As we continue our celebration of the founding of Image Comics, we take a look at a documentary from Sequart and Respect Films detailing the founding of the publisher that aimed to be more than a publisher, but a place where creators could really flourish as entrepreneurs.
Every creative type wants to avoid the Siegel and Shuster fate. You know the story: decades of lawsuits for the creators of Superman to get the copyright to Clark Kent back from DC Comics, lawsuits that left both of them virtually penniless. Sadly, many of the iconic comic artists of the 20th century fought this uphill battle, some more successful than others, some to a lesser degree than others.
So the idea of a comics company that let creators be the captains of their own destiny, in theory, is a comics creator’s utopia. That was the idea of Image Comics, founded in 1992 by several Marvel writers that felt the constraints of work for hire at Marvel. They wanted creative freedom, they wanted the ownership of their creations. The “X-odus” (as it was nicknamed because many of the creators cut their comic book teeth on “X-Men” titles) was such a shock to the comics industry that Marvel’s stock took a beating to the tune of $3.25 a share (around $6.16 today when adjusted for inflation).
But did this grand experiment work? Obviously it did as Image Comics is still around to this day. But it wasn’t without its fits and starts in the first decade of business, which is what The Image Revolution details, albeit in a rather uneven way.
With a company that started as essentially seven different companies, combining these diverse stories together into a short (barely 90 minutes) package will leave some details out. That is expected. The film, though, tilts a lot more towards making the face of early Image Comics Rob Liefeld. Love him or hate him (there’s no in-between), you can’t deny the influence of his early guiding hand on the company, right down to how he came up with the name. (You’ll have to watch, but tennis legend Andre Agassi is involved.) He was the face of Image Comics, which shows in the various archival clips of his TV appearances. And spending time on his brash frat boy demeanor and early decisions that were not always in the best of business interests makes those low moments when Image struggled extremely impactful. (More than once I was shouting at my computer screen, “ROB YOU IDIOT!”) But highlighting the Liefeld influence diminishes the impact of some of Image’s other early founders: the quiet Jim Lee, the cool, collected big brother figure of Todd McFarlane. It leaves one wondering if perhaps this somewhat egalitarian corporate structure hurt the company more than helped it.
It also glosses over just why these men left to form this new company, highlighting those problems with the corporate models of Marvel and DC. There’s an assumption here that we all know what Siegel, Shuster, and many others lost in those early days of the House of Ideas and the Distinguished Competition. But how did that work for hire system directly affect McFarlane, Lee, Liefeld, and their partisans? Sure, they were upset about losing out on royalties for their characters, but there wasn’t a personal touch to those stories that would have given that gut punch to make you root for them. When you find out later that several did return to those big two for work, their early complaining feels hypocritical. But that’s business. (Incidentally, only one of those founders – McFarlane – is the only one not to have done work at Marvel or DC since founding Image.) And there’s the brief moments of Maximum Press, Liefeld’s questionable side imprint. It’s mentioned and then dropped like a hot potato, leaving me wondering if that was just poor editing or there’s more to that story that legally cannot be told.
There’s a few moments in The Image Revolution that touch on the rise and fall of the speculator market, and the role Image played in that movement. Again, you get the highlights without exploring what it meant for Image, and how it tied into business decisions. The desire to frame this history in the angle of personal drama rather than outside events hurts the documentary more than it helps, and makes more soap-operatic than informative. And the somewhat abrupt ending in the early 2000s, when Robert Kirkman burst into the scene, leaves out a decade of growth and diversification of the company, a time with some of its most iconic titles (that aren’t “The Walking Dead”): “Invincible,” “Chew,” “Saga,” and many more.
The documentary isn’t without its charms. Early 90s footage comes straight from VHS tapes, poor tracking and all, adding to the carefree attitude of the era, with some never-before-seen footage and plenty cringeworthy high waisted, acid-washed jeans. There’s a wide variety of interviews from other creators, journalists, and influencers in the comics industry, though I wished I had seen more of some folks than others, such as Grant Morrison and Heidi MacDonald. (MacDonald as the only woman in the documentary hits home just how uneven the playing field was for women in those days, and still is in many ways.) And the filmmakers took great care to set up interviews in good light and good audio, though there are some interviews near the end (particularly with Walking Dead cast members) that certainly could have used some better editing.
For a look into the early years of Image Comics, The Image Revolution does a decent job. But its desire to cover all things leaves some of those more interesting side quests — the speculator boom and bust, the Kirkman era — off to the side. If you want to start somewhere in your pursuit of the world of 90s comics, The Image Revolution provides a nice 101 course.
