Robserecaps Twenty One – episode 53 the Gangs of Comic Books
by Joe
Now, we flash forward to the mid-90’s and early 00’s with all the new publishers popping up! And Jimmy Jay is back in the co-host chair, but not in studio so the audio quality suffers! Check out the episode for yourself as always!
- After Image Comics launched, all these other ‘tribes’ of creators started popping up, starting with Legend out of Dark Horse, this was also around the time Wizard was becoming ‘insufferable pricks’
- According to the Rob, the big difference with all of this Image is a ‘publisher’ (even though they were published by Malibu) and these others like Legend, Bravura, Cliffhanger, etc. were ‘labels’
- Side note, the Rob laments not having more pics of him with all the famous folks the Rob has met over the years
- The Rob compares the original Image crew to the Eagles since the both had multiple lead singers at different points
- After Image left Malibu, the higher ups at Malibu made up the next tribe from ‘the other old guys not in Legend’ thus came Bravura
- In listing the Bravura folks, the Rob does an impression of Gil Kane that is very much the Jim Barnett impression
- The Rob keeps saying ‘Bravura’ in his Todd McFarlane voice. A lot
- The Rob states the original name of the Legend label was ‘Dinosaur’ since they were the ‘old man boy band’
- Another side note, the Rob has been contacted by dozens of people about the DC episodes to share their batshit crazy experiences
- When Gorilla Comics started, they’re big pitch line was “we’re not gonna be like Image” which no one ever said they would and they lasted the least of all these labels
- Cliffhanger came the closest to Image’s success, but they were an arm of Wildstorm which itself was originated at Image
- A lot of allegories to these labels and boy bands, the Rob calls CrossGen ‘O-Town’
- One of the things that caused CrossGen to fail was unpronounceable titles, like Sigil and Sojourn
- The Rob feels the big failure of all these labels were too much fantasy books (talking animals is not a sure fire hit), not enough super hero stuff
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