Image Comics

Image Comics is an American comic book publisher. It was founded in 1992 by seven high-profile illustrators as a venue where creators could publish their material without giving up the copyrights to the characters they created, as creator owned properties. Along with DC, Marvel and Dark Horse, Image Comics is one of the four largest comic book publishers in America.

Its best-known series include Spawn, Invincible, The Walking Dead and several books from Top Cow Productions including Witchblade and The Darkness''.

Founding
In the early 1990s, several popular Marvel Comics illustrators grew increasingly annoyed that artwork and characters they created were being merchandised, with the artists — working as freelancers — receiving only page rates for their work and modest royalties. In December 1991, a group of these illustrators approached Marvel president Terry Stewart and demanded that the company give them ownership and creative control over their work. Accounts vary as to whom this group included, but it is generally accepted that Todd McFarlane and Rob Liefeld were among its leaders. Marvel did not meet their demands.

Several months later, seven illustrators (as well as long-time X-Men writer Chris Claremont) announced the creation of Image Comics. The company's original line-up included Todd McFarlane (known for his work on Marvel's Spider-Man), Jim Lee (X-Men), Rob Liefeld (X-Force), Marc Silvestri (Wolverine), Erik Larsen (The Amazing Spider-Man), Jim Valentino (Guardians of the Galaxy), and Whilce Portacio (Uncanny X-Men). This development is sometimes called the "X-odus", because five of these creators (Claremont, Liefeld, Lee, Silvestri, and Portacio) were famous for their work on the X-Men franchise. Image's initial titles were solicited and produced through Malibu Comics, a publisher that had specialized in low print-run black-and-white creator-owned and licensed comics since 1986. Malibu provided administrative, production and marketing support for the launch of the initial titles.

Founding provisions
Image was formed under two provisions:
 * Image does not own a creator's work; the creator does.
 * No Image partner would ever interfere, creatively or financially, with any other's work.

Image itself owns almost no intellectual property except the company trademarks: its name and its logo.

In the spirit of the second rule, each Image partner founded his own studio, which published under the Image banner but was autonomous from any central editorial control. Because Portacio did not opt to become a full partner in the company, Image originally consisted of six studios:


 * Extreme Studios, owned by Rob Liefeld
 * Highbrow Entertainment, owned by Erik Larsen
 * ShadowLine, owned by Jim Valentino
 * Todd McFarlane Productions, owned by Todd McFarlane
 * Top Cow Productions, owned by Marc Silvestri
 * Wildstorm Productions, owned by Jim Lee

Development
The first Image comic books to arrive in stores were Liefeld's Youngblood, Larsen's The Savage Dragon, McFarlane's Spawn, and Lee's WildC.A.T.s. Propelled by the artists' star power and the eagerness of comic book collectors to get in early on the "next big thing", these series sold in numbers that no publisher other than Marvel, DC or Valiant Comics had achieved since the market's drastic decline in the 1970s. (The company experienced lesser successes with Silvestri's Cyberforce, Valentino's Shadowhawk and Portacio's much-delayed Wetworks.) In fact, by mid-1992, the Image titles' success led to Malibu grabbing almost 10% of the American comics market share, temporarily moving ahead of industry giant DC Comics. By the beginning of 1993, Image's financial situation was secure enough to publish its titles independently, and it left Malibu.

Some of the founders' studios came to resemble separate publishers, each with several ongoing series set in a shared universe. (At first there were indications of a universe shared by all the studios, but these decreased as the studios developed their own directions.) The use of freelancers to write and/or illustrate series that were owned by the Image partners led to criticism that some of them had reproduced the very system they had rebelled against, just with them in charge instead of a corporation. Image partners who did not take this approach assumed a neutral position on it, in keeping with the requirement that none of them had any say in how the others' studios were run.

Some of the Image partners used their studios to publish the works of other independent creators, offering them the chance to do so while owning the copyrights and maintaining editorial control over their own series. Other publishers had offered similar deals to creators, but this was not typical in the industry. These included Sam Kieth, who created The Maxx, Dale Keown, -- who created PITT, Jae Lee, who created Hellshock, and Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson and Alex Ross, who created Astro City. Later, some established self-published series also moved to Image, such as Jeff Smith's Bone and Colleen Doran's A Distant Soil. Image's popularity and sales figures soon came to rival Marvel and DC's.

Scheduling problems
The partners also had little business experience and found themselves overwhelmed with the responsibilities of managing their respective studios. Soon the company became notorious for falling behind its publishing schedule. For example, WildC.A.T.s, which was intended to be published monthly, had only four issues in nine months (#29-32, Apr '96, Jun '96, Sep '96, Jan '97). Retailers' orders of newly-solicited issues were typically based on the sales of recent issues, but as the issues shipped weeks and even several months late, fans' interest tended to wane, leaving retailers with inventory they couldn't sell. In response, retailers cut orders even further to reduce their risk. This significantly hurt the studios, which were each responsible for their own cash flow and profitability.

Larry Marder era
In late 1993, the partners hired Larry Marder to act as "executive director" for the publisher. Valentino quipped in interviews that Marder's job was literally to "direct the executives". He developed better financial planning and had some success in disciplining creators to deliver their work on time, in part by insisting that retail orders for new issues would not be solicited until the books had been illustrated, usually ensuring they would be ready to ship when promised.

By the mid-1990s Image series such as Spawn and The Savage Dragon had proven themselves as lasting successes (the former frequently topping the sales charts for months in which new issues came out), while new series such as Wildstorm's Gen¹³, and Top Cow's Witchblade and The Darkness were also successful. Image had established itself as a strong competitor in the comic book industry, although critical reactions were often still less than enthusiastic.

Internal dissent
Clashes between partners began to harm the company. Several of the partners complained that Liefeld was using his power as CEO of Image to promote and perhaps even to financially support his own separate publishing company Maximum Press. Silvestri withdrew Top Cow from Image in 1996 (although he retained his partnership in the company). This was due in part to Liefeld attempting to "steal away" Silvestri's talent pool, which included then Witchblade superstar artist Michael Turner. Silvestri was infuriated by this and decided that to prohibit this practice from continuing he would pull Top Cow out. In September 1996, Liefeld, before he could be voted out, resigned and Silvestri would later return.

Wildstorm's Cliffhanger imprint, established in 1998, was also a commercial success, launching high-selling creative-owned properties for new stars such as Image artists Humberto Ramos, J. Scott Campbell and the recent Marvel transfer Joe Madureira. Though the great success at the top of the sales charts was marred with production delays, the imprint continued to attract more star talents such as Chris Bachalo, Joe Kelly, Kurt Busiek and Carlos Pacheco. When Jim Lee sold Wildstorm to DC Comics in 1999, citing his desire to drop his responsibilities as a publisher for more creative work, the Cliffhanger imprint moved along but the popularity of the line was already showing signs of fading, with many of its titles missing production schedules one after the other.

A promised "10th Anniversary" book for Image, in which each of the four remaining partners would create a story featuring their signature characters, experienced delays reminiscent of the period ten years earlier, and the Image Comics #1 hardcover was eventually re-solicited for release in November 2005.

Jim Valentino era
Meanwhile, Valentino, who had become less active in the company, began using his position as a partner to publish a number of "indie" titles by other creators, in a deliberate attempt to diversify Image's output and its image. Although most of these series — ironically dubbed the "non-line" because of their lack of commonality — did not sell well and were soon canceled, they introduced an increasingly important business model for the company: offering other creators the same total-ownership terms the partners enjoyed, but taking a fixed fee upon publication for the company's administrative costs. This practice increased after Marder left the company in 1999 and Valentino became publisher and manager of "Image Central", the business unit independent of any of the studios.

Erik Larsen era
In February 2004, Larsen replaced Valentino as publisher, largely continuing existing business practices. As of 2005, the majority of books Image publishes in a given month (in terms of titles, not necessarily sales) are non-studio productions. McFarlane's Spawn and related titles, his McFarlane Toys line, and Silvestri's Top Cow imprint remain a substantial segment of Image's total sales. Larsen's Savage Dragon continues as the longest-running owner-created title by an Image partner. Valentino has returned to creating comics with his Shadowline imprint, including a new incarnation of ShadowHawk. The company retains its position as the third largest publisher in the North American direct market (after Marvel, DC, and sometimes Dark Horse Comics),under Valentino but had declined to fifth largest publisher under Larsen.

Image has been collecting and re-publishing some of Jack Kirby's last two creator-owned series at Pacific Comics, which originally arose as a film screenplay. They have been working on putting together a hardcover collection of Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers and Silver Star.

In addition, Between 2000 and 2005 Image published some of Karl Altstaettler's and Robert Napton's creator-owned series at Hyperwerks. The series are: Deity and St. Angel.

Eric Stephenson era
Larsen stepped down as publisher in July 2008 and executive director Eric Stephenson was promoted to the position. Shortly afterward, Robert Kirkman, whose series The Walking Dead had emerged as one of the most successful black and white comics of the past twenty-five years, and whose Invincible had become one of the few commercially successful original superhero series in recent years, was named a partner, the first non-founding member.

The Man of Action team have already released titles through Image but in February 2009 will launch "Man of Action Month" with three original titles and an updated release of Codeflesh from Joe Casey and Charlie Adlard. The new titles include The Great Unknown from Duncan Rouleau, Steven T. Seagle and Marcos Mateu's Soul Kiss and Bad Dog by Joe Kelly and Diego Greco.

Haunt, an ongoing series created by Todd McFarlane and Robert Kirkman, launched on October 7, 2009. The comic is written by Kirkman with layouts done by Greg Capullo, pencils by Ryan Ottley, and inks by McFarlane.