NERRRRRRRRD! vol. 58

How Image Transformed From 90s Cheese to the Most Progressive Publisher in the Game

the unfettered impulse to discredit the 90s comic book boom has long been one of my points of deviation from the contemporary superhero fan hoards. this is absolute bias on my end, as my comic fanaticism sprung from the gritty 80s and blossomed fully in the extreme 90s. though those two times periods are now endlessly (and misguidedly) mocked and derided by the terminally snarky failed comedians of the blogosphere and hopelessly embittered silver age romantics like Alex Ross, they were fruitful and necessary to keep the medium from aging out of relevance in the expanding face of emerging alternative pastimes such as video games and the internet.

Image Comics was crucial to me in the 90s. at last, i could get in on the ground floor with new mythologies, new characters that weren't leaded with decades-upon-decades of creative shifts and continuity-bloat. as much as loved Wolverine, Daredevil, Batman, The Flash etc... they had existed long before me, in multiple iterations, across multiple mediums, and though i could read annotations and summations of previous eras, something was always out of reach. that wasn't the case with characters like Spawn, Savage Dragon, the Maxx, and others. it was the closest to what baby boomer kids in the 60s must have felt when Marvel Comics burst on to the scene. That was for them... Image was for us.

and Image still is for us... having evolved beyond the steroidial anti-heroes of the 90s and focusing on works that are among the most adventurous and subversive in the mainstream comics industry. Walking Dead, Kill or Be Killed, Revenge, The Black Monday Murders, Nameless, Officer Downe... i could go on.

25 years and counting.