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Is "Image" dead?
Besides Savage Dragon and Spawn, There are no original creator books (an asterisk to Spawn..). The OG creators did crossovers and played in each other's sandboxes for better or worse. Dragon would pop up in Spawn or Shadowhawk, They'd crossover with Youngblood...ect. For a bit Image had a shared universe. I think other than Spawn or Savage Dragon, none of the current books have any relation whatsoever to each other. Not a bad thing by any means. But I remember when Image firstW came out and I was but a wee lad, Image was a preferable alternative to Marvel and DC (it still is) but it sort of operated in a shared universe. ith the end of Invincible, it seems like there won't be too many more opportunities for shared continuity. I guess what I'm asking is that if anyone else will miss all the semi-shared universe books or at least the aspect of them. Once Image was mostly shared universe with a few outliers and now it's all unique projects with Dragon and Spawn being the exceptions (and Dragon is definitely in it's own universe when it wants to be).
Either way, I love and support most of what Image currently publishes. Brilliant **** every month no matter what your interests are. Just want to see if anyone has a fondness for the "good old days".
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[QUOTE=MagSeven;3665758]Besides Savage Dragon and Spawn, There are no original creator books (an asterisk to Spawn..). The OG creators did crossovers and played in each other's sandboxes for better or worse. Dragon would pop up in Spawn or Shadowhawk, They'd crossover with Youngblood...ect. For a bit Image had a shared universe. I think other than Spawn or Savage Dragon, none of the current books have any relation whatsoever to each other. Not a bad thing by any means. But I remember when Image firstW came out and I was but a wee lad, Image was a preferable alternative to Marvel and DC (it still is) but it sort of operated in a shared universe. ith the end of Invincible, it seems like there won't be too many more opportunities for shared continuity. I guess what I'm asking is that if anyone else will miss all the semi-shared universe books or at least the aspect of them. Once Image was mostly shared universe with a few outliers and now it's all unique projects with Dragon and Spawn being the exceptions (and Dragon is definitely in it's own universe when it wants to be).
Either way, I love and support most of what Image currently publishes. Brilliant **** every month no matter what your interests are. Just want to see if anyone has a fondness for the "good old days".[/QUOTE]
Cyber Force and Youngblood are also currently being published. As well as various other Artifact-verse books from Top Cow.
But officially, the shared Image superhero universe ended way back in the 90s anyway with Shattered Image. After that its just basically been something which is only acknowledged if the individual creators want to make use of it - ie. Larsen and Kirkman on occasion.
I really dont think this has had any meaninful impact on any of the books. Most of the crossovers were just fluff anyway. The more weighty stuff came from the individual imprints shared continuity imo. ie. Tow Cows Artifact books, Wildstorm shared universe, etc.
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I like Image best when its NOT a shared universe, no crossover. Let the creators do their thing. We got enough shared universes and their problems with Marvel and DC...
I say NO to the good old days. I like it how it is today.
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[QUOTE=DanMad1977;3665945]I like Image best when its NOT a shared universe, no crossover. Let the creators do their thing. We got enough shared universes and their problems with Marvel and DC...
I say NO to the good old days. I like it how it is today.[/QUOTE]
Me too. I love how the driving force behind Image is creator owned characters in creator owned stories. If one writer wants to pool some of their characters into a universe, go for it. But I love what Image is now.
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[QUOTE=DanMad1977;3665945]I like Image best when its NOT a shared universe, no crossover. Let the creators do their thing. We got enough shared universes and their problems with Marvel and DC...
I say NO to the good old days. I like it how it is today.[/QUOTE]
I feel the same way. I much prefer my Image stories to be "linear" and not crossing over into other books.
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Some of those early [I]Image[/I] comic books were really . . . [B]bad[/B].
Great artwork, but the writing could often be somewhat dreadful.
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I've loved when they did crossovers of a sort.
REALLY LOVED the Invincible War with the Image heroes uniting to take down the evil doppelgangers of Invincible. or when Dynamo 5 had Supreme and Omniman teamup with Captain Dynamo in a flashback.
The lack of a real shared universe has made it hard to like too many of the books though, but in fairness yeah Image isn't and doesn't really NEED a shared universe.
Plus as a publisher they're clearly still very viable and a great place to get your book published.
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[QUOTE=MajorHoy;3666336]Some of those early [I]Image[/I] comic books were really . . . [B]bad[/B].
Great artwork, but the writing could often be somewhat dreadful.[/QUOTE]
Could you say which books you mean specifically? Just today I decided I would binge read old Wildcats, since I grew up reading those and loved them at the time. My current view, though, could be clouded by the nostalgia goggles.
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[QUOTE=Paulie Blade;3667265]Could you say which books you mean specifically? Just today I decided I would binge read old Wildcats, since I grew up reading those and loved them at the time. My current view, though, could be clouded by the nostalgia goggles.[/QUOTE]The Liefeld books are probably the biggest offenders, with all the multiple teams he launched in a short period of time. Others seemed to also be more of "[FONT=Comic Sans MS]lets create all these kewl-looking characters[/FONT]" books that didn't put in nearly enough thought to the [B]reasons[/B] for the groups/characters to even exist in the first place in those initial issues.
(Can't recall specific titles off-hand; they all start blurring together in my memories, and the "frequency" of their publication really made it hard to remember some as well.)
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[QUOTE=MajorHoy;3667312]The Liefeld books are probably the biggest offenders, with all the multiple teams he launched in a short period of time. Others seemed to also be more of "[FONT=Comic Sans MS]lets create all these kewl-looking characters[/FONT]" books that didn't put in nearly enough thought to the [B]reasons[/B] for the groups/characters to even exist in the first place in those initial issues.
(Can't recall specific titles off-hand; they all start blurring together in my memories, and the "frequency" of their publication really made it hard to remember some as well.)[/QUOTE]
True, but Image was playing catchup, not creating a universe organically over decades. [i]And[/i] it all had to feel fresh and original in an already crowded market. So you kinda have to grade on a curve. Imagine what Marvel or DC would do if they had to start all over from scratch with a 5 year plan or whatever. Yes, New Universe, I'm looking at you...
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i'm in the group that preferred when individual studios developed their own shared universes, not necessarily one united image-verse. even though certain image characters obviously crossed over into different core books, when i think of classic "image" i tend to think a bit farther into the 90s with the wildstorm universe, extreme universe, top cow universe, etc etc.
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[QUOTE=Dark-Flux;3665767]But officially, the shared Image superhero universe ended way back in the 90s anyway with Shattered Image.[/QUOTE]
Anyone remember when they tried to bring it back in 2009 with [URL="https://www.comixology.com/Image-United-2-of-6/digital-comic/3624?ref=Y29taWMvdmlldy9kZXNrdG9wL3NsaWRlckxpc3Qvc2VyaWVz"]IMAGE UNITED[/URL]? The planned 6-issue miniseries, where they managed to get issues 1 and 2 done in two months, and then #3 came out eight months after #2, and that was a wrap?
It was certainly an ambitious project, with Robert Kirkman writing a story featuring the main characters of 6 of the original Image founders, minus Jim Lee, but the plan to have each creator draw their own characters in each book was doomed to failure. They should have just got some other dependable artist to draw the whole series and maybe have each creator draw a cover, and some pin-ups.
Personally, as someone who was there from the start, I do miss the shared Image Universe. I liked the little details like Rob Liefeld's character Chapel being the man who killed Todd McFarland's Al Simmons, which lead to Al becoming Spawn, and Youngblood showing up in the last issue of the original WildC.A.T.S. series, Savage Dragon being sent to New York to track down ShadowHawk, etc. At the time it genuinely felt like we were getting in on the ground floor of a the Next Marvel Comics.
I still wish there was a sort of Central Image Universe like that, where creators could participate with their titles [I]if they wanted to[/I], while also publishing separate unconnected titles like Walking Dead and Astro City that were just their own thing.
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It would seem Image has indeed become a shadow of its former self as stated.
Spawn and Savage Dragon are still around.
Youngblood has been revived, but hardly the powerhouse it was in its heyday.
Not sure about the others.
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[QUOTE=iblogalot;3668122]Anyone remember when they tried to bring it back in 2009 with [URL="https://www.comixology.com/Image-United-2-of-6/digital-comic/3624?ref=Y29taWMvdmlldy9kZXNrdG9wL3NsaWRlckxpc3Qvc2VyaWVz"]IMAGE UNITED[/URL]? The planned 6-issue miniseries, where they managed to get issues 1 and 2 done in two months, and then #3 came out eight months after #2, and that was a wrap?
It was certainly an ambitious project, with Robert Kirkman writing a story featuring the main characters of 6 of the original Image founders, minus Jim Lee, but the plan to have each creator draw their own characters in each book was doomed to failure. They should have just got some other dependable artist to draw the whole series and maybe have each creator draw a cover, and some pin-ups.
Personally, as someone who was there from the start, I do miss the shared Image Universe. I liked the little details like Rob Liefeld's character Chapel being the man who killed Todd McFarland's Al Simmons, which lead to Al becoming Spawn, and Youngblood showing up in the last issue of the original WildC.A.T.S. series, Savage Dragon being sent to New York to track down ShadowHawk, etc. At the time it genuinely felt like we were getting in on the ground floor of a the Next Marvel Comics.
I still wish there was a sort of Central Image Universe like that, where creators could participate with their titles [I]if they wanted to[/I], while also publishing separate unconnected titles like Walking Dead and Astro City that were just their own thing.[/QUOTE]
On one hand I agree, it sounds tempting and I recall the Spawn/Chapel and WildC.A.T.s/Youngblood bits fondly, but it can cause problems regarding the creator-owned philosophy of Image. If, for instance, Grifter (of WildC.A.T.s) had been set as Al's killer (instead of Chapel), he would have never been able to mentioned again once Jim Lee left for DC and took his properties with him. That being said, I'm not sure if Chapel has ever been mentioned either ever since that single appearance. So, yeah, perhaps making single, minor visits to other books sounds like a safer idea compared to building an entire universe around creator-owned characters.
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The stuff at Image today is not comparable to the older stuff anymore. Its so much better today. More thought is given into the storys and the characters. It has real substance and will stand the test of time. I cant say that for 90% of the older books. I tried to read some lately, but just coudlnt get through most of the first issues, except Spawn and Savage Dragon...