brayzie

I only thought he did the covers! I gotta check those books out.

I like Portacio so that would be interesting to see his version of the Punisher. I can't see Larsen though, as his stuff is more superhero cartoony.

Josh-da-man

Portacio:







And Larsen:






Larsen's style here is a more realistic and gritty than the one he adopted after doing numerous Spider-Man gigs, though Scott Williams' inks might also be a factor here.

I was impressed enough with Portacio's Punisher art that I was pleased when I heard was going to be the new regular artist on X-Factor back in 1990.

Red Hood

Portacio suffered from his diabetes and ended up in a coma a little bit after founding Image from what I heard. He had to re-learn to draw after he recovered from his health issues

brayzie

Thanks for the images Josh.
That second cover by Portacio is very striking. I like it, but damn, it's awkward and silly. The Punisher is holding a high school student suffering an overdose, his right hand grasping her arm AND holding an empty vial of DRUGS that just happen to be spilling out, his left hand holding a recently fired gun AND cradling her neck, AND he's crying, while SIMULTANEOUSLY being shot at between his legs and just over both his shoulders.
Some nice covers excluding the "Ninja Camp." The boxing one is pretty good with the grittiness.

@Red Hood
That's awful what happened to Portacio. I always thought that he was just really late with his work like everyone else at Image. The crazy thing is that Wetworks #1 was a better read than the other X-Men copycats (Wild C.A.T.S., Cyberforce, and Youngblood). It was pretty off the wall, with mercenaries/soldiers encountering golden symbiote armor and vampires, but okay, I get it and I could follow it.
I still don't know what Cyberforce or Wild C.A.T.S was about.
I eventually understood that Youngblood was about a government sponsored superhero team that was concerned with PR, but I never got that from the comics. It just seemed like random X-Force-looking characters popping up in vague locations and shooting plasma blasts at each other. Apparently Vogue was supposed to be Russian and I never knew that until Alan Moore said that she returned to the former Soviet Union.
Man, so many of those Image comics were horribly written.

Timber

Shit, those Portiacio covers look really good. I was never a Punisher reader so I didn't know he had a run there like Lee did before X-Men.

fujishig

Yeah, Portacio's style is completely different now, understandably so. I loved his X-Factor artwork and was really looking forward to Wetworks at the time.

The interesting thing about the Image founders initial run is that of them all, really only Savage Dragon "survived" intact, and you could argue that Larsen has gone off the rails with it after so many years (you can also argue that the freedom he has to do whatever he wants is what Image was built on, and also that it was the least "super heroey" of the initial titles). Spawn is probably next closest, with McFarlane giving up drawing it early on but still keeping it close to the vest, but it's also one of the ones I was least interested in except for his art (though Capullo and Tony Daniel were decent follow ups). Spawn was the one that was the first to have guest creators, but that also created all kinds of problems.

Lee I feel did the best by basically giving over Wildstorm to other writers. His WildC.A.T.S. morphed into something completely different, and then Wildstorm went into all kinds of cool directions (Stormwatch to Authority, then Planetary, etc.) before being bought by DC. I always thought it was a mistake to integrate Grifter and co. into the DC Universe but the current reimagining of the universe in Wildstorm is decent. Rob did a similar thing giving over Supreme to Alan Moore and it's like one of the lost classics that never gets reprinted for whatever reason; then I don't know if it's because he lost the rights or what but in recent years his Glory and Prophet IPs churned out books that were completely different form superhero fare and more in line with Image's modern day lineup.

davidh777

This. I grew up with Sal on the Defenders, MTU, etc., and his stuff is Bronze Age comfort food to me. I never liked his being in the thread title.

brayzie

Yeah, their comics got better once they let established and/or talented writers have free reign.

I read Wild CATS with Lodbell and Charest. I still don’t know what was going on but the dialogue was great as was the art.

I can’t say enough good things about Moore taking Liefelds rip-offs and using them to basically just write DC characters. Sneaky MFer that Alan Moore is. I noticed that there’s constant humor and parodying of tropes. I wonder if he did that in case DC sued. “It’s a parody!”

PhantomStranger

A lot of Alan Moore's best work deconstructed traditional superhero comics. You see it even after he left DC and was making his own decisions.

RonG617

Well everyone is in luck. Rob is planning on putting out a new Prophet book. He is calling it issue 50 even though the series ended with issue 45. But if you waited for him to do the actual 5 issues he wouldn't ever get to 50. Just like Bloodwulf, Brigade kickstarter, and various Youngblood minis that got one or no issues done before he bailed.

fujishig

Wait, he's doing a continuation of the original Prophet book ,after it was already reimagined in a great way as a space epic?

RonG617

Yes, he has to always muck something up after someone does something good with one of his properties...post Alan Moore

John Pannozzi

The reason Portacio was late with launching Wetworks back in the 90s had to do with his sister's illness/death. He went into a coma later, in 2000. Either way, poor dude.

Red Hood

I don't know if the pandemic is making him an even worst troll, but he's burning his bridges with a lot of folks in the industry with comments like this. Donny Cates, who Liefeld had praised before, was hurt by another of Rob's stupid tweets where he says that everything Marvel has put out in the past several years is crap. One thing that I've learned in this industry is that you may not like the product of your peers, but you don't put it down in public. A lot of people have protected Rob when he's publicly criticized but it seems more and more he's going to the deep end.

fujishig

I'm sure there are other tweets specifically about Marvel, but I can confirm after looking it up in Wikipedia, the 2000s were a crappy decade for Liefeld-led work. Two failed reboots of Youngblood, five issues of Killraven with Robert Kirkman that were never published, and Onsloaught Reborn. So maybe he only collects his own stuff?

whotony

He took a shot at kirkman about an hour ago.



He might have finally lost it.

fujishig

His response wasn't in the tweet you quoted for some reason but here:


But I want to say he's saying he liked it but it doesn't mean the era isn't crappy? Or maybe he has lost it.

whotony

Rob’s response was right under 9tp5nerds comment. Click the link I posted and it was right there.

PhantomStranger

Hard to say what's going through Rob's head most of the time when he tweets. I've always thought it crushed Rob on some level that many fans mock his art. It can't be easy going from superstar comic book artist to many trashing your work.

John Pannozzi

I think that's it. Liefeld's colleberated with Kirkman several times. Plus, Kirkman is a fan of Liefeld's work and helped to mend bridges between him and his former partners at Image.

slop101

I'm with Rob on this one - Kirkman may be successful, but I honestly don't think he's a good writer, at all!

Overrated is putting it mildly. I'd say he's practically the writing equivalent to Rob's art.

PhantomStranger

Kirkman is wildly overrated. He was in the right place at the right time.

fujishig

I dunno. I will always love Invincible, and even though I didn't read it all the way through (yet), the Walking Dead is one of the most successful independent comics of all time and really helped define Image. I wouldn't exactly call him the Liefeld (or Sal Buscema) of writers.

If you want a writer who's works were once revered but which haven't aged well, I give you Mark Millar.

brayzie

Maybe he's trying to brand himself as the bad boy of the comics industry. Stuff like this gets people talking about him. Maybe he'll swing this into a podcast/YouTube channel.

Josh-da-man

I thought The Walking Dead was generally great (though I don't think he was able to track the landing) , but everything else I've read by Kirkman has fallen flat for me. One trick pony.