Image or Valiant: which was worse?

Image had some properties that I either appreciated from afar (The Maxx, Savage Dragon, Astro City) or morphed into things I enjoyed (Stormwatch, Gen13, DV8, WildC.A.T.S.). Valiant acquired Quantum and Woody and it instantly became terrible.

I hate to vote Liefeld but...

At the time they were both publishing, image were easily more horrible in every way - i remember quite a few old old school superhero comic bk fans being really into the 'traditional' values of the early, shooter-driven valiant comics, and some of the BWS stuff was certainly several cuts above the image big guns (todd, rob, jim)

but by now image have prob published more good comics than valiant ever did, and even by the time of that horrendous image/valiant crossover above, all the mainstream comic bk publishers were engaged in the same greedy and short-sighted publishing practices - market flooding, valueless 'collectibles' hyped by a compliant fan press, creative conservatism and artistic incoherence, despicable treatment of freelancers etc etc a pox on them all

I freely admit that I don't give a shit about Wildstorm as a shared universe until Warren Ellis got his hands on it.

poll is which one's worse DJP

lol oops

did I vote yet

um

I hope I voted Valiant, Stormwatch Prime/Red/Black 4eva

Voting for Valiant, but only because 1963.

I never really paid attention to these imprints in their heyday, I didn't get why the world needed even MORE shitty superhero comics. But Image put out Alan Moore's 1963 and later reprinted Chaykin's initial American Flag run so uh them I guess.

poll is which one's worse

― mucus has a right to children (Drugs A. Money), Thursday, August 22, 2013 2:59 PM

I was just thinking a kind thought about Harbinger the other day, and was vaguely bummed out when I checked back into superhero comics after 15 or so years of ignoring them and Valiant didn't exist anymore. But Ward is pretty much OTM.

market flooding, valueless 'collectibles' hyped by a compliant fan press, creative conservatism and artistic incoherence, despicable treatment of freelancers etc etc a pox on them all

ugh all this is true, this was such an awful time for so many comics

image was much worse, valiant had serious swag going on before they went all chromium ninjak bloodshot multiple covers.

i think both imprints had a window of "non-suckage" for two years max

i was one of those kids who grew up on everything image* and thought everything else was lame (the WildCATS cartoon was my gateway into comics around this time, though i'd read some of the eastman/laird tmnt [way different from what i was used to in the cartoon] and the death of superman before then), i never read much valiant - their shit always looked really stodgy to me. why would i read a comic about a guy in a red skirt who punches robots, he doesnt even have any pouches, etc.

it'd be intereting to go back and look at the valiant stuff with fresh eyes today, see if any of it looks better to me now than it did back then. most of the image stuff was horrible beyond reckoning obv, but their books became more interesting as they became home to a bigger creator-owned roster than just the big 2 exiles, and when they started throwing money at decent writers to do the flagship books. im sure he doesnt regard there work he did with any special fondness, but alan moore's wildcats run blew my mind a little back in the day.

*except liefeld, even a 9 y/o could see his shit stunk

Valiant acquired Quantum and Woody and it instantly became terrible.

quantum & woody was awesome. wish i still had my old issues. did they ever collect the whole series?

I pretty much checked out of comics before all this stuff started as I quit reading and sold my original collection summer of 1990 and didn't get start back reading until late 2006, so it is interesting to see how people regard this period of comics. To me, I have read some of the Spawn after being a fan of the cartoon and been reading some Savage Dragon and they are ok. They are definitely better than some of the Marvel/DC comics from the period and while aspects are pretty ridiculous, I can't say they are that much more wacky than your usual super hero comics.

I guess I read the first 30 issues or so in trade and to me it was very much like a lot of Marvel monster comics from the 70s, except non-code. The way McFarlane would use those big splash pages and then have all of those text pieces kind of reminds me of Don McGregor's comics.

Savage Dragon definitely has some goofy looking characters but Larsen definitely improves as the comic goes along and there is a sense of humor in the comic about some of those elements, even if it is kinda sophomoric at times. I'm kind of hooked on it at this point.

"after 15 or so years of ignoring them and Valiant didn't exist anymore."

They actually restarted the line a couple summers back. Haven't read the originals, but the X-O Manowar comic they are putting out I like pretty well. I've got the first few issues of Harbinger's restart and those were pretty decent too, but I missed a couple issues and haven't gotten anymore.

As for Image now, I think Robert Kirkman in the wake of his success has got quite a few people doing comics there. I'm reading in singles right now: Fatale, Lazarus, Saga & East of West. I'm a year or so behind, but I have read the first 70 issues of Invincible. I've gotten the first trade of The Manhattan Project and Prophet, both which were good weird fun. I also got the first two issues last week of Five Ghosts and Satillite Sam to check out. First issue of Five Ghosts was pretty good.

I loved Dragon and Maxx back in the day but could not find my way into Valiant AT ALL.

I shd prolley check out some of the more prestigious Wildstorm stuff shouldn't I?

Most of it's been done again in other places better. Maybe that initial run of The Authority would be good -- it's what Millar used as the basis for his later issues, and then The Ultimates. Those are both retreads of the Ellis issues, IMO

authority wasnt v good aside from hitch doin his thing

image was much worse but also much better than valiant

quantum & woody was awesome. wish i still had my old issues. did they ever collect the whole series?

no, and they've just started a new series without Priest and Bright, because fuck you you can't afford lawyers, that's why

authority was ok overall story-wise, but the format and plot scope were pretty influential for what was next

well, that and hitch actually being the artist for the ultimates

Ellis's Stormwatch run is one of my favorite storylines in modern (post-91) comics

yeah ellis' stormwatch run is what made me a fan of his, along with dv8. i think i'd find them hopelessly goofy if i went back and read them now, but its mad funny in retrospect that he used an Aliens crossover book to murder most of the cast

haha yeah, furthermore he murdered every field character that he didn't create aside from Flint and Swift

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I am taking the '90s' and the past tense in the question to mean it's a historical comparison over the period when they were in competition, in which case Valiant easily - like ear nash I'm now reading a lot more Image than I would have imagined 20 years ago.

Request For Schooling: all the mainstream comic bk publishers were engaged in the same greedy and short-sighted publishing practices - but at the time it always seemed that they were chasing the same group of shitty popular artist/writers, and Image seemed to be all of them at once, together with an intensifying of all those practices - or was 11-year-old me just too black-and-white about it? I know I basically swore off Marvel over the rest of the decade as well.

oh i just meant, marvel and dc were also flooding the market with gimmick covers and polybagged 'collector's item' - and companies like Dark Horse were coming up with their own line of work-for-hire superhero comics and multipart crossovers.

No hate for Malibu?? I went all-in on Prime but boy what a dorky bunch of comics.

have a smidgen of affection for malibu's line cos they gave work to old school dudes like steve gerber and steve englehart, but yeah, terrible guff from terrible ppl, mainly

Malibu's Ultraverse stuff had some reasonable titles! Some really horrible ones, too. I never really read pre-Ultraverse Malibu, but I remember they were somewhat also into the gimmicks of the time. There was some book that had a giant hole punched through the middle because... some character got shot

it was Jab, a humour anthology on Adhesive edited by Too Much Coffee Man's Shannon Wheeler, that was shot with real actual guns. #3 iirc? "Dear God... it's - it's not mint!"

There was one variant that wasn't shot, so didn't have a hole, and one that was shot with a shotgun, so couldn't properly be read.

Here we go:
http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/protectors5.jpg

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2011/03/04/comic-book-legends-revealed-303/

sheesh, figures

Wow, great to get all that info and the scans. Good link.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

http://www.4thletter.net/gavok/wwf/cover1.jpg

http://4thletter.net/2007/06/stone-cold-steve-ditko-presents-wwf-battlemania-part-one/

amazin'

Wow, great to get all that info and the scans. Good link.

it was only because I couldn't get a direct image url on phone-GIS! glad to hear it wasn't a loss

So Savage Dragon has gotten weird

How weird

what happened, did it get super political or something

The Dragon is no longer the star of his own book

my... my god

lol

"The Dragon is no longer the star of his own book"

I'd figure with Savage Dragon #200 about ten issues away, it's probably not a permanent move. The status quo of the comic seems to change every so often.