![]() Inarguably, because of that rigor he’s evolved more than any of the other founders. He’s the only one of them who never let up on a regular schedule for himself. ![]() Erik Larsen is still around, though more people could always stand to pick up Savage Dragon. An unlikely ending, considering he’s the only one of his peers who graduated to an editorial or executive position at a mainstream publisher, which is a thing that used to happen a lot more before they stopped letting most editors freelance. Jim Lee has been ensconced at the heart of DC Comics for decades. Still doesn’t want to draw much more than the odd cover or promo piece. He saw there was an opening for America’s Beloved Comics Pap-Pap. ![]() Todd has somehow managed to come back to near-ubiquity. The ringleaders of the Image exodus were large personalities. Suddenly, and without really expending any effort on his part, he was thrust into the center of the industry’s biggest storyline. Silvestri was at that moment in the middle (soon to be the end) of his run on Wolverine. Literally walked into a room where the gang was sitting and got the hard sell from Todd himself. The important thing to remember is that Marc Silvestri arrived on this scene at the last possible moment. And as they didn’t accidentally sell their billion dollar idea to Marvel Comics. Two regular fellas who stumbled upon a dinky little idea they thought might just sell a few thousand copies in black & white - turned out that dinky little idea had more legs than the creators themselves ever imagined. I mean, Eastman & Laird were standing right there. It had to be the guys who made more money from that system than anyone else to realize they deserved more. Straight up - modern conditions aren’t encouraging in terms of attracting the best up-and-coming artists to pursue regular monthly work on interiors. The royalty system doesn’t work like it used to, when books were selling enough that even midlist fare like The Avengers or Web of Spider-Man could easily meet that threshold. Of course, it can be very difficult to make a living drawing monthly comics. But he doesn’t get anything for the t-shirts, I don’t think. His Marvel stuff is almost never out of print-a rare honor at a company whose idea of “rarely out of print” generally includes the understanding that "Born Again" and "The Dark Phoenix Saga" go out of print for long stretches of time-and he still makes a few dollars every time they reprint those comics, as well he should. A lot of people were making a lot more money off Todd’s Spider-Man than Todd was ever going to see. The issue wasn’t that they didn’t have enough, but they knew they were directly responsible for making a lot more. Do not doubt: the men who formed Image had, by and large, made a fair bit of money just off royalties paid by Marvel. Employment standards at Marvel have gotten worse, not better. The matters at hand in those heady years of Batman, boom and bust are still at front and center of our industry’s discourse. People still read those interviews because that period of time is generally judged to be a significant one. or at least, those rarified few wont to leaf through old issues of magazines about comic books in their spare time. Up there with the Kevin Eastman interview a couple dozen issues later, in terms of significance. Todd McFarlane gave one of the best interviews in the history of the print Journal, no doubt, but also one of the most adversarial. Certainly, the product on display at the time of the company’s formation found no purchase in these pages. The initial wave of Image was a movement, a genuine populist uprising in a traditionally hidebound industry. What does that and a nickel get you, at the end of the day? We’ve advanced to discussing that period in the forensic terms of the art historian. So, most interesting artist of the Image founders. Oh, that guy, you say, scratching your chin. That the most interesting artist of the seven original Image founders was Marc Silvestri. With deepest gratitude to Claire Napier, without whose friendship this essay could not exist.Īs I wandered along this distant beachhead of life on a discontented eve of sorrow, I was struck by a conviction which has come to dictate a not insubstantial portion of my thoughts.
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