Broken Frontier

Almost every comic fan knows the story of Image Comics.  Formed in 1992 by seven Marvel artists—Todd McFarlane, Rob Liefeld, Jim Valentino, Jim Lee, Eric Larsen, Whilce Portacio, and Marc Silvestri—who decided to break loose from the House of Ideas to start a company where they could publish and own their own characters. No more were they beholden to editorial hampering of their creativity and having their hard work go to fill the company’s coffers instead of their own.

The company was an almost immediate success. Talk began of Image surpassing Marvel and DC as the number one comic book company. That didn’t happen, at least not on a permanent basis, but Image did become one of the big four. Now, 14 years later, Image is still going strong and shows no signs of stopping.

While many people know Image’s story, less know of Tom Beland’s story—or, rather, not as many as should. Beland’s True Story Swear to God began as an autobiographical comic strip in 1995 in the San Francisco area.  The strips proved popular enough to be collected into mini-comics that were nominated for the 2000 Ignatz Award for Best Mini-Comic.

By 2002, True Story Swear to God had evolved into the form of a comic book. The series related the true story (hence the title) of Beland’s chance meeting with a woman, Lily Garcia, at a Walt Disney World Orlando bus stop that leads him to discover the love of his life.

The series became a critical darling. The title, published under the Clib’s Boy imprint, received three Eisner Award nominations, including a nod for “Best Continuing Series” in 2003. People who read the book from the beginning felt pride on getting in on the ground floor of something so good. And people who came in late wished that they had come in sooner. Problem is, there were a lot more of the latter than the former.

The comic faced a problem that many of its kind face. Independent and self-published books seem to blend together in the alphabetical listing of books in the back of the Previews catalogue. Few of the smaller presses can afford advertising to make their titles stand out, making it hard for retailers and fans to find jewels in the rough like True Story Swear to God. This is where Image comes in.

Over the years, Image has used its standing as one of the big four comic companies, and all the perks that brings, to take smaller press titles under its wing to expose them to a larger audience.

       

Image has advantages that small press publishers will never have. It has a cushy spot at the front of the Previews catalog, right after DC. Its titles receive anywhere from a half a page to two pages for their solicitations. Indies seldom get more than a small blurb and a tiny picture of the book’s cover. They also have a foot in the door in getting trade paperback collections of their series into bookstores and on Amazon.com which brings even more exposure and more income to creators.

This means a lot to titles struggling to find an audience. True Story Swear to God is not the first book to take advantage of this opportunity. Jeff Smith’s Bone and Terry Moore’s Strangers in Paradise both spent time at Image and had their audiences increase as a result. Even strip collections such as Scott Kurtz’s PvP and Frank Cho’s Liberty Meadows reaped benefits from a relationship with Image for the books and their creators. It seems hard to believe that Frank Cho would be drawing the Mighty Avengers if Liberty Meadows continued to be published by Insight Comics Group.

       

And all Image gets in return is a flat fee off the books they publish to cover the cost of creating the physical comic book.  This is a small price for a creator to pay for the possibility of greatly increasing their audience. True Story Swear to God led the Image section in the July Previews and the company even included a four-page preview of the issue itself.

Image should be commended for helping great books such as True Story Swear to God find a higher audience. If you are in stores tomorrow, pick up a copy. Make Image’s effort worthwhile so they may continue this practice.

Also out this week:

• Blade #1: In honor of the character’s Spike Network TV show, Marvel brings us a new ongoing featuring everyone’s favorite Daywalker. The success of the Blade property is truly amazing. If you told fans in the 1980’s that not only would Blade get a movie before Spider-Man, but the success of the movie would help Spidey’s get made, people would have thought you were crazy. But here we are and the character shows the depth Marvel has in its properties.

The new series isn’t an adaptation of the TV show, but rather a comic which sets Blade directly in the Marvel Universe. Judging by the covers that have been released for the series, expect visits from Spider-Man and Dr. Doom in the vampire hunter’s future. And with a team like writer Marc Guggenheim, who has impressed with his work on Wolverine, and art by comic legend Howard Chaykin, the new series is bound to get off on the right foot.

• Checkmate #6: One of my favorite books from the 1980’s was Suicide Squad, because it featured one of the best concepts of all time. The team was composed mostly of super-villains who agreed to go on missions for the government in exchange for communicated sentences. A bomb was enclosed in a bracelet they wore to keep the bad guys in line. And the missions were so difficult that quite a few did not return back alive, hence the name of the squad.

I guess I wasn’t alone in my appreciation of the series, because in this issue of Checkmate, a new version of the team returns. It seems only fitting that they would return in this title, based on the types of stories Greg Rucka has been creating for the comic. The dark espionage style of the series fits the Suicide Squad concept to a “T”. I am greatly interested in how it will be, pardon the pun, executed.

• Iron Man #12: “Execute Program” reaches its conclusion, and we finally get answers to all the questions raised in the storyline. The arc, written by Daniel and Charlie Knauf and drawn by Patrick Zircher, put Shellhead where he works quite well, in the world of international espionage.

The character was born out of an international conflict (originally, the war in Vietnam but recently updated to the war on terror) and many of his best stories revolved around industrial espionage. The combination of the two so far makes for a satisfying story.

Next month, both this book and Captain America start their Civil War tie-ins. I am especially looking forward to the regular teams tackling each hero’s motivation in the conflict. It should go well to fleshing out both the characters and the crossover.

• Hellblazer #224: Denise Mina begins her second official arc on the title. The 5-part “The Red Right Hand” tells the tale of a man who finally finds his dream fulfilled and realizes that it was not all it was cracked up to be. The only person who can help him is John Constantine, who he just buried alive.

Mina’s latest arc does something that is seldom seen in this day and age, it builds on her first arc. “The Red Right Hand” is somewhat of a continuation of the 7-part “Empathy is the Enemy” storyline and acts as a new chapter in an even bigger story.

Subplots usually carry from arc to arc, building as they go. But to have each storyline play into a bigger whole is quite unique and exciting. Good going, Denise!

• Dwight T. Albatross’ The Goon Noir #1: The Goon, as a comic and as a character, has been one of the most original things to come down the pike in the last ten years. Part comedy, part crime noir, part supernatural horror, the book is quite unlike anything else on the market today. And like True Story Swear to God, the book started out as an indie, published by Avatar and Albatross, before being picked up by Dark Horse.

The true success of any character or concept, though, is how it fares under different creators. The Goon has been—and probably always will be—Eric Powell’s baby, but now, with this series, other writers and artists are going to have a shot at it. The series will feature people from outside of comics (King of Queens' Patton Oswalt, Comedians of Comedy’s Brian Posehn, and The State and Reno 911’s Thomas Lennon) and inside (30 Days of Night’s Steve Niles and Rex Mundi’s Arvid Nelson) writing the adventures of the Goon and his cohorts, as Powell takes a short break to reload. With the talent attached to this project, expect a dose of quippin’, punching and stomping so big it can’t be good for you! And that’s as good a reason as any to pick this up, right, Frankie?!

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William Gatevackes is a professional writer living in Mamaroneck, NY with his wife Jennifer and writes periodic comic reviews for PopMatters. He also writes title descriptions for Human Computing’s Comicbase collection management software.