of Luther Strode
The Li'l Depressed Boy
The Li'l Depressed Boy: Supposed To Be Here Too
Low
Monstress
Morning Glories
Outcast by Kirkman & Azaceta
Paper Girls
Plutona
Pretty Deadly
Rat Queens
Red One
Revival
Saga
Sex Criminals
Shutter
Switch
Tech Jacket
Thief of Thieves
Tokyo Ghost
The Wicked + The Divine
Witchblade

And I know some of these have ended but I've collected enough to count them.

Speculation blew the bubble up in the 90s

And everyone was to blame for it not just a single publisher.

Image has been fun

However I have noticed that most of their stuff just blends into the generic science fiction / fantasy background now.

If you're going to pin the blame on anyone it should be Wizard.

I'm still glad The Savage Dragon is still going and Erik Larsen is still at it. He's a pleasant fellow.

What things you think they should try?

>hard mode
things that sell.

>it should be Wizard.

Some writer/editor at Wizard ran an article about the price of Valiant going up just to sell their own issues

I don't actually have a problem with them selling books that don't interest me at all.

This piece by Kim Thompson is really good at why

tcj.com/a-modest-proposal-more-crap-is-what-we-need/

It's just the trend now, they used to publish mostly hero/action stuff.
It'll be something else 10 years from now

>Alex + Ada

no alex and ada was the worst. It's a story about American slavery only using white people
fucking the worst shit.

I like that a lot.

Is Morning Glories finished already? Stopped reading by issue 15 or something because of neverending misteries and no answers. Reminded of Lost which is fucking shit

You mean how did they go from a collection of edgelord shit to a bunch of HBO show premises that go nowhere?

>Shut up, your shit is getting old.
"Struggling artists" has nothing to do with it. The way a TV or a movie are writen is completly different from how most comics are writen. TV that go beyond their pilot have a bunch of other witers to fill in the minor episodes and add to it. Firefly`s pilot is just Outlaw Star, the other details are what make it unique.

>This meme again

Lost is good, though. Its characterization, mysteries, and overall presentation were fantastic, especially by TV standards.

Morning Glories is shit. And no, it hasn't ended and doesn't seem like it will anytime soon. It's just on huge breaks because Spencer literally has 4 ongoings right now.

They spent the whole show saying "This isn't Limbo guys, keep watching!" and in the end it really was. J.J. Abrams never again.

Isn't Valiant currently the best out there?

But that's literally not what the island was. It's not their fault you have poor comprehension.

Usagi yojimbo has the kill count of the goon and hellboy combined? But he looks so cute and fluffy!

i'm probably the only person who thought zero was good when it turned to the william burroughs stuff, but then again he's one of my favorite authors so inherent bias

Valiant is limited to cape, Image has a wider range of genres.

Zero to me was an excellent showcase of a lot of really great artists, barely held together by a plot.

lol no

i honestly think kot just comes up with premises, runs them for an arc, and then uses his comics to muse on his thoughts on politics, the body, media, etc.

I don't there is a "best publisher" anymore for most people.

It is just a list of books you read that come from all over.

Probably and I don't have a problem with it as long as he finds interesting to people to draw them.

What's a good series by him?

oh i meant william s. burroughs is one of my favorite writers as in novel writers
his most famous is naked lunch, after that i would recommend the cut-up trilogy

he is fascinating person and writer

as far as kot goes he's okay
I liked his graphic novel with rossmo Wild Children, his short 4 issue run on suicide squad is fantastic imo, and I thought Zero was decent. His current series Wolf has a cool premise but is hit or miss

Burroughs or Kot?

I've been reading mostly Image recently, just because I find it easier to keep up with it than the Big 2 and I'm so fucking far behind the 8-ball with Dark Horse to ever truly catch up Although with Hellboy ending I might give it a go
Right now I'm reading
>Manifest Destiny
>Nowhere Men
>The Autumnlands
>Manhattan Projects rip
>Spread
>Southern Bastards
>Chew
>Roche Limit
>Low
>The Humans
>East of West
>Whatever Brubakers working on Criminal, The Fade-Out, etc
>Limbo
>Rumble
>Postal
>Revival
>Copperhead kinda fell behind on this, premise was interesting but no new issues in awhile
I'm mostly just following at a distance, picking up trades here and there. As other people have pointed out, there is a tendency for some of there comics to fall apart after the opening arc because it was essentially a TV pitch, but quite a few have managed to hold my attention. I feel like Image is at its best when the writers use it as an opportunity to get really weird.

brubaker used to be so good but fuck is he boring now. i'll give that his books have great art but man oh man are those stories rehashed or generic

I really want to check Wold out because the covers are fantastic, but a lot of Kot's stuff I can't help but feel it's kinda pretentious. Does Wolf manage to avoid that?

define 'pretentious'
i feel like this word gets misused a lot

sure wolf is cool and it has musings on racism, rape and all that but if that counts as 'pretentious' then imo i wouldn't recommend it. its weird because it has a female on male rape too

There's nothing wrong with being pretentious. I like it when creators aim high, when they aren't content to be generic or middling. And even when they fail to reach their goals, that's endearing to me too, like the underdog in a sports movie that we all love to root for.

There's nothing in the league rulebook which says that a dog can't make comics.

Might be interesting if it's well written I guess. The problem with musings on racism and rape is that if you don't do it well you faceplant, there's no real middle ground.

i would say he def tries to incorporate it in line with the story but the execution of it is good or bad on the opinion of the reader
agree with this so hard

Yeah I would I think always have creators try rather than not to really push the series they are doing and what it is about.

If you faceplant, you faceplant at least you went for it.

>fantagraphics.com/amsterdam/
>They need Owl to come and help them save their relationship. But why does he have a suitcase full of glass dildos?
Warhol.

He is putting out a new volume of Criminal later this year, hope it is on par with the rest. From his recent work i really liked Fatale, even bought the deluxe editions, but it seems most people on Sup Forums wasn't impressed by it.

the ending of fatale was kinda cool with the trippy cosmic shit i just wish he would stop writing noir stories and branch out because its starting to get a lil' stale

>Copperhead
Faerber just posted about it on Twitter. Drew Moss will be the new artist while Scott will only do cover work.

Damn, I liked Scott's art.
What else has Drew Moss done?

Never read anything penciled by him desu. Here is a link with some of his art: drew-moss.tumblr.com/

Doesn't look half bad.

Started reading Manifest Destiny today, wtihout knowing what was it about. It got creepy fast.

>tfw Image has the prestige right now that Valiant should have

FUCK
THEM

DH is crippled by retarded CEOs.

A year ago a dude that worked in the company made a thread to complain about how the higher ups basically had no idea what they were doing

I have never understood the Valiant love people have, the books of theirs I have seen look boring.

Image always had this problem, they tend to fall into trends pretty hard.

At least they are starting to drop the cop comics. God that genre is boring.

>morning glories
>shit
nah it's good. not mind blowing because time fuckery is almost never good.

Almost everything they made in the 90's was gold, and all of the re-introduced series are either okay, to amazing. They have literally never made a "bad" series. I do not know why they aren't selling as well as others.

The only stuff worth reading is what Barry Windsor-Smith did in the 90's

I remember that, they have delusions of launching a DH cinematic universe with characters like Ghost and X. JESUS

Does any one even remember what Glory was ORIGINALLY.

It's like the best example of how the company has changed with the times.