Image Comics: No Respect?

Alex Ness: So what is the deal for people working at Image? How does a creative talent get in? And what does image do for them?

B. Clay Moore: You submit a project and it's either approved or not. At that point, Image publishes it, and takes publishing costs out of the back end, along with a flat fee. Everything else is yours...profit and rights to your creation. Image gives you choice catalog space, obviously, and we do what we can to promote the book. And if you drop by the Image offices, you can eat your weight in Home Run Pies.

AN: Me, too? I like pies so

BCM: Maybe. If you can find the office.

AN: I think IMAGE is pretty damned special, although people might think of Spawn or Witchblade, Image central should be seen as an Independent comics market dream

BCM: Yeah, well, I agree. And I'm pretty jazzed by the way things are looking these days.

AN: To me, there is a great deal of resistance to new work and Image is putting out a lot of excellent titles: Mora, Pigtale, Battle Hymn, Kane, Savage Dragon and many more. How do you kick down the door?

BCM: Kick down which door?

AN: The DC/Marvel-like sales door.

BCM: Who cares about DC- or Marvel-like sales? The main goal should be making money for our creators, and letting them tell the stories they want to tell.

AN: Ok, let's make money...good first step.

BCM: Are we producing better books than Marvel or DC? In many cases, sure. But we don't have the marketing money they do, and because we offer so much variety, we don't have a fan base willing and eager to throw money at different variations of the same thing month after month. Can we reach that level of sales again? Sure. Some of our books outperform some of their books now. But if we do that, it'll be the honest way...by producing great books that people would be foolish to ignore. There's nothing too complex about the formula for success. Good books by good creators coming out relatively on schedule.

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How often do you disregard a book at IMAGE due to an association with the IMAGE founders' Universes? Many people I know do so all the time. But with the exception of Erik Larsen, precious little from the founders makes its way to the market, through the presses of IMAGE or anywhere else. On the other hand, the typical output of IMAGE is smaller press oriented. IMAGE Central is a clearing house of sorts to allow a wide variety of talent to reach the market. That is, buyers of comics associate the product of IMAGE with talents no longer producing at IMAGE, while some very fine books from IMAGE come out, almost to no buzz. A variety of steps can be taken to assure IMAGE of a readership I am certain, a couple huge books would help. But overall I think IMAGE is a very good publisher, who gets no respect. No respect at all. I like IMAGE. If you want a title from a publisher outside the Big Two (DC/Marvel) IMAGE is/or rather should be, perfect, but wait a minute, didn't IMAGE put out SPAWN? THOSE Bastards!!