Image is totally the best comic book company in the world you guise

>>85834228
Well, he's not wrong. He's not saying it's the best dumbass.

>>85834228
>Even Jack Kirby, the dude whose work built up most of Marvel Comics and a good chunk of DC, got the largest check of his career through working with Image
That's really fucking sad. Especially today.

>>85834228
Kirby died in February 1994, aged 76. If he didn't get paid more than that ever before (which is debatable, since dear Brandon hasn't bothered to explain whether this was a single payment for a title from which there would be no further sales, whether it was compared to whole-life on other titles Jack had created, or anything complex like that - it almost certainly doesn't come close to the amount Kirby made from his Marvel work, adjusted for inflation - he wasn't kicking out 12 books a month or whatever just because he could), he certainly wasn't hurting for money at that stage of his life.

The cover date of Phantom Force #1 was December 1993. Given that it would have taken Image (who were already struggling with Rob Liefeld's fingers in the register) several months to process that payment (as it would for any other publisher), it's quite possible that check was the last thing Kirby saw, if he ever saw it at all. Short of a contemporary quote from the man himself, it's pretty hard to prove he ever saw the money.

It's interesting to see the Image founders (most of whom can't command sales of more than a few thousand today) being held up as the way forward for a publishing company - Liefeld embezzled from Image and left early on, MacFarlane kept pushing Spawn even though he was no longer writing it, and of course there's Angela.

Do you know why Neil Gaiman's character, Angela, is at Marvel now?

It's because Gaiman created her under an Image contract, in the Spawn book. MacFarlane continued to use Angela after Gaiman left the title, claiming he (MacFarlane) owned Angela and that Gaiman's work was "work for hire". Eventually, after decades of this shit, a judge disagreed and handed the (now worthless) character over to Gaiman. So Gaiman put her in Marvel as a big fuck-you to "creator owned" Image and to MacFarlane.

>>85836965
In the course of Gaiman's investigation to prove his ownership, he discovered something else about MacFarlane: that he'd bought the rights to Miracleman, formerly Marvelman, a stand-in for the original Captain Marvel published by Fawcett Comics back in the 40s and 50s. When DC Comics forced Fawcett out of publishing comics (on the grounds that Captain Marvel was a ripoff of Superman), a British publisher, L. Miller & Son Ltd., who had been reprinting US Captain Marvel comics in the UK decided to continue publishing.

They changed the name and came up with a similar (but legally distinct and therefore their own) character named Marvelman, created by Mick Anglo. About 10 years later, L. Miller also stopped publishing these comics, as they no longer sold well.

Ten years after that, another publisher bought the rights from L. Miller, and resurrected the character. Alan Moore, among others, worked on this version. It was resold again several times to different publishers, ending up with MacFarlane in the 90s. MacFarlane intended to reboot it as an Image property (as a fuck-you to creator rights).

Except that Gaiman had discovered that MacFarlane had never really owned Marvelman. Neither had Alan Moore or any of the other people who'd worked on any reboots, because according to the original contracts (which MacFarlane's legal people really should have discovered), the rights had reverted to Mick Anglo when L. Miller & Son Ltd. stopped publishing. It had never been theirs to sell.

Gaiman arranged for the rights to be bought (in whole, including stories - as opposed to characters - owned by Moore and co.) by Marvel Comics, and Moore, Gaiman, and everybody else saw that Mick Anglo (by then in his 90s) got the money from the sale. He died 2 years later; his wife died a few years after that.

That's a respectful way to treat a creator. Actually paying them what they were due for decades, not using their name or creations to bump your own sales.

>>85834228
>I think those of us working with Image owe it to ourselves to do the best we can with this publisher that allows for the freedom to do our best.
>Hold ourselves to higher standards to bring in and support creators who will enrich the culture of comics and push the medium forward.

Absolutely. He's praising the potential of Image, not saying they're the best. They obviously still aren't there yet and Brandon is pretty open about that too. But everything he's done with Prophet, 8house, and Island is clearly working with this ideal in mind.

>>85834228
Remember when Image ran that JET FUEL CAN'T MELT STEEL BEAMS comic?

>>85836993
>what the fuck does any of that jave to fo with now? Or what Grahm is tryin to say about moving forward.
Further, I can't think of two creators I give less of fuck about than Mc Farlane and Gaiman.

>>85834228
Is there any way to do a viable "shared universe" setting in the style of Marvel and DC while respecting creator ownership and creators' rights?
When most good books struggle to sell anyway, I can't imagine that having to pay royalties for every instance of character use would be viable. It'd put an end to cameos/crossovers and a serious dampener on team books, at the least.
And Marvel's suffered enough from losing the right to use Rom and the Micronauts; can you imagine if any creator was able to say "no, I don't want you to use this character any more" and pull the rug out from under them?

>>85837285
Luckily a shared universe is not a desirable thing.

>>85837285
Well, Invincible, Savage Dragon, Firebreather and Jay Faerber's superheroes have a sort of shared universe thing going on.

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Fuck it, storytime. The last comic Kirby ever worked on!

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>>85838920

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>>85838933

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>>85838948

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>>85838960

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>>85838992

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>>85839003

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>>85839016

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>>85839039

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>>85839051

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>>85839063

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>>85839077

Those 90s inks and colors kinda really ruin it, huh?

>>85836965
Angela was co-created by MacFarlane and Gaiman. And the only reason Gaiman got a credit was because he wrote her. Her design was obviously MacFarlane's.

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>>85839109

>>85834228
>can't draw
>I know I'll just cover up space with pointless words

WHO ELSE BUT IMAGE

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>>85839135
>>85839118
The army of inkers don't help either.

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>>85839155
>>85839171
Graham can draw farly well though

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>>85839192

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>>85839200

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>>85839227

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And that's all I've got.

>>85839109
>Gin Seng
Is this racist?

>>85839121
>he wrote her

He also wrote her character around Spawn, so its not like he was going to create Angela anyway if McFarlane didnt asked.

To me that felt just sooo pety for Gaiman to bitch about that character, maybe he was hurting for money.

>>85839331
I don't think he really cared about her. He just wanted Miracleman which he thought Todd owned and wanted to use her as leverage to get him. Which is why it's so fucked up that he somehow ended up with both.

>>85839331

Hell, (tee hee) if this shit happened during the Spawn movie era I would't be surprised that Gaiman was doing this shit because there were talks about a Sandman movie so he saw got the idea of making a Angela movie ride on the hype of the Spawn movie

>>85839388
>Miracleman

There is an explanation about why that comic got uber gritty and people didn't gave a fuck?

>>85834228
Hey more pretentious image shit

>>85839674
t. simple minded Big Two drone

>>85839701
Enjoy dystopian future book 3000 faggot

>>85839787
Enjoy your...
Wait, forget about it, joy isn't allowed in the big two.
Keep shitting yourself in rage while reading capeshit.

>>85836993
McFarlane had no way of knowing that the creator of Marvelman didn't get the money from the original sale or that the contracts didn't give him the rights, though. You're kind of phrasing this like McFarlane is an asshole, but it's far more likely that he just didn't realize.

Also, I love fucking Gaiman, I do. And I don't dislike Marvel at all, but his constant dick sucking for Marvel is really bizarre considering most of the artists and writers at Marvel currently want out as fast as they can get it. Marvel in this day and age is a stepping stone that you don't want to make the mistake of tying your property to lest it pushes you away and drops out of the sky with it. Most creators admit that the reason Marvel doesn't get very many new IPs isn't just Marvel pushing to keep the old workhorses around for recognition. It's also that none of them want to give Marvel their own personal work, because Marvel will take it and the rights and they'll never see that property again. It's fucked.

>>85839893
it's clearly a message in a bottle from an autist, anon.

>>85839305
Hey thanks for that!

I thought the (fucking cool af) second Super Powers Mini was the last thing he did.

>>85839155
>Brandon Graham can't draw
>I don't read comics

>>85839787
Enjoy generic capeshit book 3000 faggot

>>85836965
>Short of a contemporary quote from the man himself, it's pretty hard to prove he ever saw the money.

Mark Evanier confirmed Kirby got the check at a panel, so I'd think he'd know if Kirby ever saw the money.

File: Image+ 002-001.jpg (2MB, 2354x3056px) Image search: [Google]

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Here are Graham's other think pieces from Image+, for whoever cares.

>>85838933
>8 inkers
Did they just split the inking up between everyone so they all got the chance to ink Kirby? If so that's actually kind of cool.

>>85834228
>Image is totally the best comic book company in the world you guise.
Good thing they haven't lost 1/3rd of their meagre market share in recent months.

BIG THREE
I
G

T
H
R
E
E

>>85841100
That's only because of Rebirth, senpai.

>>85841121
They were losing market share even before rebirth

>>85841121
Sorry, but no.

>>85840992
>>85841022
>>85841050
I love these, I'm glad he always posts them online so I don't have to pick up the magazine they're printed

>>85834228
>My hope got the future is that every book would be someone's dream book. A book that the person or people are the most passionate about doing. A book they can abandon after three issues because people aren't reading and it probably won't be a movie or TV show. A book that's built a small fan base that's subsequently disenfranchised because the creatives make a new issue only two or three times a year when they feel like it. This is the unique place Image is.

>>85841000
They did.

The story goes is that Liefeld and his Extreme crew got invited to the Kirbys' home and Liefeld came across a lot of unpublished pages that Kirby did. Liefeld asked Jack and Roz if he could go get friends at Image to ink them and publish them, they accepted, Liefeld called up McFarlane, Lee, Larsen, etc and then that was how Phantom Force came about.

>>85841243
Sorry, but yes.

>>85841389
>got invited to the Kirbys' home
The way I understand it the Kirby house was always an open door, even after Jack died his friends and fans would still come and visit Roz

>>85834228
I'm pretty sure the Kirby estate has gotten way more from Marvel at this point

>>85841385
The schedule of the comics is on the creators themselves. If they only want to do three issues a year that's up to them. Most of Image's series are monthly with breaks in between arcs anyway.

>>85841591
Well that's not really his career

>>85836965
>since dear Brandon hasn't bothered to explain whether this was a single payment for a title from which there would be no further sales, whether it was compared to whole-life on other titles Jack had created, or anything complex like that
It literally says it was the biggest check of his career. That means it is the biggest check he ever received. I'm pretty sure Marvel didn't wait and give him one single check as Kirby was walking out the door.

Which Kirby comic is it that tears John Byrne a new one?

>>85841897
I know that Bynre is a villain in Savage Dragon along with Peter David

Maybe they're also in Destroyer Duck

>>85839331
I'm not a Gaiman fan, but I can confidently say without even looking into it that at no point since writing Sandman has Neil Gaiman been "hurting for money".

>>85841954
> Sandman

Let's be honest the comic money has to be chump change to the rest of his career

>>85841389
>Liefeld did something in his life that wasn't shithouse
You learn something new every day.

>>85841948
The one I'm thinking of riffs on Byrne's line about how proud he was to be a company man at Marvel and how Kirby was ungrateful for everything Marvel had done for him.

>>85840615
Hey, there was nothing wrong with Justice League 3000. 3001 sucked balls though.

>>85842055
That company man line is hilarious since now he's burned bridges with the Big 2. He made a big stink when X-Men the Hidden Years was canned and DC gave him the boot because he refused to stop talking shit about Superman Returns

>>85837285
>can you imagine if any creator was able to say "no, I don't want you to use this character any more" and pull the rug out from under them?
Well that's exactly why it's now Jessica Priest and not Chapel who killed Spawn.

>>85837285
>It'd put an end to cameos/crossovers
Not really

TMNT crossovered with just about everyone back when they were creator owned. Hellboy and Madman have had their fair share of it too

I mean just thinking about the amount of paperwork and dealing that had to be behind the scenes of Batman/TMNT compared to the way things used to be is weird. If anything being creator owned just facilitates crossovers/cameos

>>85842151
Did Jessica Priest ever actually appear in Spawn? I remember there was an arc about her in one of the spinoff series but was she ever in the main title aside from a retconning flashback?

>>85842151
If memory serves, Kirby's Byrne character is remarkable for being able to live without a spine, and can self-duplicate at will.

>>85842322
I quit reading Spawn back around issue 100 or so. After months of every issue having three pages wasted on reprinting a write-up about that stupid baseball Todd bought, they actually even had Sam and Twitch comment on it in-story and I just gave up mid-issue.

I do remember a scene of Priest having some guy tied to a chair while some potentially end-of-the-world bullshit was going on and noticing that the way the panel cut off just below her elbow and the odd dialogue of "You might even get off on the moment" made me think she was giving the guy a handjob. Don't know if that was in a regular Spawn issue or Curse Of The Spawn, though.

>>85842024
I wouldn't be surprised if it's one of his higher selling properties

>>85842556
>live without a spine
Yeah I remember that line, his spine was detachable

>>85836965
Hey dumbass he wasn't saying that Kirby had never made that much money before. He's saying it's the largest single check he ever got for a single published work.

people shit on image but theres not a better comic company currently

fantagraphics publishes anthologies and shitty autobiographical comics

>>85842151
It wasn't that he talked shit about the film, it was that he bailed on a project as it was officially solicited and they had to scramble to get a replacement on such short notice.

>>85846624
>>85842151
What actually happened:

Superman Returns got announced, then some sites reported the rumor that Superman may actually have a kid with Lois, among other things.
Byrne got pissed off about something from the Superman Returns news and bans all discussion of the film from his board.
Solicitations containing listings for Superman Returns prequels show up later and show that Byrne is artist of the Krypton prequel. Byrne at first defended it by saying that he was doing an adaptation of the '78 film part, but instantly announced that he was bailing on the project.
Since it means they needed to find another artist to do it in a short amount of time, DC probably got pissed off and that's why you don't see much DC work from Byrne after.

>>85841100
Market share means literally nothing. That is why Marvel and DC can have 75% of the market and maybe four or five good comics between them.

>>85834228
>TEXTTEXTTEXTTEXTTEXT
>texttexttext
>repeat
No.

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>>85843891
People shit on Fantagraphics because they don't know how varied its lineup is.

>>85848051
>reading hurts my head :(
lol