Image Comics, the third-largest comics publisher in America, just announced at its annual convention a host of imposing projects by A-list creators. I blame Robert Kirkman.
Kirkman is the writer and co-creator of The Walking Dead, a comic book that – legend has it – got its start because zombie-movie fan Kirkman always wondered what happened the day after the zombie apocalypse, or in movie terms, what happens after the credits roll. So he wrote it. But since this experiment was not expected to sell well, it had a low print run and was in black-and-white -- two attributes which virtually guaranteed that “not expected to sell well” would become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
As we all know, that didn’t happen. Instead, Kirkman got very famous and probably very rich. Which is why I think there’s currently an exodus of top talent from the “Big Two” publishers, Marvel and DC, to smaller Image, where creators can retain rights and make more money, if their books make any money. Given the rush, I suspect Kirkman envy.
I have no empirical evidence for this theory, by the way. I just have this image in my head of a big-name (but no money) comics creator sitting on his or her couch, a half-eaten sandwich dangling from his or her mouth, watching Kirkman on The Talking Dead and thinking “Why isn’t that ME?”
So, Image. They hold a convention called the Image Expo annually, where they announce plans and projects for the year. It was in San Francisco this year, on Jan. 9. By Jan. 10, I had more than a dozen press releases, almost any of which was worth its own story.
Perhaps the biggest surprise didn’t involve a specific comic book at all, but rather two creators. Writer Ed Brubaker and artist Sean Phillips have been a team on a variety of outstanding crime noir comics, and Image has given them carte blanche to continue to do so – a five-year contract “to do anything they want with total freedom, total control and total ownership of their projects,” according to an Image press release.
Nobody really knows how that will work in practice, since such a deal has no precedent in comics. But it’s a vote of confidence in a team with a superb track record, so it may not be much of a gamble.
I first ran across the duo in DC’s Sleeper, in which a super-powered government agent infiltrated a supervillain-run crime syndicate. Not only did the agent find himself in a fascinating moral quandary – was there any difference in what he did for the two organizations? – but we met Miss Misery, a character whose super-power was that she grew younger, stronger and more beautiful with every evil act. The converse as true, so she had to avoid doing nice things, even after she fell in love with the sleeper agent. Talk about always hurting the ones you love!
Brubaker and Phillips continued with Criminal at Marvel, a series of crime noir stories that mildly cross-connected, as all the principals came from the same run-down neighborhood and frequented the same seedy bars. That provided not only Easter eggs for the readers – “Hey, isn’t that guy in the background from issue #2?” – but also relieved Brubaker of having to come up with different seedy bars for every story!
Lately the pair has teamed for Fatale at Image, about an immortal woman cursed to have all men she meets fall in love with her. If you think that doesn’t sound too bad, you haven’t seen what Brubaker and Phillips do with it!
Fatale is scheduled to end with issue #24, whereupon the team will launch its first project under the new contract, The Fade-Out. It’s crime noir, of course, set behind the scenes in 1940s Hollywood, and promises to burst with decadence, violence, double-crosses and dirty tricks. I can’t wait!
Brubaker has been doing other things as well, one of which movie audiences are about to enjoy. While working on Marvel’s Captain America, Brubaker proposed bringing back the hero’s World War II sidekick, who -- we learned in 1964 -- had died in 1945. Since Bucky Barnes was quite thoroughly dead, and Marvel had an informal no-sidekicks policy, and no one wanted this lame character back anyway, it had always been adjudged a terrible idea the many times it had been proposed before. But Brubaker did it, and did it so well that even I liked the story – as did so many others that it is the basis of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, coming to a theater near you in April.
But the other creators aren’t slouches, either. Here are just some of the new books announced:
* Scott Snyder – whose Batman is DC’s best seller – returns to his horror-writer roots with artist Jock (The Losers) on Wytches, which promises a contemporary – and much darker – take on spell-casters. (He did much the same for neck-biters in American Vampire.)
* Image doesn’t even bother to describe Nameless, because the writer will be Grant Morrison, famous for everything he’s ever done.
* James Robinson (Starman, Silver Age) returns to high-concept adventure with Airboy, a revived ‘40s aviation character.
* Kelly Sue DeConnick (Captain Marvel, Pretty Deadly) will combine – somehow – science fiction, women-in-prison exploitation and you-go-girl feminism in Bitch Planet.
Kiren Gillen (Journey into Mystery) re-joins his Young Avengers artist Jamie McKelvie for The Wicked and the Divine, where the gods re-incarnate in the modern day. Good for them, but it will probably make us miserable.
Which is not to be confused with Restoration, in which the gods and all manner of other mystical creatures return today from whence they’d been banished millennia ago – and are not in a good mood. That’s by writer Bill Willingham and artist Barry Kitson, both fresh from Fables.
* Rick Remender (Secret Avengers, Black Science) takes the human race underwater to survive in LOW.
* Nick Spencer (Morning Glories, Secret Avengers) has three titles in the hopper. Paradigms reveals a hidden world of magic operating behind the scenes. Cerulean is a sci-fi title set on another planet where the survivors of Earth try to re-build. And Great Beyond explores a society where your wealth determines your place in the afterlife.
* C.O.W.L., written by Kyle Higgins (Nightwing), will tell the tale of a 1960s superhero union.
* Brandon Graham (Prophet) attempts a Game of Thrones type of fantasy series with 8House.
* Nailbiter is a thriller about serial killers, so more than nails may be bitten. It’s by writer Joshua Williamson (Ghosted).
* Joe Keatinge (Glory) promises to make the heroine of Shutter a cross between Indiana Jones and Lara Croft, one who has globe-trotting adventures in a world more fantastical than our own.
And, yes, there’s still more! O, Robert Kirkman, what hath thou wrought?
Contact Captain Comics at capncomics@aol.com.
Replies
Your Kirkman Effect might be the 'pull', but I see a lot of 'push' too in the stories that get back to us about how creators get treated at Marvel and DC. Who needs that once you've got your name out there?
I loved Sleeper too. I only read the first half and must get the second half. Even if it started with awful 90s Image rubbish, the WIldstorm U ended up with some great stories set there, so it's a bit sad that the well-populated and established Wildstorm Universe that Sleeper was set in is now Kaput, with most of its big-name heroes slumming it in the DCU as second rate also-rans.
But Image has come a long way, and this contract with Brubaker and Phillips is a big commitment to producing profitable, popular comics rather than just farming transferable brands.