Talk:Image Comics

Adjustment to claim of first titles to hit the shelves
Edited the section that mentions the first titles to hit the shelves to include Larsen's Savage Dragon. This title was shipped the same week as Spawn's first issue, and both were three weeks before Lee's WildCATs title. -sapbuckets

Image characters are rip off of Marvel characters
ShadowHawk is Wolverine and Darkhawk Spawn is Spiderman and Venom WildCats/Cyberforce/Youngblood is a rip off of X-force

I think the only thing original image produced was the Maxx and Wetworks.

The "history" section especially is full of pro-Image/anti-Marvel rhetoric. I will work on this when I get some time. -leigh (&#966;&#952;&#8057;&#947;&#947;&#959;&#962;) 02:42, Dec 4, 2004 (UTC)


 * It's basically just a summary of the last external link. The first paragraph might not be too friendly towards Marvel, but the rest of the section isn't exactly friendly towards Image. - Lifefeed 17:00, Dec 4, 2004 (UTC)

I and new to the site but you also have Marvel bias from the editors on this wiki. - nerosmoke 13:00, july 5, 2016 (UTC)

"Cotton" quote
RE: "Supposedly, the meeting became intense and, when the artists threatened to leave Marvel, Stewart said the company could "always find someone else to pick the cotton," an analogy that compared the artists to slaves."

This is a highly incendiary quotation, and possibly libelous. What is the citation for this, and is it proper to quote someone without citation? As a journalist, I know the word "supposedly" is not considered a defense against libel.


 * It appears to be true, though. The Image Comics Tenth Anniversary hardcover contains a timeline of Image Comics events, and the above incident is included. The direct quote is this: "Liefeld, McFarlane and Lee meet with Marvel CEO, Terry Stewart, who offers them the Epic imprint. McFarlane rejects offer...colorfully (tells Stewart where to shove his offer). Liefeld leaves the meeting early. Stewart tells them he will not '...kiss (their) asses. You boys don't get that anyone can pick the cotton.' (McFarlane will, hereafter, refer to Marvel as 'The Plantation.' )" --Michael24 01:50, 19 January 2006

Age of Bronze
Not all of Image's titles involve poorly-rendered numbskulls in spandex walloping each other with power blasts. For years, Eric Shanower's "Age of Bronze" series has painstakingly chronicled the historical Trojan War...which is, of course, the original tale of numbskulls walloping each other. But it is quite well-rendered.

Cleanup wrong/bad links
The "Notable series published" section has a lot of misdirected links. In some cases, ambiguous title names are pointing to the wrong article, so I'm either pointing it to its comic-related article, or if there currently is no such article, I'm de-linking it. I've finished the first column, will work on correcting the rest a bit later. ---Jackel 00:46, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Thank you. --Chris Griswold 06:16, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Better-Known Series
Hi there, I just wanted to mention that I added ShadowHawk to that list. That series is sometimes described as one of Image's "flagship" series on the Image Comics website. Plus it is still around and selling relatively well compared to other Image Comics series. Feel free to accept this revision or not. Thanks. --ShadowAvatar 18:36, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Problems with the presumption that Image is seperate from Marvel...
Check any Image comic, the last time I did was Spawn #18. Image is a subsidiary of Malibu comics, which is a subsidiary of Marvel Comics. The whole thing was a publicity stunt to give popular artists a chance to make even more money for Marvel. Maize5 01:10, 27 April 2007 (UTC)Brett Harris/Maize5


 * No, It was not. Malibu DID have an association with Image at the begining, but only as "official keeper of records". And in any case, Malibu wasn't bought by Marvel until years AFTER Image became it's own company.


 * I am confirming the poster above me as image is owned by dc comics right now. -nerosmoke


 * That's absolute nonsense. The ownership of Image by its (currently five) partners is well documented. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 23:29, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
 * DC Comics bought Wildstorm, which was Jim Lee's Image Comics imprint, in 1999. But DC doesn't and never has owned Image. Klintron23 (talk) 18:11, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Shattered Image ?
What was "Shattered Image" minisers--Brown Shoes22 01:34, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

All tease, no please
"Image's success has significantly changed the position of creators in the comic book industry,"

Shouldn't that be expanded upon and supported, or removed?

How many studios remains
Which studios remains at Image today? Is it correct that these are Todd McFarlane Productions, Desperado Publishing, 12 Gauge Productions, Beckett Comics and Top Cow Productions? If so, this should clearly be mentioned. 193.217.192.160 13:35, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Obergeist.JPG
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BetacommandBot 20:26, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Wb80cover.jpg
Image:Wb80cover.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

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BetacommandBot (talk) 03:23, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

citation v. external link for TCJ article
The Comics Journal article, "The Image Story," which is already listed in the external links, corroborates the "two provisions" in the Founding section, currently marked as needing a citation. (It also corroborates the previously discussed "cotton" quote, BTW.) If it is added as a reference, is it redundant to leave it in the external links? --Sloop Jon (talk) 01:22, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Should be fine - unless those parts are the be-all and end-all of the article. ntnon (talk) 03:22, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Split
The article has reached the point where the titles need their own article in line with the other big publishers. List of current Image Comics publications (and any such "current" list) is unwise as it relies on being constantly updated and it dates rapidly so I'd suggest merging that into the new publication article list.

This would then give the article room to expand into a better, more rounded piece that we can push on to higher quality (as befits its status as one of the biggest comic publishers). It will also mean that the titles can be properly formatted and other useful information added (as you can see at List of DC Comics publications, List of Marvel Comics publications, List of Wildstorm titles, etc.) so both parts will benefit from the split. (Emperor (talk) 23:31, 22 September 2008 (UTC))


 * I'll just assume the lack of replies is the same as "go for it" and will do the split later. (Emperor (talk) 13:39, 4 October 2008 (UTC))

Image copyright problem with Image:The Maxx 01 cover.jpg
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Megalodon character?
Article has "Superheroes and teams from the Image Universe" which includes "Megalodon". (Link went to article about shark that lived in prehistoric times so changing link to "Megalodon (comics)". I've never heard of this Megalodon character before, although the closest i can find at comicbookdb.com is a character named Megaldon-7 who apparently is in DC Comics' Strange Adventures (2009) #6 and #7. --EarthFurst (talk) 18:52, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Claremont
This article said "This development was nicknamed the "X-odus", because several of the creators involved (Claremont, Liefeld, Lee, Silvestri, and Portacio) were famous for their work on the X-Men franchise." But Claremont didn't abandon Marvel in order to create Image. He abandon one year before and didn't create his own studio nor company. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.122.13.174 (talk) 07:07, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
 * That doesn't change the fact that this was called "X-odus", or the reason why. Claremont was "involved" in it, even if he (like Portacio) didn't join them to become a partner in the company. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 16:10, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Merger proposal
Merge the non-notable, poorly referenced Cyberforce (and any others) to here. GenQuest "Talk to Me" 19:13, 25 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Cyberforce has had improved sourcing so I think it should be kept as a solo article. Dwanyewest (talk) 21:47, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I think Cyberforce does a passable job of establishing notability. But more importantly, I don't see how the content of the article could be properly integrated into Image Comics, especially not without creating undue weight problems.--NukeofEarl (talk) 16:16, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Dinner with Dave Olbrich?
The opening paragraph of the "Founding" section talks of a dinner with Dave Olbrich, but the story is never finished. What does this have to do with the founding of Image? We can only guess. If someone has more information, please include it (with citations, of course). Otherwise, it should probably removed. Matt Thorn (talk) 20:56, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
 * His company Malibu was the de facto publisher for the initial batch of Image comics (mentioned later in the article). -Jason A. Quest (talk) 01:11, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified
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Current ongoing series / Former notable series
I'm unconvinced of the value of the "current ongoing series" section. In theory it should change literally every month, and it isn't always clear (without reading them all or knowing the creators) when a series is no longer "current" or "ongoing": cancellations and planned endings aren't necessarily announced. I haven't seen a new issue of A Distant Soil or Age of Bronze in a long time... so how exactly do we know they're still ongoing? A new title might be listed as "#1" with no plans to ever publish a #2, or maybe there are but sales are poor so it never happens. They don't clearly distinguish between limited and ongoing series, either. We don't try to maintain such a list for any other comics publisher, for all these reasons.

The "former notable series" section is less problematic and more encyclopedic in nature, because it doesn't try to be complete. But it still suffers from a total lack of sources. I don't necessarily doubt that Protectors Inc. was published from 2013–2014, for example... but how notable was it? Even the titles that have WP articles aren't necessarily significant to Image Comics as a publisher: they might have been just one more book Image put out for a year or a few, and never collected or reprinted it. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 01:37, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Seeing no objections, I've remove the "current ongoing" section. I added some of them to a more general "notable series" section, but that needs clean-up. I started that clean-up by removing any series that doesn't have an article, since that implies a lack of notability. The section needs some kind of sourcing. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 12:36, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Market share
I recently added a caveat to the claim that Image is the third-largest comic book publisher, since the numbers come from direct market sales, not the overall market for comics and graphic novels, which would also include digital sales and the book trade, where Marvel, DC, and Image compete with the likes of First Second and Scholastic.

Another issue is that the most recent direct market market share numbers I can find are from the first quarter of 2020, when Diamond Distributors was still the primary source for all direct market comics. https://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2020.html https://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2021.html

During the pandemic, however, DC dropped Diamond and instead went with two new distributors, Lunar Distribution and UCS Comic Distributors. Then in 2021 Marvel moved to exclusively distribute to the direct market through Penguin Random House. Other publishers have started distributing through Lunar as well. Image just went exclusive with them today.https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/54187/image-goes-exclusive-lunar-direct-market-distribution Fragmented distribution makes calculating market share harder, which I assume is why Comichron hasn't compiled any sort of market share numbers since 2020.

Someone with paid access to ICv2 or Book Scan might be able to provide more up-to-date market share numbers. I suggest we wait until the end of this year and remove the claim about market share from the entry if more current (at least through the end of 2021) data is not available by then. Klintron23 (talk) 18:28, 24 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Or caveat the statement in some way such that it says it was the third-largest comic book publisher or obtained the third-largest market share in 19XX/20XX, etc. (I always found those statements a bit tenuous, and they've just been left there for years now... Similar statements are also at IDW Publishing and Dark Horse Comics.)-2pou (talk) 18:52, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I found a free ICv2 article from January, 2023 with market share data from the ComicHub point-of-sale system. This appears to be what ICv2 is using for market share data now. On one hand, it draws from a smaller sample than using the pre-order numbers from the distributors. On the other hand, it provides actual sell-through data, which is more indicative of what consumers are actually buying. At any rate, this is the most up-to-date market share information I can find anywhere and certainly better than relying on data from Q1 2020. Klintron23 (talk) 01:18, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Todo
I've seen "todo lists" on a few other articles, so I thought one would be helpful here. I plan to do as much of this as I can but would welcome help and feedback.

• Add necessary citations where still needed and/or remove unsupported statements.

• Founding: Clean-up, plus add a few more details: the Executioners ad, Huntsman announcement, and Fabian Nicieza's criticism of the founders' exit from Marvel.

• Development (Maybe this should be renamed "Early Years"?): Clean-up, plus a few more details: 1993 "Image Implosion," Deathmate, 1963, Image X-Day, Images of Tomorrow.

• Diversification: Expand. More on Valentino's Shadowline non-line (what were those early books that were unsuccessful?). More on the early 00s. More Walking Dead/Kirkman, more Saga. As it expands, maybe split into more segments (ex: Valentino-era, Larsen-era, and Stephenson-era).

• A section with more recent developments: Image United, Savage Dragon # 225, AMC Secret History of Comics episode, Spawn # 300, more on unionization.

• Maybe more on awards won by Image creators.

• Eventually perhaps a Controversies section for the early criticism of the company, late books/Deathmate issues, and unionization. Klintron23 (talk) 00:31, 27 May 2023 (UTC)


 * I've done most of what was on this list now. Most of what I didn't end up adding I felt weren't notable enough to include (Image X-Day, Images of Tomorrow, Fabian Nicieza's criticism, etc.).
 * I'd love to see someone take a pass at updating the Accolades section, though. Klintron23 (talk) 15:47, 18 July 2024 (UTC)