Robserecaps Eight – episode 38 the SECRET Secret Origin of Image Comics
by Joe
The Rob has tasted success at Marvel with the launch of X-Force #1 and this episode, the Rob promises the secrets behind the start of Image Comics. As always, I recommend checking out the podcast for yourself, and away we go!
- The Rob promises things, quotes, alliances, etc. you’ve never heard before about the formation of Image
- the Rob’s first published work was in the Marvel Handbook Book of the Dead, drawing all the members of the Zodiac. My friend Kevin recently got that issue in a blind pack he bought from Five Below
- the Rob heaps praise on Mark Millar, sites Wanted as his favorite work by Millar
- Marvel thought by adding cel sheets to Cage #1 or claw marks on random Wolverine issues would make them million issue sellers, but it was the connection the fans had with creators
- The Rob mentions all the characters he created in his time on New Mutants/X-Force, including Feral, but also states he would be told if a certain character was too close to another existing character
- Sadly, the Rob mentions he’s not feeling his Todd McFarlane impression today
- I must have missed ‘Peel the Face Away Cable’ on the toy shelves
- the Rob remembers the call from Bob Harris (who would call the Rob ‘RobBob’) telling him that wave two of the X-Men ToyBiz line was going to be X-Force centric
- the Rob laments that his creation Gideon has been killed out of spite more often than good storytelling, but he always comes back
- the Rob also hates most Deadpool and Cable storylines, cites a Cable two issue mini series from a plot the Rob pitched and someone else did, being the last Cable storyline the Rob enjoyed
- In the summer of 1990, the Rob, Erik Larsen and Jim Valentino went to Dave Olbrich of Malibu Comics about doing a side project off their signal boost from Marvel
- What they pitched was Jim, Erik and the Rob sharing chores on a book, each doing a third monthly, similar to Dark Horse Presents
- the Rob’s character he was going to do was called ‘the Darkling’ a spinoff of what he did in Megaton Comics, only a few pages have ever been seen publicly
- the Rob states at the time, the royalties on the books he was making would take a year to come in
- In the year McFarlane left Spider-Man and started Spawn, he tried to get into the sports trading card business with a company called Front Row (“why would you sit in the Upper Deck, when you can sit in the FRONT ROW!”), focusing on hockey
- Todd’s pitch for the card set was the front would have a photo and a caricature on the back
- Todd went to the NHL with an eight card set, but was simply told ‘try again later’ but he would eventually get there with the action figure line
- the Rob mentions the Stabur Videos, hosted by Stan Lee, who was just a figurehead at that company, he really had nothing going on at the time
- Todd’s motivation for starting Image was he felt slighted by Marvel, the Rob saw it as an option of full ownership of his characters
- the Rob put an ad in Comic Buyers Guide for X-Cutioners (inspired by John Byrne’s neXt Men at Dark Horse), which was before Image was a thing, which would become Youngblood
- After the ad ran in CGB, the Rob got a call at 6am PST from Bob Harris threating a lawsuit over copyright infringement and the use of the letter “X”
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