Creator-owned properties

>creator-owned properties
>$10 trades for #1s

Is there a reason not to love Image?

Yes, the shit they pulled in the 90's that destroyed the industry

Kek
but yea

Being a contrarian seems to be reason enough for some people.

Also for all the great books image has, they print plenty of garbage books as well.

what did they do?

i'm new

It feels like every book is trying to be the next Saga/TWD -- either a "sleeper hit" by pressing the same buttons that Saga did, or a movie/show adaptation somewhere down the line like TWD and Millar's books.

It's tedious. The result is that these books don't feel all that interesting and, if anything, feel weirdly more constrained than their counterparts in the Big2 and other places. Honestly, I feel like the only people who "love" Image are people who mainly/entirely read Marvel comics: they see some decent creators go to Image, make some stuff, and churn out comics better than Marvel's output.

But to nearly everyone else -- everyone who doesn't read just Marvel comics -- Image's flaws are so apparent as to soil the majority of their catalog.

Image throws everything at the wall and sees what sticks. I tend to just read creators I like, so I suppose I'm happy that Image gives them a creator-owned method to tell their stories.

I don't really care aboutImage during the 90s or any of that shit. We're talking about the new Image from the past 3-5 years.

It wasn't just them, in fact Image didn't do many gimmick covers

The 90's was wrecked by the speculator market, people buying comics with the hopes that one day they could sell them off for a fortune. People thought Spawn #1 and the like could be the next Action Comics #1

So you got shit like gimmick covers, variant covers, and the whole Death of Superman ordeal. Retailers were buying more and more copies, however the speculators would only buy #1's or in the case of Death of Superman only the issue he actually died in. Leaving them with a ton of back issues that people weren't buying driving tons of stores out of business

I also know there was something going on with he distributors that lead to the current situation of Diamond holding a monopoly, but I don't know more than that

They were instrumental im nearly destroying Valiant comics with a crossover event that had a lot od money pumped into it that failed to deliver, and started a precedent for the test od the industry.

It feels like every book is trying to be the next Saga/TWD -- either a "sleeper hit" by pressing the same buttons that Saga did, or a movie/show adaptation somewhere down the line like TWD and Millar's books.
List 5 books that fit this description, you're already losing credibility because Jupiter's Legacy does not fit this at all

>they print plenty of garbage books as well.
Honestly they mostly print garbage. Comics like Prophet or Rumble are the exception.

It's interesting how even Image has turned into a writer focused company, despite being founded by artists. All the press and push goes to comics from former Marvel writers.

>Jupiter's Legacy does not fit this at all
> A Mark Millar comci isn't designed from the start to be a movie
It's all he does, his comics all get optioned before the first issue drops

Only three out of six founders participated in the crossover (McFarlane abstained because he was going to do other crossovers but loaned Al Simmons to Liefeld, Larsen wasn't that fond of Valiant's characters so he stayed off, and Valentino stayed off because he didn't believe the crossover was a good idea), so blaming it on all Image doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

I'll take action figure pitches over TV/movie pitches everyday of the week.

Can you really love image though?
If you read image, you do it for a particular creator or series. Not because image is publishing it.

But the delays and general fuckery of the Image founders who *were* involved were the main reason why Valiant went under.

Honestly though, this was a thing even back in the 90's. Liefeld's Doom's IV was already optioned by Amblin Entertainment and that was the selling point in the solicitation and press in 1993. The comic eventually got published in 1994.

I blame it on the company, not the individuals. They shouldve been Keeping an eye on what was going on.

McFarlane and Larsen also stayed out of Heroes Reborn

Erik Larsen seems by far the most genuine. Savage Dragon is the comic he's wanted to do since he a little kid and Image was the perfect place to do it. The rest of them quickly let other people draw and write their creations

At least Todd had a toy company to run and he and Valentino were execs for Image

No, that's now because he has several films based off of his work so the studios see him as a cash cow
You obviously haven't read Legacy; the film would cost at least $250 million to produce while none of Millar's properties have ever had a triple digit millions budget. It's drawn by Quietly with crazy extended action sequences for fuck's sake.

Going by what Bob Layton said years ago:

>“Here’s what you don't know about that time at Valiant,” says Bob Layton. “I literally had nothing to do with most of those projects. Deathmate was thrust upon us because (Steve) Massarsky and Jim Lee were best buddies at the time and had privately arranged the crossover. The project was jammed down our throats and we did our best to comply, although most Valiant creators thought it was a bad idea."

The real blame should really be directed toward Jim Lee and Valiant's Steve Massarsky for letting the crossover go through. Lee especially because he kept taking on way too much shit in one year (remember the 1963 annual that he was supposed to draw?) That being said, yes, the delays on the Image side really hurt things.

The movie is happening. Last update was June of this year that the screenwriters were on board

The movie's only happening when they actually cast and show actors and actresses on set. Lot of movies get screenwriters and sometimes the project doesn't go through. Hell, remember Superman Lives? They already had Nicholas Cage cast as Superman. That project didn't get made.

Just because they made a movie out of it doesn't mean Millar wrote it to be a movie like Kick Ass 2 or The Secret Service
Jupiter's Legacy is something he legitimately cares about, hence it not being shit

Each creator is basically their own company within Image, though. Jim Valentino can't go and force Rob Liefeld to be on time with his own books because he doesn't run Liefeld's side of the company. Jim Lee can't force Erik Larsen to be involved with the crossover because Lee doesn't have any involvement with Larsen's comics and characters.

It's like that line in Don Simpson's Splittin Image: "All for one and every man for himself!"

>Jupiter's Legacy is something he legitimately cares about
Mark Millar cares about $$$. He gets big artists because they know he makes a 50/50 split when the movie comes out

And honestly good for Quietly, I saw an interview he gave when the series first started and he said that while working on All Star Superman he was worried he was going to lose his house

I have no idea what you're talking about. None of the action setpieces in the book would balloon the film to $250mil. You do realize those budgets from DC/Marvel films are almost entirely post-production costs, mostly because the studios rush the fuck out of production.

The setpieces in the series are actually pretty simple in terms of how much is going on in each panel, how much would appear onscreen, etc. You could do it all within $125mil without breaking a sweat, and that would be making it look *good* -- you could scrape by with $50mil (a la Besson's Lucy) and make a good film, too.

Remember that Cuaron's Gravity only cost $100mil.

All this is besides the point. If you seriously read Jupiter's Legacy and didn't clearly see the adaptation potential of it....I don't know what to tell you. Get a new pair of eyes or something.

A deconstructionist edgy cape film? No I actually don't see the movie potential of that in the current climate

Not only that but gets good artists because he pays them really good for their job.

And for someone who only cares about dosh he poirs a lot of love on some of his comics and he likes to take care of his artists.

And Valiant is doing a crossover event again, who you going to blame this time?

I can like it because of pricing, or how they have started to handle writers. What they've been doing lately is have writers complete a trade and then take 3 months off to create enough material to do another arc. This way there are no delays inside of arcs and you can immediately pick up the trade after.

They have really pivoted their business to trades and I like that. Not all their stuff is like this yet, but a lot of their new books are doing this model

Image didn't contribute to the crash at all. They were just putting out comics, they had hardly any variant covers or gimmicks. It was mostly Marvel's fault which is why they were the ones that went bankrupt.

Jim Shooter is the one who invented event cancer and he made it popular with Valiant and Unity. Deathmate would have never happened if not for Valiant.

Even though Valiant was around for years after that and Deathmate was a huge seller and literally brought the company the biggest success it ever had?

Come on man, were you even there

>It's interesting how even Image has turned into a writer focused company, despite being founded by artists.
That's just the direction the whole industry has gone. The artist was god in the 90s. It wasn't just at Image, if you look at Dark Horse's big comics like Sin City, Next Men, and Hellboy they were all artist-driven titles too. But then the British Invasion and the rise of Vertigo slowly tilted things in the writer's favor by the time the 2000s came around and it's been that way since.

P.S.: Rumble sucks

How come Image threads always become hotbeds of hatred? Can we just talk about the company?
I wish they would publish more cape books. I realize that for most of their history the fast majority of their comics have been capes but it's like aside from their long-running mainstay titles and Millar's Jupiter stuff there is pretty much nothing.

>How come Image threads always become hotbeds of hatred?

I think it's because, on one hand, you get people who read maybe a handful of books from them (of middling quality) and say, "Wow, Image is the greatest thing since sliced bread!"

And on the other hand, you get people who've probably read a lot more Image series and been burned by what happens when the creators either don't get enough readers, lose interest in their series, or something even more mundane that causes delays/incomplete series/loss of quality/etc.

So, it ends up being a fight, where one side tries to convince the other whether Image is overall good or not.

>It's drawn by Quietly with crazy extended action sequences for fuck's sake.

That's kinda irrelevant.

I guess I don't get why people hate delays so much.
I mean if it's because the creator fucked off to go do some other thing I understand, but if it's just taking a while I don't really care, I have other shit I can read while I'm waiting.

over half of their output is terrible TV pitches that get abandoned after 2 arcs when they arent picked up

>What is Death Mate?

Unity is the greatest comic book event ever written though

Valiant was bought out after that and became an IP farm for videogames you dickhead

>But then the British Invasion and the rise of Vertigo slowly tilted things in the writer's favor by the time the 2000s came around and it's been that way since.
You realize the British Invasion started in the mid 80s and vertigo in the early 90s, right?

Yes. It just didn't gain the traction and sales to flip the way buyers prioritized creative teams in comic books until the late 90s.

>Is there a reason not to love Image?

Not having in contract that creators have to provide enough money to fund 5 issues at least. To many comics just fucking end abruptly

Image Comics that are good
>Southern Bastards
>Wicked and Divine
>Monstress
>the Graham/Churchland Family
>Casanova/Sex Criminals/Ody C
>Pretty Deadly/Bitch Planet
>Snotgirl
>Birthright/Nailbiter
>Descender
>Cry Havoc
>Wytches
>East of West
>Sons of the Devil
>Brubaker Stuff
>Deadly Class

Everything else I don't bother with

I just love the smaller comic publishers in general. IDW, Dark Horse, Image, Valiant, and even some of the Boom series are pretty good.

I really like East of West, Black Magick and Saga. I have to read more of their stuff. Trade prices and quality are great tho.

Danger Girl is good. I want another Danger Girl/G.I Joe team up story.

Image creators don't have to pay to get there comics published. Image takes a fee from after the comic is published, the rest of the money the book makes you pocket.

They literally say this in the submissions section. The whole you have to pay Image thing is a meme because no creator past or present has ever verified or even hinted at it.

If you have hard proof that will Image published your comics if you pay them, go ahead post it but you won't because it's a fucking meme guys.

STOP BELIEVING MEMES.

IDW has been really good to it. Nice art and stories. I barely even miss Campbell.