Weekly Image poll #20 - A quiet week

[sven]

Mirror is a mini-series?

[TotalSnorefest]

Mirror is a mini-series?

Sadly, yes. It was originally part of the 8House series, which was gonna be a shared-universe, but entirely creator-owned and all fantasy/sci-fi titles. There's four or five mini-series in total which overlap veeeeeery vaguely (might as well be stand-alones save for a shared concept or two). Those are: Arclight (2 out of 4 issues currently out), Kiem (1 issue out, the rest will probably be released in one 60 page issue), Mirror (5 issues), Yorris (2 out of 4 released right now) and possibly From Under Mountains (first 6-issue arc completed, originally planned for 12 issues).

I'm assuming sales weren't great because they were all releasing confusingly out of order under the 8House banner, so they moved Mirror and From Under Mountains to release as (mini-)series on their own. Works just as well though, the connections were very loose at best.

[sven]

Sadly, yes. It was originally part of the 8House series, which was gonna be a shared-universe, but entirely creator-owned and all fantasy/sci-fi titles. There's four or five mini-series in total which overlap veeeeeery vaguely (might as well be stand-alones save for a shared concept or two). Those are: Arclight (2 out of 4 issues currently out), Kiem (1 issue out, the rest will probably be released in one 60 page issue), Mirror (5 issues), Yorris (2 out of 4 released right now) and possibly From Under Mountains (first 6-issue arc completed, originally planned for 12 issues).

I'm assuming sales weren't great because they were all releasing confusingly out of order under the 8House banner, so they moved Mirror and From Under Mountains to release as (mini-)series on their own. Works just as well though, the connections were very loose at best.

Well that is disappointing. I'm gonna miss it when it's gone. Where am I gonna get my anthropomorphic Siberian Husky action when it's gone?!?!

Thanks for the info. 8House sounds like it could have been really cool.

[Joker]

Sadly...

That whole project was a confusing fucking mess. I'm pretty in the know about that kind of **** but I had no idea what was what with that one. So I never bothered with it.

[TotalSnorefest]

That whole project was a confusing fucking mess. I'm pretty in the know about that kind of **** but I had no idea what was what with that one. So I never bothered with it.

Yep they really made it difficult for themselves in terms of marketing. Would've been much more transparant had they just released them as separate minis, you could even have the 8House brand on it still. Like this: 8House: Arclight #1-4, 8House: Yorris #1-4, etc.

Now you had this weird thing where 8house #3: Kiem came out smack in the middle of the Arclight storyline, and was essentially a new #1 for the Kiem story with a drastically different artstyle and even genre. It was a cool idea and I understand this way allowed them to have several artists working on stories concurrently, rather than leaving finished issues unpublished for months. But it was very poorly marketed. Didn't help that several of the involved creators were also launching Island Magazine at the same time, which left some people confused whether that was part of 8House, or the other way around perhaps...

And if it's confusing to the message board/comics twitter/tumblr crowd already, I can't imagine what the average shopper could've made of it.

In brighter news though, Mirror is really really pretty once again, probably the most solid storyline in the whole project so far if they stick the landing next month.

[Joker]

YEah, I actually thought Mirror was at parts tied in to some of that stuff, but I... I just couldn't figure out what was what.

[TotalSnorefest]

YEah, I actually thought Mirror was at parts tied in to some of that stuff, but I... I just couldn't figure out what was what.

If you'll indulge some hardcore guesswork: From Under Mountains is probably the oldest series, chronologically, and I think part of that world undergoes major societal developments alongside aquiring some serious riches to become the land seen in Arclight. Kiem is definitely set in the far future, because they fight these weird magic bugs who may or may not timetravel forwards from Arclight and/or Yorris.

I'm thinking Mirror takes place in the reworked ruins of the Arclight/From Under Mountains, because the huge cathedral-esque structure from #1 looks like it's a huge flying spaceship that landed somewhere and rooted there. So maybe that's when they abandon magic and move towards science? I'll say it definitely made more sense in my mind than writing this down haha.

The 8 Houses could basically be family dynasties, so there'd be the royal family from From Under Mountains, and Yorris is the daughter of some leader guy whose House competes with another one, Kiem and Arclight also both exhibit strong emphasis on rejecting leadership positions thrown at them, as does Mirror obviously. That's still just 6 houses accounted for though, but perhaps I'm just super-wrong, or they were saving those in case the project really caught on.

[Joker]

Who knows?!?!

[matt levin]

Astonishingly, only one Image title for me this week: Citizen Jack, and sadly, it didn't much matter to me in the end, which offered little surprise, and, as a series, offered no real commentary on the very real political situation this year, or even on politics as a whole. Overall, a series that just didn't make it happen for me. On to next week--

[Ragdoll]

Looks like Manifest Destiny barely won, with Invincible in a close second place. I voted MD so I like this result, but I wouldn't have minded if Invincible won.

Those are the only two I read, which is really slow for an Image week. Usually there's 2 or 3 books that are really competing for my vote, plus another 2 or 3 superfluous books that I'm following but know I would never vote for.

Examples of books I follow but don't ever vote for:
Guilty pleasures like Nailbiter.
When I am following a bad book just out of loyalty to the writer like Brian K Vaughan's book about the Canadian-American War, which was so bad I forget the name.
Rat Queens with various fill-in artists.


In random Image news, Cinemax put the entire first episode of the Outcast adaption on YouTibe, check that out. I loved it. The book is good, but this show is scarier. Not that I'm slighting the book, it's just easier to convey genuine scares via TV/film than a book. Kirkman wrote the episode and did a great job setting up the series.