In 1992, seven of the most popular comics artists of their time launched Image Comics as a way to control their own work, and changed the face of American comics. By 2008, the original creators had scattered to the winds, and Image had become something very different. But when the founders of Image—Erik Larsen, Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane, Whilce Portacio, Marc Silvestri and Jim Valentino—reunited for a May 2008 signing at the Arizona store Atomic Comics, they drew a jam piece together for old times’ sake; Larsen convinced the others that it’d be a fun idea to draw an entire miniseries collectively.
The result is Image United, a six-issue miniseries whose first issue, released last week, has already gone into a second printing. It’s written by Robert Kirkman (of Image’s most popular current titles, The Walking Dead and Invincible), and six of Image’s seven founders are drawing their own characters in it—Jim Lee was unavailable due to his commitments to DC, but did contribute a variant cover to the first issue. “If anyone has any blackmail material on Jim, please send it my way,” Kirkman jokes. “Apparently all he’s going to be doing is that cover, but if I find out where the bodies are buried, that may change.”
Kirkman was a 13-year-old fan when Image’s founders left Marvel, and he followed them to their new imprint. “From 1992 to maybe 1998, I bought every single thing Image published,” he says. “The early Image comics revolutionized comic book coloring and production—they changed the way comics were done. And they were very creative, pushing the envelope in a lot of ways. They were a little more... mature, and at the same time, incredibly immature. They were awesome action comics.”
So Kirkman is following their example. Image United, he says, is “a high-stakes, balls-to-the-wall superhero adventure. I wanted to do a fight comic—that’s what these books are, that’s what people who like these books like, and that’s what I like. I know the characters very well, and I tried to use everybody I could think of in at least some sort of a small role.” That’s everybody from the artists’ comics, he clarifies: “I’m trying to make this focus on the early days of Image—I wouldn’t want to shoehorn my own characters in. That said, I hear Invincible does make an appearance.”
All the artists are working from Kirkman’s plot and layouts by Liefeld (on the first issue) and Larsen (on subsequent issues), shipping pages around the country to add their characters in turn. Kirkman singles out Spawn creator McFarlane’s work as a pleasant surprise: “It’s common knowledge that the guy doesn’t draw a lot of comics these days, but it’s great seeing him dive in feet-first and do as much work on this as he has. I’m not saying he didn’t do it without groaning a little bit—‘oh, why did I agree to this?’—but the guy hasn’t skipped a beat. Everybody’s bringing their A-game to this, because they’re all competitive. Everyone sees what the person before him has done on the page, and I think they’re very much working on this with an ‘I’ll show him!’ mentality.”