{"id":244,"date":"2015-02-28T02:45:41","date_gmt":"2015-02-28T02:45:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/?p=244"},"modified":"2015-02-28T03:08:30","modified_gmt":"2015-02-28T03:08:30","slug":"re-imagining-image","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/?p=244","title":{"rendered":"Re-imagining Image"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been collecting comics, in some fashion or another, since 1973.\u00a0 As a kid, I remember being attracted by the cool art and the bright colors and being mostly confused by the storylines.\u00a0 Things were complicated by the fact that I rarely had the money to purchase a whole set of comics to complete an arc.<\/p>\n

As I got older, somewhere just shy of my teens, I really began reading comics for the stories.\u00a0 I still remember when I actually started paying attention to the credits and could remember who the authors were.\u00a0 My first clear remembrance of an author\u2019s name was Steve Englehart, and his work still remains a favorite of mine.\u00a0 It was through his work that I began to see comics as a vehicle for philosophy and drama and the examination of the human condition.\u00a0 His work on Doctor Strange was a particular favorite, from the cosmic Sise-Neg storyline in Marvel Premiere #13 & #14 to his very spiritual exploration of life and death in the Silver Dagger saga in Doctor Strange (1974) #1-#5.<\/p>\n

Over the following years other authors touched upon those core areas. \u00a0Jim Starlin and his compelling cosmic stories about Thanos provided much food for thought.\u00a0 \u00a0Alan Moore\u2019s wonderful stint on Swamp Thing was very fulfilling and well-thought out. \u00a0J. M. DeMatteis produced a beautiful set of stories about good and evil in in his Six-Fingered Hand run on the Defenders.\u00a0 John Ostrander\u2019s successful revival of the Spectre in the mid-nineties was a treat for the theologically minded.\u00a0 I could go on but I think the point is clear \u2013 story drives my interest in comics.<\/p>\n

That brings me to Image Comics<\/a>.\u00a0 For those who don\u2019t know, Image Comics started as a reaction by some of the \u2018biggest creative\u2019 talent at Marvel Comics in the early nineties. The core group seems to have been comprised of Todd McFarlane, Rob Liefield, Jim Lee, Erik Larsen, Whilce Portacio, Marc Silverstri, Jim Valentino, and Chris Claremont.\u00a0 Protesting the lack of creative ownership and the page rate and the limited royalties afforded them at Marvel, this group went off to create their own company.\u00a0 A founding principle behind Image was the idea that creators owned the fruits of their labors.\u00a0 And, while I applaud their entrepreneurial spirit, I could not applaud their creations.<\/p>\n

From the start, Image offered the same \u2018eye-candy\u2019 that made the founders work (Claremont notwithstanding) so tiresome at Marvel.\u00a0 Everywhere I looked there were testosterone-laden men, with ridiculous anatomical exaggerations protruding from arm, leg, and torso \u2013 all wielding bizarrely constructed slabs of metal that passed for guns of some sort.\u00a0 The women were impossibly thin and scantily clad, with spines so sharply rounded and concave that they looked like a yoga pose gone horribly awry.\u00a0 Buildings, backgrounds, and breakdown art were simultaneously far too detailed and yet strangely unfinished.\u00a0 In short, it was an adolescent dream of what the world should be.<\/p>\n

All of this might have been tolerable if they had stories to offer that actually probed humanity and the state of being in this world.\u00a0 Unfortunately, their approach to stories was as adolescent as their art.\u00a0 All told, I regarded their books as the junk food of the comic world.\u00a0 And I wasn\u2019t alone in this viewpoint.\u00a0 I was present at Comicfest \u201893 in Philadelphia when Peter David debated Todd McFarlane on the tension between artist and writer, their stint together on The Incredible Hulk, and on the foundation of Image Comics.\u00a0 I call it a debate but it would be more accurate to call it a lecture on the part of the older, wiser, and smarter David against the petulant, incoherent, and childish McFarlane.\u00a0 And so Image and I went our separate ways.<\/p>\n

Well, time has passed and somehow we\u2019ve found each other again.\u00a0 The original cadre of artists who founded Image are, for the most part, still there, but I don\u2019t care because their influence isn\u2019t.\u00a0 Somewhere in the intervening years Image discovered a soul and attracted real talent \u2013 writing talent, imagination talent.\u00a0 Gone is the one size fits all eye-popping, cookie-cutter, pedal-to-the-metal action of the past.\u00a0 Now there is a wonderful variety of books to discover and explore.<\/p>\n

Some of my personal favorites include East of West, Saga, Fatale, Pretty Deadly, Five Ghosts, and Satellite Sam.\u00a0 Each of these is quite distinct in look and feel, in story and pace, and in line and color.\u00a0 None of them are burdened or compromised by a shared universe or by what has come before.\u00a0 Some of the best ideas are coming out under the Image banner and I hope that they keep at it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been collecting comics, in some fashion or another, since 1973.\u00a0 As a kid, I remember being attracted by the cool art and the bright colors and being mostly confused… Read more ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=244"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":247,"href":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions\/247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboutcomics.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}