Attention comic artists to be.... *DELETED*
By
Absinth_Incubus,
Posted on: 2008-08-10 24:43 in Multi-Media Fan Creations
I don't really think Image's, or Liefeld's for that matter, successes had much at all to do with the quality of the writing or art. Image, as well as Valiant, were started during the ridiculous era of "comics as collectibles", as opposed to being things one enjoys. There was a goodly long stretch when Wizard magazine included the preposterous "Comic Book Portfolio" section, wherein varied "collectors" showcased their never opened, hermetically sealed comics.
Image and Valiant were the new kids at that time, and used scads of silly "promotional" tricks such as variant covers, die-cut covers, hologram covers, etc., all to try to sell the same issue multiple times. And sadly, it worked. It's pretty obvious that the people willing to buy all 6 covers of, heck I dunno, Ninjak number 1 or something didn't really care about what happened between the covers.
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I don't really think Image's, or Liefeld's for that matter, successes had much at all to do with the quality of the writing or art. Image, as well as Valiant, were started during the ridiculous era of "comics as collectibles", as opposed to being things one enjoys. There was a goodly long stretch when Wizard magazine included the preposterous "Comic Book Portfolio" section, wherein varied "collectors" showcased their never opened, hermetically sealed comics.
Image and Valiant were the new kids at that time, and used scads of silly "promotional" tricks such as variant covers, die-cut covers, hologram covers, etc., all to try to sell the same issue multiple times. And sadly, it worked. It's pretty obvious that the people willing to buy all 6 covers of, heck I dunno, Ninjak number 1 or something didn't really care about what happened between the covers.
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See, now I don't have to say it, because this was going to be my point.
/signed
Heh, I'll admit I got caught in that a little bit, now I go for just the variants that I like the art on.
And yes while Image did use those tactics before, for the most part most of the original founders are trying to put out books and series people will like, some of them hit and some of them don't. I've found a few that I'm not sure I normally wouldn't have picked up if I didn't subscribe to Image and the various companies they've helped grow, Top Cow, Aspen MLT, etc.
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Image and Valiant were the new kids at that time, and used scads of silly "promotional" tricks such as variant covers, die-cut covers, hologram covers, etc., all to try to sell the same issue multiple times. And sadly, it worked. It's pretty obvious that the people willing to buy all 6 covers of, heck I dunno, Ninjak number 1 or something didn't really care about what happened between the covers.
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Well Image and Valiant were hardly unique in the multi-cover specials. X-men's (not Uncanny X-men) first issue had 6 covers. Shortly after, the Phalanx Covenant cross over story featured 2 covers for every book, one with hologram cards in bedded and a regular cover without. I just recall these because they were the books I read at the time. I'd be very surprised to learn DC was doing things any different around that time.
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Oh good grief. All comic companies were doing it. I recall several Spider-Man titles with different colored covers and different hologram images, the Death of Superman in the black plastic bag... they were all over the place with gimmicks and "KEWL" new things that the artwork went to complete crap. The covers would look awesome and the interior art was deformed and vile. The stories in many of them weren't even that good.
And sadly I still own many of them. Bagged and boarded, even.
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Oh, heck yeah, everyone was doing it. I think there are some differences between the Claremont/Lee X-Men book, the Death of Superman story arc, and what Image/Valinat were doing, though.
The first two were (obviously IMO) a quality book for a while (at least for the first story arc), and a legitimate media event. The Image and Valiant books, OTOH, were (again, IMO) subpar by comparison, not to mention the fact that they were horribly unprofessional when they first started up. What was the wait time between issues of Portacio's "Wetworks", 6 months? Eight? When those fellas worked for one of the Big Two, they'd have just been canned and replaced. When it happens on creator owned books, well, whaddyagonnado?
Stealing is one thing. Quality is another.
In terms of his quality, well I laughed my [censored] off reading the criticism of his work. But from a market perspective, he had to have been doing something right. I mean, yeah you can flaunt whatever standards you want but at the end of the day somebody was buying these books. I certainly wouldn't hold his art up as a great, or even good example of how to produce a comic. But on the other hand, I don't think he should get extra scorn points for being successful.
Image was a new line, so people could look at the art and decide whether or not they thought it was worth buying. There are so many worse incidents out there where a comic suddenly changes staff and the writing and art goes down the toilet.
I'm still emotionally scarred from when Jack Kirby left Machine Man and was replaced by Steve Ditko and writers who immediately removed half of Machine Man's weaponry from his body for no apparent reason. Or when John Byrne left The Hulk and was replaced by Al Milgrom and the book went from completely awesome to sucktastic in the span of one issue.
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