favourite Image Comics founder

Next you're gonna tell me you didn't buy a pair of button fly 501's after seeing how nicely they compliment a session of excessive crosshatching.

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

I would have voted Larsen. I read about 150something issues of Savage Dragon and at its best it was some of the best superhero comics I've read without ever getting into the visionary territory of Kirby, Ditko, Gene Colan and a few others. It could be very funny and on a couple of occasions surprisingly sad. He had a good letters page, he always preferred to print the more negative feedback and answer it patiently. He can be refreshingly honest and even though I don't follow his work anymore I still enjoy his take on things.
As a drawer, he always had anatomy problems but had some personality but I think over time it has lost some of that personality.

Jim Lee is often seen as more solid but I think he's one of the least interesting of the bunch. I'll give him credit for wonderful Psylocke cosplayers though and his drawings of Invisible Woman's butt awakened me to butts as a boy.

I'll give Portacio credit for the sheer strangeness of his drawings.

I'll echo Sic about the distinctiveness of McFarlane's Spider-Man. He could also draw good capes, grubby underworlds, gritty streets and interesting faces. I think Spawn can be worked into something interesting sometimes. Shame he never improved as an artist and didn't seem to have the passion to keep doing it. Maybe I should compliment him for (mostly) just giving up on drawing rather than becoming a hack.

I have little experience with Valentino's work.

Silvestri done a few decent looking comics in the 80s, sometimes the inkers deserve more credit for making these guys look their best but I remember this issue of Wolverine being impressively moody.
https://comicvine.gamespot.com/wolverine-43-under-the-skin/4000-64306/

I'm not a Liefeld fan but I don't think he's the absolute worst. He's distinctive enough that I'll place him above hundreds of trend chasing hacks and occasionally I can see the appeal of some of his early work, like in this link.
https://mercurialblonde.wordpress.com/2013/05/22/rob-liefeldx-force-comics-love-in-part-iii-decoration-in-comics/
Surely as flawed as it is, you can see some trashy appeal in these drawings?

I surely could at age fourteen.

I'm curious if the three ppl who voted for Liefeld in this poll were just trolling, or if they don't rate any of these guys but Liefeld is their 'favourite' in as much as his art is so bad it's funny, or if there are actually sincere Liefeld admirers on ilx?

I'm with Robert in finding Jim Lee's art pretty boring for the most part. idk if it's maybe an age thing - when I started reading American comic books in the mid-90s stuff that looked like Lee's art kind of felt like the generic default superhero style, I can imagine I might have felt differently if I saw his work before that style became ubiquitous and Lee so widely imitated

I think I voted for Liefeld mostly because I haven't had particularly strong feelings about any of these dudes since I became old enough to drive and so why not vote for the golden retriever in a human body. For a brief window of time, though, I was way into these guys and they helped usher me into the larger world of comicsdom so I have to give props.

I'm so happy Erik won this poll.

Something about him I always thought was funny is when Wizard was asking creators which was the lamest dorkiest character they've ever worked on. Most creators chosen forgotten characters and Larsen chose The Punisher.

in retrospect, the idea of these dudes being talented entrepreneurs doing their own thing, and all the misconceptions and press angles on what they were doing, feels a lot like the later dot com boom that happened at the other end of the 90s

"the writing is bad, but it can come later!"
"missing deadlines is bad, but they'll make it work"
"self-publishing is a strong creator's rights move"

Probably discussed this before but I wonder why more people didn't jump onboard or try something out at Image in the early days? They often got big superhero artists to do pinups and things like that but there really wasn't many big names beyond the founders.

because that wasn't an option in the early days, is the most obvious guess and also the factual answer

can you imagine the number of ill-conceived pitches they received in the mail from teens?

I mean, half were probably better than Liefeld's ideas, but that's a given