Robserecaps Twenty Two – episode 54 The Secret History of Image X Month
by Joe
Another detour! This time, to 1994 and the Image Crossover “Month” where different creators take over different books and how it relates to Age of Apocalypse. As always, check out the episode here for yourself!
- Image X Month was an experiment, a Hail Mary pass to try and reinvigorate the original seven Image books
- the idea was that it would be a surprise, who would be the new creator, until you pulled the book off the shelf to shock people
- Golden Apple Comics was the Hollywood, nationally known comics book shop, everyone from Michael Jackson to Frank Darabont to Gene Simmons (of KISS) shopped there. Mile High Comics may have been bigger, but Golden Apple was more well known
- Golden Apple would hold post San Diego Comic Con parties the Rob would attend with Wizard’s Gareb Shamus, even staying at each others homes
- At one of these parties, the Rob met Scott Lobdell for the first time, who was writing X-Men post Jim Lee leaving Marvel, and Generation X
- During this era, the X-Men and Spider-Man books, were firing on all cylinders, with 8-10 books a month, which I don’t think is true for Spider-Man
- At this party, Lobdell approached the Rob, maybe he had a few too many, to say “we (Marvel) are coming to get you, we got something big, gonna put you (Image) on your heels”
- After some digging, the Rob discovered this was going to be a “wide line” (how the Rob says it multiple times) relaunch of the X-Men books at all new number ones which would later become Age of Apocalypse
- In poaching talent from Marvel & DC, the Rob once got a nasty call from a prior editor, shocked someone would walk off an X-book to go to Image
- Some early Image ideas to combat Age of Apocalypse were to do a crossover or event book, but it needed to be more unique
- The original Image idea was you weren’t buying the characters, you were buying the creators. So Image X month was these same creators doing their takes on the now existing Image characters
- Now, was the uncomfortable part, who was gonna pick what books, who was going to go first, etc.
- For example, all the other Image creators did not respect Jim Valentino as an artist and did not want him drawing their book, so to ease the tension, the Rob volunteered to do ShadowHawk, meaning Jim would do Youngblood
- Todd McFarlane was left with CyberForce which he was not happy about doing a team book, not that it mattered since Greg Capulo was doing all Todd’s layouts by now, making Todd style very compromised
- No one got more from Image X Month than Marc Silvestri doing Spawn, which led Marc to doing Witchblade and the Darkness
- The Rob knew he could not match the ‘shiny’ style of Jim in ShadowHawk, so the Rob decided to ape more of a Frank Miller style with Karl Allstaetter doing layouts
- the cover the Rob did was very Spider-Man esque, showcasing ShadowHawk’s big, juicy butt cheeks
- the Rob was surprised how quickly he was able to draw in this style, even drawing at the kitchen table, doing 2-3 pages a day
- The Rob is very complimentary to Silvestri, calls him one of the top three modern day comic artists, someone with no weaknesses
- The biggest clashes were Erik Larsen and Jim Lee doing each other’s book, neither style fit the other, so far as Eric retroactively completely redoing Jim’s issue, decommissioning Jim’s work
- The main plan, having the creative teams be a surprise until purchase was shot down by retailers, unable to sell books “blind”, and they wanted to order the most of whatever book Todd was doing
- Frank Miller did an interview decrying people aping his work. Jim Lee called the Rob to say it was the Rob that put Frank over the edge, but this interview had been in the can for two months, so there is no way Frank could have known what the Rob was doing. In “Sin City A Dame to Kill For”, Marv is seen stepping on the throat of a Deathblow analog, Jim Lee’s Frank Miller pastiche
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