What if... Image at Marvel

[jemurr]

What if back in 91 or whenever the powers that be and McFarlene, Leifeild, Lee, etc actually came to an agreement and stayed at Marvel, and were allowed to launch their own Marvel imprint?

(If I'm not mistaken, the Image guys were offered the Epic line, but for whatever reason it was not enough)

What if Spawn, Savage Dragon, The Maxx, and the other big hits were released under a Marvel imprint called Image, while the key artists still worked on Marvel books like Spiderman and the X-men?

Given that they already would have a company structure, would the artists have more time to develop both Image and Marvel books? Would the company structure already in place push them to not have the books so late? If so, would that have any effect on the "crash of 93?"

During the mid 90s Marvel and DC did a ton of crossovers, would they also do stories with Image? Would we finally see Spiderman/Spawn? What about more DC/Image? Would Marvel still end up buying Malibu, and if so, would the Ultraverse and Image world meet?

What about now? Would the books still be published? Would books like Walking Dead and Witchblade be published under Marvel? Wildstorm studios under Marvel instead of DC? (Thundercats meets Spiderman, instead of Superman?) Hell would they have had League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and from there have been able to convince Alan Moore to write Marvel Universe books?

Obviously these things wouldn't happen, because, well they didn't. The perception at the time was that Marvel didn't respect their artists and take them seriously, and there was the whole creators rights thing.

I'm just saying, if some circumstances had been different, where Marvel actually agreed to a creator owned line with the Image crew, I wonder how differently things would have been.

Good reading......

[Erik Larsen]

I imagine it wouldn't exist--at least not in a substantial way. The "Image deal" is too good--too sweet--for Marvel to put up with. Why would they want to make 2¢ when they can make $2? Ultimately, their best option (had they taken on Image) would be to limit our growth and get us back on books where they would make the bulk of the profits. It wouldn't be in their best interest to have Image be healthy--just as they aren't really making a big effort to expand the Icon line (and why few of the Icon creators are getting the "Image deal") because the money they get out of the deal is so small (the creators get most of it).

[bird]

i'm glad marvel didn't have image as a imprint. it would have been buried due to not making huge profits, much like the epic line did.

it's important to have creator owned comics and image making a strong 3rd in the comic industry proves this. it's unfortunate that dark horse has been printing less and i miss DHP.

with large corporations buying up independent publishers the diversity of books of all kinds is becoming smaller and smaller. i guess i should boycott DC (and to a lesser extent marvel, since i don't buy as many of them) the same way i boycott barnes and noble and borders and shop at locally owned book stores instead. but i'm weak and have been taken in by the story lines of classic superhero characters.

i don't really have any big point to this. i'm just rambling on and on. so to tie it back into the main point, i'm glad image is there to fill the 3rd publisher gap. it might have happened anyway, perhaps a different publsiher would have filled the gap, maybe aliens created life on earth.

as always look to the underground and self published for all the newest and i most interesting things.

[Alex A Sanchez]

During the mid 90s Marvel and DC did a ton of crossovers, would they also do stories with Image? Would we finally see Spiderman/Spawn? What about more DC/Image? Would Marvel still end up buying Malibu, and if so, would the Ultraverse and Image world meet?


There have been plenty of Image/Marvel and Image/DC crossovers. Two Savage Dragon/Superman books have been made, Invincible guest-starred in an issue of Marvel-Team up, the Wildcats have had adventures with the X-men, Gen 13 have fought Generation X, etc.

Would the company structure already in place push them to not have the books so late? If so, would that have any effect on the "crash of 93?"


I don't think so. The crash of 93 was based mostly on people treating comic books as investments rather then entertainment. Remember poly-bags? People would buy multiple copies of poly-bagged issues: one for an investment and one to read. People used to buy holo-foil covers of books they didn't read and did not plan to read simply because they thought it would be worth money. Shadowhawk #1 was the perfect example of this. That book was worth so much damn money just because of the cover- and people still bought it! (The real shame was that these same people did not continue to buy these series: Shadowhawk II was one of my favorite storylines of the early Image era.) The death of Superman was the nail in the coffin: since the issue was publicized in every frickin major newspaper, non-comic readers came out of woodworks to buy copies of the damn thing; thinking that Superman was finished as a character (WHOOPS! Any regular comic reader could have told you he was coming back- especially considering the parallels with Jesus that Donner threw into the Superman movies). People began to realize soon after that the only people buying comics at inflated prices were the other investors. No one was making much money on them, and suddenly it wasn't "cool" to be reading comics anymore. It was ironic that the character who ushered in the era of superhero comics was the one that put an end to it (as least for the time being).