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What happened to Spawn?

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What happened to Spawn?

Old 07-25-20, 08:36 PM
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Re: What happened to Spawn?

Originally Posted by Josh-da-man
A couple of other clouds in that perfect storm were Valiant Comics and the collapse of sports cards.

Valiant Comics become "hot" and their early releases were scarce, which caused prices to skyrocket on almost all of the pre-Unity issues. And, then when people saw things Magnus Robot Fighter #1 (first appearance of Turok), Harbinger #1, Rai #3 and #4 (rarest early Valiant issues), and others, they started stockpiling new issues like crazy.

And the collapse of the sports card industry in the early 90s (was there a Baseball strike? Or just over-saturation?) led baseball card dealers to start dabbling in comic book retail and speculation.
The Valiant thing is interesting to me because of the many different things that made them famous in the industry. To me, they were Image before Image. They started with Jim Shooter, and immediately licensed 2 properties that you would think would have made them successful from the get go with Nintendo and WWF and for some reason (maybe the oversize golden age size, almost magazine looking format and the higher retail price) they weren't giving the return on investment Jim expected. Then, Shooter goes out and get the licensing rights of the Gold Key characters, which had been dormant since the 60s, and that gives an immediate boost to the publisher by having Magnus, Solar, and later Turok paired with established writers and artist like Don Perlin, Bob Layton and Barry Windsor-Smith and then they create a bunch of entertaining new characters with Rai, X-O Manowar, Shadowman, Eternal Warrior, Harbinger, Archer and Armstrong and the company gets the indy buzz that hadn't been heard since TMNT. Then, they get the immediate exposure on Wizard and the company goes and explodes in popularity. Turok, Bloodshot and Ninjak (with a very young Joe Quesada) get their own titles and in the midst of this, Shooter gets kicked out of his own company, they start overprinting their books, lose some of the strong creative talent and then Acclaim buys them and basically ruins the company the same way they ruined their video games. Valiant had it all one moment and the next thing they die because of corporate ineptitude. They were part of the bubble in the sense that Wizard pushed them and their books from 92-94 were overprinted and stupid LCS started hoarding them, but in contrast to Image, Valiant books were pretty good in terms of story and they came out on time for the most part.

On a side note, I have come close 3 times of going to work for Valiant over the past 5 years only for plans to change at the last minute and me having to refuse the offer.

As for trading cards, the business became saturated by 1994, the baseball strike didn't help matters, but at the same time basketball cards began to flourish. What killed the industry was the greediness of Upper Deck and later Topps. Regular series cards were worthless from the get go and the ones to get, like Kobe rookie card, were scarce, put in premium sets that had like 4 cards per pack and were worth between $7 to $20 bucks per pack that would usually be filled with secondary stars and role players. Beckett didn't help matters as they became as bad as Wizard in selling bullshit. I collected trading cards up to 1998 when Jordan retired. After that, most collectible sets that came out were extremely overpriced and people got tired of paying hundreds of dollars for cards of rookies that didn't pan out, like Kerry Wood, Mark Prior, Ben Grieve, etc.
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brayzie (07-25-20)
Old 07-25-20, 08:38 PM
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Re: What happened to Spawn?

Originally Posted by Josh-da-man
A couple of other clouds in that perfect storm were Valiant Comics and the collapse of sports cards.

Valiant Comics become "hot" and their early releases were scarce, which caused prices to skyrocket on almost all of the pre-Unity issues. And, then when people saw things Magnus Robot Fighter #1 (first appearance of Turok), Harbinger #1, Rai #3 and #4 (rarest early Valiant issues), and others, they started stockpiling new issues like crazy.

And the collapse of the sports card industry in the early 90s (was there a Baseball strike? Or just over-saturation?) led baseball card dealers to start dabbling in comic book retail and speculation.
I remember Valiant Comics being hyped up in Wizard. I dismissed it as some nerdy-looking superheroes with unexciting art. And yet I still bought Bloodshot #1, Turok #1 and Magnus #25 with the metal foil cover. Turok was the only one that I remember being interesting.

I did manage to get a hold of an early issue of Magnus Robot Fighter years later, #3. It wasn't amazing, and the art was average, but I really like how the story was easy to follow, and you can clearly tell what's going on. The artist actually drew backgrounds in the majority of the panels. All those things are a rarityin most early Image comics.


Originally Posted by fujishig
As far as the Image guys defecting... I think overall most will agree that that was a good thing. At the time there were a lot of headaches with late books and copycat art, but if they had stayed they would have been catered to by Marvel and I think creatively it would have gone about the same, probably a little worse in those initial years. But Image morphed into something much bigger in terms of creator owned comics which led to a lot more diversity, both within and outside of the superhero genre (without Image we don't get stuff like ABC Comics, Planetary, Astro City, etc.)
Strong competition for Marvel and DC was definitely a good thing in my opinion too, and I suppose it took the most popular artists at the time to do that. I don't think any creator-friendly comic publisher ever put a hurting on the Big Two like Image did. But my problem with it is that by the time Image Comics got "good" the damage to the industry had already been too great. I was a big comics reader by the time Spawn and Youngblood were being put out, but Image Comics as a whole was exploiting the spectator craze at the time by over saturating the market with new titles with flashy art and gimmicky covers, but with awful writing, and seemingly no discipline or editorial influence.

I got into comics because I loved the fun storylines and characters. But by the time of The Death of Superman and the formation of Image Comics there was no actual fun in reading most of these books. I bought at the time:

Brigade #1
Supreme #1
Cyberforce #1
Wild C.A.T.s Trilogy #1
Deathblow #1
Cyberforce #0
Darker Image #1
Youngblood Strikefile #1
Bloodstrike #1
Tribe #1
WildStar #1
Shaman's Tears #1
ShadowHawk #1
Wetworks #1
The Maxx #1
Hellshock #1
1963 #1
and more...

Out of all those issues, only two I actually enjoy reading. So all that money and time, down the drain. And Marvel and DC were also going downhill.
Marvel had a bootleg Jim Lee on X-Men and the stories seemed to become even more out there. Amazing and Adjectiveless Spider-man was pretty lame with Peter's parents coming back and Venom turning into a good guy, while Carnage was the EXTREME! replacement for Venom. With lesser art as well.
DC was really drawing out the Death of Superman with World Without a Superman, and then Reign of the Supermen, and the Return of the Supermen. That stuff is mostly unreadable to me and the worst representation of Superman. Batman being killed off in his own way was also drawn out for what seemed like forever. With lesser art.

Actually reading comics just wasn't fun anymore and I left. I didn't come back until 2001 when Jim Lee started illustrating Batman on a monthly basis.
Old 07-25-20, 08:38 PM
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Re: What happened to Spawn?

By the way, a reminder that tonight at 11PM on SYFY is the McFarlane doc.
Old 07-25-20, 08:50 PM
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Re: What happened to Spawn?

Originally Posted by Red Hood
Shooter gets kicked out of his own company, they start overprinting their books, lose some of the strong creative talent and then Acclaim buys them and basically ruins the company the same way they ruined their video games. Valiant had it all one moment and the next thing they die because of corporate ineptitude. They were part of the bubble in the sense that Wizard pushed them and their books from 92-94 were overprinted and stupid LCS started hoarding them, but in contrast to Image, Valiant books were pretty good in terms of story and they came out on time for the most part.
The crazy thing is that grocery stores and drug stores still had spinner racks at the time, and I remember seeing Valiant/Acclaim Comics along side Marvel, DC, and Image. Kids weren't trying to buy those comics. It's like, there was this golden opportunity to attract a larger audience in the early to mid-90s and every company dropped the ball.

As far as Jim Shooter goes, that was some bullshit. It seems like he helped make the company what it was, only to get fired. I still have to go back and re-read the backstory on that. He seems like he may have been an asshole to work for, I don't know. But it seems to me that when he was in charge at Marvel and Valiant they both had great eras. And I really respect his approach to storytelling from an editorial standpoint.
-You can't redeem a superhero who commits mass genocide.
-Said superhero has to stay dead.
-Every issue is someone's first issue.

His Legion of Superheroes run in the mid-2000s was not ground breaking or anything, but it was very fun. He didn't indulge in the fad of decompressed storytelling, and instead made sure that each issue was chock full of story and each page had multiple panels. Each issue was definitely worth the cover price.


On a side note, I have come close 3 times of going to work for Valiant over the past 5 years only for plans to change at the last minute and me having to refuse the offer.
Can you say in what capacity you were going to work for them?

Old 07-25-20, 09:11 PM
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Re: What happened to Spawn?

Originally Posted by morriscroy
Not to go too far off topic.

If I had to guess, the sports card bubble was driven by stuff like Wayne Gretzky's rookie card? (IIRC, from 1979).
Here's an interesting article on baseball card collecting in the 80s and 90s.

https://slate.com/culture/2010/03/th...rd-bubble.html

Good God, you could find/replace a few key words in a word processor and have an article on the comic book industry.

The article mentions the baseball strike of '94 hurting card sales, but I remember ball card dealers hawking comics in the early 90s.

One flea market I went to had a card dealer with a bunch of copies of Terror, Inc. #1 he was trying to sell at inflated prices. One thing I always found funny was that card dealers always had their comics in binders like cards, with the comics in full-sized "pocket" style pages.

The early 90s had a huge comic book boom going on; lots of retailers popping up, Marvel selling eight million X-Men #1s, the Image creators, Valiant booming, the Death of Superman. And Marvel had already started dipping into the trading card market, so it's not surprising that baseball card dealers started taking notice.

The one really hot card I remember at the time was Bo Jackson. I remember being at one of those aforementioned flea markets when a kid grabbed a Bo Jackson rookie card off of a dealer's table, and the dealer took off after him. The dealer was a little person, and I was quite impressed by how quickly he moved. His ball cap even went flying off of his head while he was running, like he was a cartoon character.
Old 07-25-20, 09:17 PM
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Re: What happened to Spawn?

Originally Posted by brayzie
I remember Valiant Comics being hyped up in Wizard. I dismissed it as some nerdy-looking superheroes with unexciting art. And yet I still bought Bloodshot #1, Turok #1 and Magnus #25 with the metal foil cover. Turok was the only one that I remember being interesting.

I did manage to get a hold of an early issue of Magnus Robot Fighter years later, #3. It wasn't amazing, and the art was average, but I really like how the story was easy to follow, and you can clearly tell what's going on. The artist actually drew backgrounds in the majority of the panels. All those things are a rarityin most early Image comics.




Strong competition for Marvel and DC was definitely a good thing in my opinion too, and I suppose it took the most popular artists at the time to do that. I don't think any creator-friendly comic publisher ever put a hurting on the Big Two like Image did. But my problem with it is that by the time Image Comics got "good" the damage to the industry had already been too great. I was a big comics reader by the time Spawn and Youngblood were being put out, but Image Comics as a whole was exploiting the spectator craze at the time by over saturating the market with new titles with flashy art and gimmicky covers, but with awful writing, and seemingly no discipline or editorial influence.

I got into comics because I loved the fun storylines and characters. But by the time of The Death of Superman and the formation of Image Comics there was no actual fun in reading most of these books. I bought at the time:

Brigade #1
Supreme #1
Cyberforce #1
Wild C.A.T.s Trilogy #1
Deathblow #1
Cyberforce #0
Darker Image #1
Youngblood Strikefile #1
Bloodstrike #1
Tribe #1
WildStar #1
Shaman's Tears #1
ShadowHawk #1
Wetworks #1
The Maxx #1
Hellshock #1
1963 #1
and more...

Out of all those issues, only two I actually enjoy reading. So all that money and time, down the drain. And Marvel and DC were also going downhill.
Marvel had a bootleg Jim Lee on X-Men and the stories seemed to become even more out there. Amazing and Adjectiveless Spider-man was pretty lame with Peter's parents coming back and Venom turning into a good guy, while Carnage was the EXTREME! replacement for Venom. With lesser art as well.
DC was really drawing out the Death of Superman with World Without a Superman, and then Reign of the Supermen, and the Return of the Supermen. That stuff is mostly unreadable to me and the worst representation of Superman. Batman being killed off in his own way was also drawn out for what seemed like forever. With lesser art.

Actually reading comics just wasn't fun anymore and I left. I didn't come back until 2001 when Jim Lee started illustrating Batman on a monthly basis.
Right, that's why I say that the Image guys leaving wasn't the cause of it. Maybe their rise to fame was, but what followed was a dearth in quality comics (not completely) from DC and Marvel as well. The art especially, sometimes I question what we were thinking with some of those artists.

I thought Valiant was awesome: the build up of a single universe was really good, they got some great talent (BWS, Lapham, etc.) on it, they didn't expand too fast and by the time Unity rolled around I thought it made a lot of sense. They would probably have been helped by the tpb boom that we're going through now where everything is collected, because they could certainly tell a story. Shooter can be maniacal but I don't blame their fall on him, if anything him leaving really hurt them creatively.

Years and years later, Crossgen did a similar thing but crossed over to other genres, but got a bunch of great creators to do a bunch of books that tied in together but could be read separately, and I think they just ran out of money or made some bad investment decisions or something. If you think about it, all those guys folded: Malibu/Ultraverse, Valiant (though they resurrected, the Dark Horse superheroes, even Image just stopped focusing on superheroes and most of the superhero centric lines like Wildstorm went back into the fold. I'm not sure if part of it is just Marvel and DC (but mostly Marvel) just flooding the market with titles or if it's just hard to compete with them.
Old 07-25-20, 09:29 PM
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Re: What happened to Spawn?

Originally Posted by brayzie
The crazy thing is that grocery stores and drug stores still had spinner racks at the time, and I remember seeing Valiant/Acclaim Comics along side Marvel, DC, and Image. Kids weren't trying to buy those comics. It's like, there was this golden opportunity to attract a larger audience in the early to mid-90s and every company dropped the ball.

As far as Jim Shooter goes, that was some bullshit. It seems like he helped make the company what it was, only to get fired. I still have to go back and re-read the backstory on that. He seems like he may have been an asshole to work for, I don't know. But it seems to me that when he was in charge at Marvel and Valiant they both had great eras. And I really respect his approach to storytelling from an editorial standpoint.
-You can't redeem a superhero who commits mass genocide.
-Said superhero has to stay dead.
-Every issue is someone's first issue.

His Legion of Superheroes run in the mid-2000s was not ground breaking or anything, but it was very fun. He didn't indulge in the fad of decompressed storytelling, and instead made sure that each issue was chock full of story and each page had multiple panels. Each issue was definitely worth the cover price.



Can you say in what capacity you were going to work for them?
From what I've heard and read, Jim Shooter is an asshole. He would use his size (6'8") to try and intimidate his co-workers and underlings. His bullshit wasn't tolerated at Marvel but at Valiant that was used as an excuse to fire him. From what I've been told, the reality was that Shooter got fired for standing up against with business partners when it came to creator rights. Shooter felt that the actual creators of the characters should be getting more money and ownership of their creations, while the other business partners at Valiant felt the they should own 100% of the characters and the creators should be content with the contract pay. Shooter was being a hard ass at Valiant too in order to keep books coming out without missing deadlines but it wasn't as bad as it became at Marvel. Valiant business partners were the same ones looking for a big paycheck and using the characters as company assets and that's why they quickly sold the company to Acclaim just 2 years after Shooter was out.

Shooter got fired at Marvel too when the New Universe experiment failed miserably and a lot the talent had moved to DC cause they couldn't work for Jim anymore.

As for me, I was going to work in the marketing and helping as needed in finance.
Old 07-25-20, 09:43 PM
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Re: What happened to Spawn?

Yeah, Shooter was a legendary bad boss to work for in the business. Shooter couldn't tolerate artists and writers missing deadlines at all, which is just a fact of life in the comics business with creative types.

The failures of Valiant and Crossgen more or less prove that any new superhero comic book universe can't sustain multiple books, no matter how good, without popular Marvel or DC characters around carrying the line when creative ditches are hit.
Old 07-25-20, 09:56 PM
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Re: What happened to Spawn?

Originally Posted by brayzie
I remember Valiant Comics being hyped up in Wizard. I dismissed it as some nerdy-looking superheroes with unexciting art. And yet I still bought Bloodshot #1, Turok #1 and Magnus #25 with the metal foil cover. Turok was the only one that I remember being interesting.

I did manage to get a hold of an early issue of Magnus Robot Fighter years later, #3. It wasn't amazing, and the art was average, but I really like how the story was easy to follow, and you can clearly tell what's going on. The artist actually drew backgrounds in the majority of the panels. All those things are a rarityin most early Image comics.
I first got into Valiant when I was at a flea market, and, after hearing a bit about Valiant but unable to find their books (I was using mail order at the time for new comic books, and couldn't browse in-store), found a dealer selling new issues.

I ended up buying Shadowman #1 and #2, Harbinger #5 and #6, and Solar #9 and #10.

And I was blown away. The books were kind of retro (very un-Lee/McFarlane/Liefeld) but still felt contemporary. And had really nice painted line art on good quality paper. Everything just felt special. I was hooked, and spent the next sixty days tracking down all of the back issues I could find. I actually tracked most of them down at cover price, before Valiant exploded in popularity a few months later with the Unity event. (I was able to find everything except Harbinger #1, and still don't have that book.)

What really appealed to me about Valiant is that it presented a compacy, cohesive universe, with consistent quality over all of the titles. And a really tight, neat continuity that spanned thousands of years; X-O Manowar was from 2000 years ago, Magnus and Rai took place two thousand years in the future, and characters like Eternal Warrior and Armstrong tied it all together.

And, yeah, I was shocked when Shooter got shitcanned the month after Unity landed with a huge success. I still stuck it out for about a year, getting every title they put out (including duds like Secret Weapons, Bloodshot, and Turok that I didn't think advanced the macro-story much) before losing interest.

I did go back and get all of the issues I missed up to the "Birthquake" fiasco; they were easy to find in the quarter bins. They still did a pretty decent job of keeping up a cohesive universe until Acclaim sank it all with Birthquake.

Strong competition for Marvel and DC was definitely a good thing in my opinion too, and I suppose it took the most popular artists at the time to do that. I don't think any creator-friendly comic publisher ever put a hurting on the Big Two like Image did. But my problem with it is that by the time Image Comics got "good" the damage to the industry had already been too great. I was a big comics reader by the time Spawn and Youngblood were being put out, but Image Comics as a whole was exploiting the spectator craze at the time by over saturating the market with new titles with flashy art and gimmicky covers, but with awful writing, and seemingly no discipline or editorial influence.
I remember how disappointed I was when I read Youngblood #1 (and all of the other early Image titles). The writing was just awful; they felt like a bunch of pin-ups and random portfolio pages that poor soul had to attempt to come up with a script for.

I remember being hyped to read Youngblood, and was expecting for something that redefined superhero comics the way that Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns did. And what I got was a flipbook with two shitty, incomplete stories with even shittier artwork. I think I stuck with most the Image books for about five issues, hoping they would improve. I did stick with Spawn until, maybe #12, and the issues by Moore and Gaiman.

It was weird that I enjoyed the Valiant books so much more than the Image books of the time, considering that the Valiant titles looked like something your dad would come up with, while Image was the kind of stuff your friends would create.

I often wonder how Image would have gone down if, instead of going out on their own, the Image guys would have co-created (and owned) their properties with actual writers. Jim Lee and Alan Moore's WildCATs. Todd McFarlane and Neil Gaiman's Spawn. Rob Liefeld and Peter David's Youngblood.

I doubt that would have worked though, because the Image artists wouldn't have been able to keep anything resembling a schedule, and Todd ratfucked Neil Gaiman over after he wrote one issue of Spawn.

There was also a strong anti-writer sentiment in the early days of Image (didn't most books that had writers list them in the credits behind the letterer and colorist?), which is another reason it wouldn't have happened.

Yes, there, was anti-writer sentiment and did it ever show...
Old 07-25-20, 10:08 PM
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Re: What happened to Spawn?

Originally Posted by Red Hood
By the way, a reminder that tonight at 11PM on SYFY is the McFarlane doc.
Bring it back to Todd McFarlane I'll try to check this out.

I haven't been interested in his interviews. He doesn't come across as the most eloquent or insightful guy in my opinion, but maybe it was just some bad videos I saw.

I gotta say he probably had the best approach at the time of Image Comics' initial launch. No gimmick covers, no multitude of spin-offs. The story was easy to follow and had a good sense of atmosphere. He even successfully courted some of the best writers at the time to contribute to the series. And in hindsight, I like how the title character and supporting cast were black: Al, Wanda, Terry, Cyan, and Granny Blake. I don't know his motivation, but as a younger reader at the time, it didn't come across as a specific effort by the author to encourage diversity. These characters just happened to be black and they were likable and relatable.

Then he ventured out into toys, and at one point his company was the only one putting out high quality action figures of every type of character at an affordable price. I think NECA overtook them awhile ago along with all the licenses, but McFarlane Toys still puts out quality figures. They even had the Attack on Titan license recently. He got some flack for getting Clive Barker but not the Hellraiser license, but I thought the figures they came up with through their collaboration was worth it. Probably not as profitable as being able to sell a Pinhead figure, but I think the Tortured Souls line and getting an actual Clive Barker story to go with it was more fun.
Old 07-25-20, 10:39 PM
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Re: What happened to Spawn?

Originally Posted by PhantomStranger
Yeah, Shooter was a legendary bad boss to work for in the business. Shooter couldn't tolerate artists and writers missing deadlines at all, which is just a fact of life in the comics business with creative types.
I can't really get a decent read on Shooter. He is, ultimately, a divisive figure in the industry, with some people fiercely loyal to him (see those who followed him from Marvel to Valiant, from Valiant to Defiant), and others who hate his guts. He did do a lot of good for both Marvel and the Industry -- I believe that him picking up Transformers and G.I. Joe brought a whole new generation of readers to Marvel and comics in general -- but he also left a scorched Earth behind him. Don't know him, and I've never met him, and have no idea what he would have been like to work with. He certainly didn't piss off everyone who worked under him.

The sense I get from his time at Marvel is that he tended to be a micromanager, and could be fickle and mercurial when applying his standards.

Ultimately, I think he was fired from Marvel because of an internal power struggle that he was on the losing end of, and the abject failure of New Universe provided his enemies the ammunition they needed to send him packing. From what I recall, it wasn't as much a matter of pissing off creators so much that they burned him effigy in their backyards (like John Byrne), but he was angering a lot of executives by throwing them under the proverbial bus to gain favor among Marvel's new owner, New Line Pictures. Corporate bullshit politics.

The reason Shooter was fired from Valiant is a similar power struggle among Shooter, his partners, and the investment capital firm that bankrolled the company. From what I recall, Valiant was started by Jim Shooter, Winston Fowlkes, and Steve Massarsky with backing from Triumph Capital. Once Valiant finally hit it big (the Unity Crossover), Massarsky and Triumph wanted to sell the company and cash out (Fowlkes had already been let go by then), while Shooter didn't. And he was outvoted and forced out.

The sense I get from Shooter is that he's a corporate animal. He can get a seat the big table, but he can't keep it. He's always at the losing end of a power struggle. Considering he was able to get both Valiant and Defiant bankrolled, it seems like he's skilled at networking with money people, which is impressive for someone who started out as a writer and artist.

Last edited by Josh-da-man; 07-25-20 at 10:48 PM.
Old 07-25-20, 10:43 PM
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Re: What happened to Spawn?

Originally Posted by Josh-da-man
And I was blown away. The books were kind of retro (very un-Lee/McFarlane/Liefeld) but still felt contemporary. And had really nice painted line art on good quality paper. Everything just felt special. I was hooked, and spent the next sixty days tracking down all of the back issues I could find.
I was a shallow snob at the time, but the way you describe the overall result of Valiant seems spot-on. The modern coloring and quality paper with a more traditional style of comic illustrating was a really nice balance.

I remember how disappointed I was when I read Youngblood #1 (and all of the other early Image titles). The writing was just awful; they felt like a bunch of pin-ups and random portfolio pages that poor soul had to attempt to come up with a script for.
I missed out on buying it when it came out but used some birthday money to buy the first three issues at about $10 a pop. I was happy with my financial investment that would eventually make me rich but I don't remember actually caring about the story or making too much sense of it. Guy gets attacked at mall with his girlfriend by random super-psychos, and a black super-powered Punisher-clone bursts onto the scene on a motorcycle shooting laser pistols. And somewhere else, some X-Force-looking characters led by Jack Kirby are shooting their way out of a complex of some kind being pursued by X-Force-looking villains.

The reverse side of Youngblood #1 had the other team going into Iraq and one of their telekinetic/telepathic characters bends the rules and kills Saddam Hussein. The leader goes "Aw, jeez, didja have to do that?" Everyone else just shrugs their shoulders.

It was weird that I enjoyed the Valiant books so much more than the Image books of the time, considering that the Valiant titles looked like something your dad would come up with, while Image was the kind of stuff your friends would create.
I only wish I had been more open minded and read Valiant when it first came out, but to be fair, I didn't even know about them till Wizard and I think Unity had already passed by then.

I often wonder how Image would have gone down if, instead of going out on their own, the Image guys would have co-created (and owned) their properties with actual writers. Jim Lee and Alan Moore's WildCATs. Todd McFarlane and Neil Gaiman's Spawn. Rob Liefeld and Peter David's Youngblood.
If you want to see what it would be like, check out Rob Liefeld's Supreme when Alan Moore started writing it and eventually took over the entire Youngblood universe. If they had put out THOSE comics in '92-'93, I think everything would have been much different, for the better. That's what Image SHOULD have been.
Alan Moore rebooted Supreme, Youngblood, Glory, and even did his own Crisis On Infinite Earths called "Judgement Day."

Moore also dabbled a little with Wildstorm stuff but what little I read, it wasn't very good.

There was also a strong anti-writer sentiment in the early days of Image (didn't most books that had writers list them in the credits behind the letterer and colorist?), which is another reason it wouldn't have happened.

Yes, there, was anti-writer sentiment and did it ever show...
I remember reading some of the Image founders comments at the time, and yeah, they didn't seem to have much respect for the writers' contributions to comics. X-Men #1-3 was beautiful to look at, but it was also a good story, classic Claremont, classic X-Men. When Jim Lee started to exert more influence on the story and start scripting it felt more like action figures interacting with each other. I was a big X-Men and Jim Lee fan at the time and even I wasn't buying the issues with Ghost Rider and Longshot appearing.

People would complain about McFarlane's writing ability in Spider-man and later Spawn and he was constantly overly defensive and even a little antagonistic towards the criticism in the letters column. "If you don't like it, just stop reading!" It's just too much to run a publishing company, maintain the legal responsibilities creative property, pursue licensing opportunities, illustrate 22 pages every month, AND also plot and script a good story every single month.


Old 07-26-20, 07:55 AM
  #88  
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Re: What happened to Spawn?

Any one know if SyFy will put the documentary up on their YouTube channel eventually? I haven't had cable in 8 years.

Last edited by Ringmaster; 07-26-20 at 08:05 AM.
Old 07-26-20, 08:08 AM
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Re: What happened to Spawn?

Originally Posted by Josh-da-man
I can't really get a decent read on Shooter. He is, ultimately, a divisive figure in the industry, with some people fiercely loyal to him (see those who followed him from Marvel to Valiant, from Valiant to Defiant), and others who hate his guts. He did do a lot of good for both Marvel and the Industry -- I believe that him picking up Transformers and G.I. Joe brought a whole new generation of readers to Marvel and comics in general -- but he also left a scorched Earth behind him. Don't know him, and I've never met him, and have no idea what he would have been like to work with. He certainly didn't piss off everyone who worked under him.

The sense I get from his time at Marvel is that he tended to be a micromanager, and could be fickle and mercurial when applying his standards.

Ultimately, I think he was fired from Marvel because of an internal power struggle that he was on the losing end of, and the abject failure of New Universe provided his enemies the ammunition they needed to send him packing. From what I recall, it wasn't as much a matter of pissing off creators so much that they burned him effigy in their backyards (like John Byrne), but he was angering a lot of executives by throwing them under the proverbial bus to gain favor among Marvel's new owner, New Line Pictures. Corporate bullshit politics.

The reason Shooter was fired from Valiant is a similar power struggle among Shooter, his partners, and the investment capital firm that bankrolled the company. From what I recall, Valiant was started by Jim Shooter, Winston Fowlkes, and Steve Massarsky with backing from Triumph Capital. Once Valiant finally hit it big (the Unity Crossover), Massarsky and Triumph wanted to sell the company and cash out (Fowlkes had already been let go by then), while Shooter didn't. And he was outvoted and forced out.

The sense I get from Shooter is that he's a corporate animal. He can get a seat the big table, but he can't keep it. He's always at the losing end of a power struggle. Considering he was able to get both Valiant and Defiant bankrolled, it seems like he's skilled at networking with money people, which is impressive for someone who started out as a writer and artist.
Shooter's blog, which I don't think is updated any longer and is also not https compliant, is a good read. Obviously everything is from his perspective but as long as you go in knowing that, there's a ton of stuff there, from his start in comics on the Legion to, well, his last stint on the Legion.

02 Early Life ? JimShooter.com

The guy started in comics at 13 writing a script for the Legion. There's the stuff about Transformers that everyone knows from "The Toys that Made Me" and lots of other goodies, like his claim that the defining moment (unfortunately) of Hank Pym's life was probably a mistake.

As far as whether if Image started with more emphasis on writers would it have turned out better... I can't really say that it would have. The speculator boom hit the industry hard, sure, but we remember it because sales were through the roof. We've had a ton of what I would consider incredible runs by writers and artists in the comic book space since, things that I would hold up as classics, and yet the industry is where it's at. I don't think the boom was sustainable, and I don't think the popularity was sustainable, and it has almost nothing to do with the relative quality of the comics. But that's probably a discussion for another thread (and we've had that discussion before).
Old 07-26-20, 11:12 AM
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Re: What happened to Spawn?

Originally Posted by Ringmaster
Any one know if SyFy will put the documentary up on their YouTube channel eventually? I haven't had cable in 8 years.
You can watch it here for free now, without having to log in

https://www.syfy.com/videos/101-todd...ke-hell-i-wont
Old 07-26-20, 12:02 PM
  #91  
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Re: What happened to Spawn?

Originally Posted by brayzie
It seems that's how these things always work out. All those comics I bought purely because they were #1, the 100th issue, Death of-, -went insane and turned evil, -got back broken, etc, all turned out to be worthless.
Back in the day, I remember the precedents of "death of", "turned evil", "went insane", etc ... special etc ... type of issues which spiked up in price, was stuff like: the death of Elektra in Daredevil #181 and Spiderman's black costume after coming back from the "Secret Wars 1" planet in Amazing Spiderman issues #252 to #258 (or #259).

After noticing these issues having significant price spikes in those days, I also kept an eye out for similar types of issues. Though in the end, I didn't spot anything obvious that I was willing to speculate on.

The only thing I bought which I speculated on in those days, was the first several issues of X-Factor. (Unfortunately my copies were no longer in pristine mint condition after 30+ years).
Old 07-26-20, 02:23 PM
  #92  
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Re: What happened to Spawn?

Originally Posted by Ringmaster
Any one know if SyFy will put the documentary up on their YouTube channel eventually? I haven't had cable in 8 years.
The doc is mostly Todd and his friends promoting Spawn #300. Not unwatchable but very self-serving.

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