MattBrady

Welcome to this exclusive preview from the pages of Image Comics: The Road to Independence, a TwoMorrows Book release that will be on-sale everywhere starting on June 20th, 2007.

In 1992, seven artists shook the foundation of the comic book industry when they left their top-selling Marvel Comic titles to jointly form a new company named Image Comics. With no certainty of success, they formed a home that would allow themselves and other artists the opportunity to tell their stories without any censorship or editorial restraints. Even more importantly, Image would finally give creators full ownership of their properties. In an industry that began with artists working in sweatshop-like conditions, Image remains a living beacon for any creator that dares to dream.

Image Comics: The Road to Independence is an unprecedented look at the last big bang to happen in the comics industry from every single angle imaginable. An incredibly dense 280 page tome that’s packed from cover to cover – this isn’t your granddad’s book about comics history – it’s an intense, refreshingly candid, and vivid experience about not only Image Comics, but in many ways the last twenty years of the comics industry!

Featured are new interviews and art from Image Founders Erik Larsen, Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, Whilce Portacio, Marc Silvestri and Jim Valentino. Also, the book spotlights many of Image Comics’ most popular creators from the first fifteen years of the company: Jae Lee, Jeff Scott Campbell, Larry Stroman & Todd Johnson, Steve Oliff, Sam Kieth, Dale Keown, Brian Michael Bendis, Robert Kirkman, Frank Espinosa and Scott Williams. There are more articles, art, and a ton of photos to document this larger than life story.

For me, this book was not only the hardest single thing that I’ve ever worked on, but the most rewarding one in terms of its large scope and what it says about the future of this industry. Whether you’re a fan or not of Image Comics, you have to respect them for bringing an infusion of tenacity and influence that changed the landscape of comics forever. This is the book for you, the comic reading audience; without you there isn’t an Image Comics or comics industry.

Sincerely,

George Khoury, author

Marc Silvestri Interview
© 2007 George Khoury and TwoMorrows Publishing


The always energetic Marc Silvestri was the first of the Image co-founders to ever experience a degree of major success when he became the regular penciler of The Uncanny X-Men in 1987. The Floridian self-taught artist broke into comics in the early ’80s via short stories in DC’s dying horror line; among the influences in his art style are Bernie Wrightson and John Buscema. After his pivotal runs on Uncanny and Wolverine, he went on to help build Image and develop his own properties. The launch of Cyberforce, his signature book, sold over 850,000 copies and gave Marc a taste that independence would be very sweet. In the mid-’90s, Silvestri moved his offices to Hollywood just as his Top Cow Studios experienced their greatest surge with the creation of Witchblade and Darkness, both among the best known Image properties. Gradually, Marc turned Witchblade into a popular TV show and successfully negotiated an enterprising deal with Marvel Comics where he and his Top Cow artists provide art for selected Marvel special events. Recently, Marc illustrated the popular Hunter-Killer (with writer Mark Waid) and continues to have his sunny disposition as he oversees the future of Image as their acting CEO.


KHOURY: Were you always into drawing and doodling and sketching?

SILVESTRI: I always kind of had a knack for it, and I was one of those guys that during math class was doodling pictures of cars and stuff. I had no aptitude for math whatsoever, but I always enjoyed doodling around. I didn’t really take it seriously and I never considered it as an actual career choice until later in life. When I was younger I thought, oh, I was going to be an architect, or at one point a doctor, until I realized you actually had to be smart for those professions. That kicked me out of that idea, so I went to various small jobs, retail, I was a bouncer for a little while in a bar. I was in the health club business for about a year or two. Finally my cousin brought to my attention that DC Comics was running a talent search. This was in ’80 or ’81, something like that, and they were running it all across the country, and Chicago was one of the major conventions. This was before San Diego really took off, but anyone that was not living on the West Coast at that time didn’t really travel to San Diego to go to the shows unless you were a diehard fan. But Chicago was a big show, and DC was running a contest, and I started drawing about six months before that came around. Put together a portfolio, four or five pages of a comic book story that my brother had written, and a bunch of pinups, and I went there.

KHOURY: Were you confident that you were good enough already to work professionally in comics?

SILVESTRI: I had no confidence whatsoever. In fact, I wanted to get out of that convention as soon as possible. I was actually relieved that they closed down the portfolio review before I got in there. Y’know, I was, like, next in line and they shut it down because they had already seen too many people, they were done. But my brother forced me to stick to it, and we found Joe Orlando in his hotel room and kind of looking at the stuff. My brother said, “Look at this stuff, you’re going to love it.” At that point, I was going, I’ll try to do something else for a living, maybe go back to the health club business. DC hired me that very next week, and again, I think that was 1981, something like that, and I’ve been with comics ever since.

KHOURY: You didn’t do much for DC; you did a few short horror stories, right?

SILVESTRI: I was doing those anthology books that they were running at that time, like House of Mystery and Ghosts and Weird War [Tales] and things that nobody ever bought, but were a great training ground. Five- to eight-page stories, and nobody noticed when you screwed up. So I did about six or seven of those.

KHOURY: But Orlando was a mentor to some; did he encourage you to do more work for him?

SILVESTRI: No, there was no real mentor. I had encouragement from my brother because he thought it would be a cool thing. I think he always wanted to do comics, as well, as a writer, which I was able to help him out when Image started. But for me it was like, wow, this seems like a really easy gig. You sit at home all day long and you draw pictures, and somebody sends you a paycheck. Wow, what could be easier than that? Well, as it turns out, it’s not as easy as I had thought it was.

KHOURY: But at DC, they weren’t going to give you a book anytime soon. You had to go to Marvel.

SILVESTRI: I was kind of stuck with the anthology stuff over at DC. And back in those days, really, the Holy Grail was Marvel, anyway. That’s when Marvel was just really kicking ass, and they were the hip company, and they had The X-Men, and they had Chris Claremont, and they had Spider-Man. They had all these cool characters that, when you were younger, that’s the kind of stuff you wanted to draw. Batman had not been reinvented yet by Frank Miller, Superman was long-dead. Nobody really cared about that stuff. And you really wanted to go to Marvel; that was where you wanted to be. And Jim Shooter was the editor-in-chief at the time, and I brought him what I had done at DC for the past year, plus the original portfolio that I did, and he hired me right there. He doubled my page rate, which was, wow, that’s a great selling technique. I jumped over and I started doing little things again. Not anthology stuff, but stuff people didn’t really pay much attention to, Conan books and….

KHOURY: Yeah, but you were into that. That was the genre that you were into, wasn’t it, at that point?

SILVESTRI: I like the fantasy stuff. I was never really a super-hero guy. I think that’s because I wasn’t really brought up on comics, so I didn’t get that stuff. My exposure to super-heroes, really, when I was a kid, was the Batman TV show. Which I loved, by the way, I watched that religiously. But I came from a sci-fi/ fantasy background. That’s the kind of stuff, when I was a kid, that I would read, and those were the kind of movies that I would watch. To this day I’m still a sci-fi fan, and a lot of my work today in a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff that Top Cow publishes, or I’ve had something to do with the creation of, has a sci-fi or fantasy bent to it. We blend in the super-hero elements, but primarily, at their core, they’re sci-fi/fantasy concepts. That really is where I come from.

KHOURY: When you were working on Conan, that’s when you really started studying John Buscema and the Marvel masters and that sort of stuff, trying to push your anatomy and layout?

SILVESTRI: Yeah. When I was at my cousin’s house all those years, those were the kind of things I was drawn to. I really like the dynamicism of guys like Kirby and Buscema. They really had a way of drawing the human figure that kind of leapt off the page to me. And being a horror fan, I loved Bernie Wrightson’s stuff. I loved all the old EC books, all those Creepy and anything that Warren published. I swallowed all that stuff up. Vampirella.

KHOURY: Did you feel like they were grooming you at Marvel, that there were going to be phases to your career already at this point?

SILVESTRI: I don’t think there was such a thing as grooming back then that much. I think Marvel just sat back. The joke back then was that DC was Marvel’s farm club. That’s kind of what we adopted in the early punk-ass days of Image was we were saying that Marvel and DC were our farm club, because that is the attitude that we had early on. But, yeah, I think it was just, in comics back then, if you wanted to do that for a living, you had two places to go. You had DC and you had Marvel. So I don’t think that Marvel really cared whether or not that you were going to become a superstar or what books you were going to be working on. They had an audience, and that audience bought their books. Obviously when there was a better artist or writer on one of those books, there was a spike in sales, but I don’t think there was a grooming mentality, necessarily.

KHOURY: All right. You weren’t, like, one editor’s main guy or something throughout your career at Marvel?

SILVESTRI: Yeah. I had a great relationship with Bob Harras. Once you get to a certain point, I think once I got to The X-Men, obviously, I was one of those guys that editors wanted to work with.

KHOURY: Was that what you were aspiring to? Were you, like Jim Lee, hoping to get that Uncanny title and that would have been the thing?

SILVESTRI: I think unless you grew up loving a character and you were obsessed with drawing Batman, for an example, I think everyone wanted to work for the Holy Grail in comics, which at that point was The X-Men. In the ’80s there was really nothing higher-profile that you could be working on, unless your name was Frank Miller.

KHOURY: Nothing against Claremont, but one of the things about working on The X-Men is that it’s always been an artist-driven book, too. Only the top guys have worked there.

SILVESTRI: Yeah, and again, it was the ultimate. That was as far as you can go in comics. If you did have a career path, you wound up at the apex at The X-Men working with guys like Chris Claremont. I mean, if you wanted the highest sales — and at that time you were getting royalties on book sales, so if you wanted the highest-selling books, and you wanted the biggest paycheck, and you wanted the highest profile, and you wanted to work with the best writers, that’s where you wound up.

KHOURY: What were your influences back then? Because, if you look at your figure work back then, the characters are more slender, they’re not as muscular as they are now.

SILVESTRI: I think guys like, again, even though Buscema, he drew beefier guys, he was still one of my main early influences when I drew figures, and I think that, if my characters had a little slender look to them, it was probably from residual Neal Adams influence from way back when I was first looking at comics at my cousin’s house. I was attracted to what he was doing, too, and his guys were all pretty lean and cut, and I kind of got that look from him, I think. But for me, I didn’t feel there was a template too much to follow on The X-Men. I could do my thing and see if people liked it or not. There were some great guys that came in just before me that I was looking at, and I certainly wanted to not pale by comparison, so I was doing the best work that I was able to at that time. And I thought it was a great learning experience, but the deadline I wasn’t used to.

KHOURY: Did you contribute to those plots, though? It wasn’t like the traditional X-Men team; Wolverine and Storm I think were at the head of your team.

SILVESTRI: That was mostly Chris. I mean, my favorite character was Wolverine, to this day, still one of my favorite characters. I think he’s one of the best comic book characters created. Storm was a lot of fun, Colossus was fun to me. But it was Chris.

KHOURY: But the people were always in flux, right, during that whole period? Because you had a lot of new members, like, Psylocke and some odd members.

SILVESTRI: Yeah, yeah, and I think that reflected the fact that Marvel may have wanted to get as many characters in there as possible, and I think Chris’s writing style, he likes to throw a lot into the pot and stir it up and see what comes out. And for me that was a blessing and a curse in that, wow, I didn’t quite figure out until later on in my career how to squeeze bodies per square inch into a story. So a lot of times I was a little vexed by it, but working with Chris was a pleasure. He had a great imagination, and the guy just obviously loves the medium. You could tell that with the plots that he would send in. They were very dense, and he had a lot going on. He was asking me, “Hey, who do you like drawing, and what characters do you think we should concentrate on?” But then the stories were all his. He’d do all the plotting and I’d just do my job.

KHOURY: So you were never dissatisfied working at Marvel? It never got to, like, Todd’s point of view?

SILVESTRI: No, I understood completely what Todd’s point of view was, and I didn’t disagree with it at all. The thing about Todd, out of all us Image guys, and I think Rob also… they had the most rebellious spirit. Obviously Image wouldn’t have happened without Todd and Rob going, “You know what? We can do this on our own, and let’s show these guys.” And ultimately the difference with Image, as opposed to when a lot of people have tried to break off on their own, was the numbers that we had. We had seven guys that mattered in comics at that time starting their own company, not one guy who kind of went off. You’ve got a good chunk of Marvel’s best producers going off and doing their own thing. You combine that with the exact right time in the industry and stuff like Image happens.

KHOURY: Who extended to you the invitation? Was it Jim (Lee)?

SILVESTRI: It was actually Todd. Yeah, Todd, in New York we had a sit-down. I think at that point it was Todd and Rob, Jim Valentino, and Erik were onboard solidly. I think Jim, he had just really blown up with the new X-Men book, and he was collecting some nice paychecks, and I think he wasn’t quite sure if he wanted to make that leap. He was going to start a family soon, and he was pretty much ruling Marvel Comics as far as the talent pool is concerned, he was the guy. And I think it was a little bit easier for myself to make the decision, and Erik Larsen, to try something new and stick our necks out there. But Jim I think respected the idea, and I think he respected the people that were involved with it — you know, Todd and Rob — and I think it became exciting to him real quick, and then he got onboard. For me, when I talked to Todd, literally within 30 seconds it was “yes.” I was again ready for something new, and again I wasn’t quite sure if I wanted to stay in comics, but this was something exciting. Yeah, I’ll take that gamble. What’s the worst that could happen?

KHOURY: But you didn’t leave right away, though. I think you did Wolverine #57. That’s pretty much right into the beginning of Image.

SILVESTRI: Yeah. Even to this day, if I have a commitment, I want to stick to it. And I was committed; I was under contract with Marvel. It was real loose as far as the rules to get out of it. I think you just had a certain number of issues that you were committed to after you gave them notice and blah-blah-blah. Y’know, they were good to me, and I had a great relationship with Bob Harras, and I told him, “Look, I’m going to be part of this Image thing, but I’ll stick through my commitment to Wolverine.” And he appreciated that, regardless of issues with the top brass and the fact that they didn’t really want to give anymore to creators than what was being given, which that was the real crux of the issues, considering how many books Marvel was selling in those days. I never had a problem with the editorial staff and I wanted to make sure that I left on good terms, not because I wanted that security in case Image didn’t work, simply because, you know what? It was the right thing, personally, for me to do. I had no problem with those guys. And Image was already starting to pop and sizzle, and I’m going, “Oh, geez, I’m still drawing Marvel books, here.” I was still drawing Marvel books when I was down at Homage. “Ah, this is kind of awkward.” Everyone else was already pulling out.

KHOURY: Rob sold, what, I think he sold 900,000 copies the first time Youngblood was solicited, and you’re like, “Wow!” and still working on Wolverine.

SILVESTRI: Yeah. Once we saw those first Youngblood numbers, and that was before it was even part of Image, yeah, we all went, “Oops, there’s something here.” I think that’s when everybody just went, “Okay, the hell with everything else. We’re diving in.” The numbers were just so much higher. I remember Jim Lee, he was doing some calculations, and he came up with a number that he would have to sell in order to make the same amount he was making on The X-Men. And he was making good cash on The X-Men back then. And I think that number, especially once Spawn #1 came out — I think that number was times ten. “I think we made the right choice, here.” So it was exciting. Those were times that were filled with the excitement of something new combined with the fear of something new.

KHOURY: You said you were ready for a new challenge. Were you really ready for everything that was coming to you those first couple of years, emotionally?

SILVESTRI: I don’t think anyone was really ready for that, and I don’t think that it’s ever going to happen again, quite frankly. I don’t think the comic book world is the same, and I don’t think it ever will be. It was one of those moments that were exactly the right thing at exactly the right time. The marketplace was looking for something new, the speculation market was there, and you had people that were willing to buy cases of books that just inflated these numbers. There was a hysteria that was born of the seven of us leaving at the same time. The fans caught wind of that hysteria, and I think the marketplace was looking for something exciting. It had been 50 years or whatever, not that long with Marvel, but just two companies really throwing out the same characters. And here you had these guys, these lunatic seven guys that thought they could do something to shake this up.

KHOURY: That was one of the things: you guys had the good will of the fans, they actually wanted to see you guys succeed. They had faith in your names. More than the projects themselves, they believed in the cause.

SILVESTRI: Yeah, and I think that was the big selling point for us. It was that there was this rallying cry of, “Yeah, we want something new.” And, yeah, whether the perception was real or not, suddenly the perception was that Marvel and DC were ripping off the fans. “All they’ve been giving us is X-Men and Spider-Man and Batman all these years. You’re ripping us off! These guys are going to give us something new!” And everyone was pretty vocal about how we were mistreated by the system and it was like we were sticking it to “the man.” Everybody kind of bought into that, and the frenzy started real quick, and you know how frenzies are. Especially today with the Internet, once that ball gets rolling, positive or negative, the momentum alone is just going to mow everything down in its way. And we were riding that wave.

KHOURY: But you believed that this was the right thing to do. Sooner or later you guys had to branch out on your own, something had to happen like Image.

SILVESTRI: Yeah, I think, for the most part, most of us had a built-in entrepreneurial spirit. We were surprised at how many professionals not only didn’t want to jump ship with us, but were kind of pointing fingers at us like, “You guys are a bunch of assholes.” It’s like, “We don’t want any part of you.” Todd had some famous issues with another creator that were very public.

KHOURY: I mean, they were gunning for the seven of you, basically. It wasn’t just Todd, it was all of you. They sort of envied what you guys were doing.

SILVESTRI: It’s not as if the offer wasn’t put out there to everyone. It was like today, come on board if you want. We weren’t pulling people by their shirt collars, but we were certainly going to certain guys and saying, “Hey, do you want to be part of this?” from the get-go. And I think a lot of guys looked at us as crazy; that we were going to be out of business in six months. I know that the upper guys over at Marvel thought that, and I think they saw some opportunities to fill some of those vacuums. We were the guys working on the X-Men books and such, and suddenly there were all these openings for people that maybe weren’t going to get those books. And I think the fact that Marvel wasn’t going to be out of business in six months; a lot of people wanted that steady paycheck and didn’t want to take that risk. That’s one thing that the seven of us had in common is we weren’t afraid to take that risk. In fact, and certainly I know Todd and Rob, and I can say for myself, and surely Erik felt this way, too, not only did we want the risk, but we embraced the fact that it was a risk. Not just the opportunity to do something that we felt was going to be better, but I think we really enjoyed that stepping-off-the-precipice feel.

KHOURY: Was Cyberforce something that you had in mind, or was it something that you created as soon as Image was formed?

SILVESTRI: It was something I was working on that I was thinking of taking over to Marvel at one point, and introducing some new characters, introducing a new book. And obviously when Image was formed and our relationships with Marvel were broken, “Okay, well, I’ll just do it myself. I’ll just take these characters and it’ll be the first thing that I publish.”

KHOURY: Did you have the time to develop them like you wanted to, or was it just a big rush just to get it out there, “We need to get this book out quick”?

SILVESTRI: Yeah, unfortunately, when I look back on it I go, “Wow, I wish I could have developed this a little bit further before I put it out.” But, yeah, I was already way behind everybody else. I think I still had two more issues to do Wolverine.

KHOURY: And your brother was the first guy you wanted to write the script, right?

SILVESTRI: Well, it sounded like a great idea to work with him and keep it in the family and throw the ideas back and forth. He’s always wanted to write comics, and I thought, “Well, here’s an opportunity for this. I can kind of control my own destiny now, and I can hire who I want, and I can work with who I want, for the most part.”

KHOURY: Did you guys work well together? Did you get combative or anything?

SILVESTRI: No, I mean, it’s family stuff, y’know. It’s going to have that dynamic. Image itself was this big dysfunctional family. If there was ever such thing as a dysfunctional family, I think Image Comics was it. Yeah, for us it was fine. We did butt heads, and there were things that I wanted and things that he wanted. And I think ultimately we kind of went our separate ways. It didn’t quite gel, I think, as much as either one of us wanted. But it was good experiences. I had a good time, and I think he’s a good writer.

KHOURY: But you had what you wanted, you had a team book, you had action. I think fans pretty much identified with the designs you did right away, with Stryker and Ripclaw.

SILVESTRI: It was fun. Again, it was my sci-fi that I could put in there. My love of science-fiction I could put in with the super-hero stuff. This was also kind of X-Men stuff, that’s why I was doing the X-Men for those years. And obviously the influences were there.

I wanted to do my own version of that world. And science-fiction and cybertechnology and cyber-this and cyber-that, it was stuff that always interested me. And this was also just at the dawn of the digital age, and I thought, “Wow, this kind of futuristic stuff is happening now.” So it sounds possible to me.

KHOURY: I thought that might have been for me, also your influences at Homage, because you were around Jim Lee and Whilce and Scott; I remember they were into the same stuff. I mean, do you see an Image style, when people tell you now, “Oh, you have that Image style.”

SILVESTRI: Yeah, yeah.

KHOURY: I know Whilce doesn’t like it when he gets classified with that. But you guys were the founders — who better than you guys to hear that?

SILVESTRI: We had that flashy style, all these reflective surfaces, and all this crosshatching and horizontal rendering and all this stuff. And it was a lot of fun, because, just like Image itself, it didn’t feel like we had any rules anymore. You could just draw what the hell you wanted. “Wow, I can draw as many big splash pages as I want to!”

KHOURY: “I can kill off as many people as I want to, and do whatever I want with these characters.”

SILVESTRI: Yeah. So, for good and bad, I think, when you let the inmates loose in the asylum, you’re going to get some great results, and you’re going to get some not great results. I think Image Comics ran the table with that. And I think history will tell what kind of an impact long-term those early days at Image had, but, yeah, we were having a good time, and I think a lot of the fans had a good time with us. For the most part I’m proud of the stuff that we did. I think we blazed some trails, and we stepped on a toe once in a while, but for the most part we changed the way things were done for the better.

KHOURY: I was looking at this quote, I think you mentioned it before, but you said, like, “The only thing I regret is not having the mindset that I have now when we started Image.” Did you have somebody you could consult with in terms of business, or you just rushed into this head-on?

SILVESTRI: I think most of us just rushed into it and figured it out as we went along.


KHOURY: So Hollywood came calling pretty fast?

SILVESTRI: Oh, sure. Well, Hollywood didn’t know exactly what to do with us, because there was a lot of buzz about who we were, but this was before the X-Men movie came out and proved that you actually make these things. And this was also before technology really made it possible to transfer what we do in comics and put it convincingly on the screen. So, yeah, there was a lot of interest, and there was a lot of meeting, and there was a lot of pitching, and there were a lot of deals made, and not a lot of movies made. This was before the Internet, so the buzz was more contained, but there was buzz. And people were just starting to notice, “What’s all this racket in this business called comic books? Maybe we should be looking over there.” So we did get some good meetings, we got some good exposure. And for us at Top Cow, that was something that we’ve always kind of maintained. We’ve always kept that foot in other media to make sure that when the day came that the publishing market would fall that we’d be prepared with other ways of making income, which I think is probably the smartest thing that we did.

KHOURY: That’s exactly the same thing Todd said. Did you start studying what Todd was doing? I think you became aware, you saw the crash coming to comics in the mid-’90s.

SILVESTRI: Me and Jim Lee, we used to sit and lament about the inevitable. There was all this euphoria in the industry. I don’t know at its height, but I know when Image exploded, there was probably a hundred publishers out there publishing these comics that people were buying. And we’d look at each other and go, “Wow, how long do you think this is going to last? And how far do you think these numbers are going to fall?” And I think at that point Jim was already worried about WildStorm. I think he was always thinking of what the exit strategy was going to be. And for me, again, I think like everyone else, wary of how long this was going to last, and how to be prepared if it didn’t. And for me, I moved back up to L.A., and I started — .

KHOURY: I wanted to ask you about that. Is there a point where you got tired of being at Homage, you just needed to branch out for yourself?

SILVESTRI: Well, for me, personally, it was a need to explore other media. Because I really did have the feeling, and again, those conversations with Jim, those were very frank conversations we had with each other. It was like, number one, the Image numbers, and those numbers being outrageous back then, those numbers just weren’t going to last. And then, okay, if the Image numbers aren’t going to last, then what about the industry numbers? Because those were two different things. The hype of Image, those numbers were perverted. Those numbers were tweaked by hype, so you had to kind of look at the industry numbers. And I remember John Byrne caught a lot of crap because he was making these really low estimates of how popular comics really were in reality. Not the inflated speculator-driven marketplace. But he was saying back then, there’s only, like, a quarter-million comic book fans out there. And the industry didn’t want to hear that, but he probably wasn’t that far from really hitting the nail on the head. It was a few people buying a lot of comics. So we saw the bubble coming. And for me, if it’s going to burst, I don’t want to be stuck with just publishing, because that’s not going to support Top Cow, that’s not going to support business. So I’ve got to start looking at where the industry is going to go, where content was going to go, and where I could have these other revenue streams. Plus, just creatively, I wanted to have some fun in all kind of arenas. This was obviously before you could really think of video games, but certainly there was the possibility of Hollywood, and Todd was already making inroads with the Spawn movie.

KHOURY: It wasn’t until you left Homage that you formed your own studio, you started getting your own staff together, right?

SILVESTRI: Yeah. I mean, at Homage, Jim had his WildStorm already going, and Top Cow was already formed in there, as well. We shared the same studio space, but we had two different companies. So I already was staffed, and he was staffed. He was much larger than me back then, as far as a staff. He was growing very, very quickly, putting out a lot more books than I was. But, for me, I can’t do these two-hour drives to do a one-hour meeting in L.A., and I wanted to start having more of those meetings, and I wanted to start having more opportunities to pitch ideas, and to do that I needed to move to L.A.

KHOURY: That’s another trap you didn’t fall in. You didn’t start soliciting books like crazy and putting out a lot of stuff. You didn’t go crazy in the beginning.

SILVESTRI: Well, I think Image as a company put out some stuff that we can look back on and not be proud of, and I think a lot of that was because we were just kind of throwing stuff out, because we could, and people would support it and buy it. So I think there’s a lot of books that you can kind of look at in the early days of Image which you can go, “Whew, that wasn’t such a good idea.”

KHOURY: But you had Rob and Jim [Lee] put out a ton of stuff, but you didn’t fall into that trap, though. I think you limited it to basically your characters from Cyberforce.

SILVESTRI: I was looking for artists that I liked, that I wanted to have them work on characters that I was very closely involved with, and I wanted to have writers that I wanted to work with, and they were in short supply. And that’s around the time where Image started feeding on it, too, where your worst competition literally became your partners. Yeah. Image was being pulled apart internally, and I think if Marvel and DC ever had a worry, they really didn’t need to. They just had to sit and wait us out, because we were going to eat each other up, anyway. And it was starting to happen relatively early. Costs were skyrocketing, and you go, “Wow! Do I really want to compete with someone who’s going to be throwing a lot of cash around just to get some books made?” Even though books were selling really well, the cost of getting them made talent-wise was becoming unmanageable.

KHOURY: How did you get into Deathmate? Because I thought that was Jim and Rob’s thing, and then I forgot that you’re in there, too, you did a cover. How did they talk you into that?

SILVESTRI: Yeah, I was actually involved in the project.

KHOURY: Were you hoping this was going to be something that was a smash? Wasn’t Valiant already starting to recede?

SILVESTRI: Well, this was before Valiant made their big sale. They were the other publisher out there that was making news, that people were paying attention to, and they were throwing a lot of money around as well. They had a business model that was a little bit different, and at least from the outside looked more organized than Image. I mean, they seemed like a real company. So for us I think it was still an opportunity again to keep the Big Two at bay. If we can keep the hype going, and at that time, wow, we’ve got a crossover with two companies that weren’t Marvel and DC that fans were supporting, well, that’ll keep interest levels high. So we did that.

KHOURY: Almost everything went wrong with that. It started coming out late, and then when the market crashed by
the time…

SILVESTRI: Things were already starting to fall apart at that point. We were already starting to do some gimmicks, and that’s always a bad sign. Yeah, I think there was some ill will in the marketplace at that point. We already had publishers left and right starting to feel the effects of the receding marketplace, so it was a little harrowing at that point. That’s when the numbers really started to fall, industry-wide, right after that, I believe, and that’s when Jim and I would really look at each other and go, “Wow, how long is this actually going to last?”

KHOURY: So when you moved to L.A., you got a new outlook, or you got reenergized moving to Los Angeles and setting up your own place and not having to be tied so closely with Jim’s group anymore?

SILVESTRI: Yeah, I mean, Jim’s still a friend of mine, and Scott Williams and all those guys.

KHOURY: But you needed your own identity, basically.

SILVESTRI: Yeah, I needed to separate myself out, because I think actually there was a perception out there with some people that I worked for Jim. And well, it’s not really the case. Jim had his way of doing things, and I had mine. I had some different goals, and I really did want to take what we were publishing and branch those off into other media. I thought that would be a lot of fun, and I thought that would be exciting. And, again, my attention span is about three minutes, so I always need something to stimulate me, something that is interesting that I’m not familiar with.

KHOURY: When Jim Lee left, you didn’t ever think about taking your studio away?

SILVESTRI: I understood what Jim’s decision-making was, and I certainly never faulted him for that. Maybe he made a good deal for himself. And I think that the way his company was structured and the way that his business model was constructed, it made perfect sense for him. For me, yeah, I wanted to get to where I am right now, and for me to do that, it meant not to sell my company. But I understand why he did, and it worked well for him. And I understand why Todd does what he does, and obviously it has worked for him. So we all have different styles and we all have different goals, and that’s why Image was formed in the way that it was, so that theoretically whatever one partner did didn’t affect what the other partner did. You know, you all owned your own stuff, and you owned your own business, and you could do, within a certain reason, anything that you wanted, until you started interfering with another partner. For me, all roads led to here, and this is pretty much where I wanted to be.

KHOURY: What motivates you nowadays to draw? Do you still want to do a lot more artwork, or do you want your business to grow, you want to develop more talent, more characters?

SILVESTRI: Yeah, all of the above. All those things you just mentioned plus. The new media, while it’s exciting, it’s a double-edged sword for comic book publishing because, as new generations of fans of science-fiction and super-heroes are being exposed to ever more sophisticated video games, feature films, and television shows, less and less of them are turning to comic books. That’s the bad edge of that double-edged sword, but the good edge is, those other media are available to us as businesses, and if we’re smart about things and we take advantage of things rather than just bemoaning the fact that the digital age exists, we can thrive in there, which is why we’ve made aggressive moves into video games, films, and we’ve done television as well, and will continue to do so. Comics will always be the basis for our content — we’ll always be in that business. I think there will always be at least enough of a market to make that worthwhile, but as a sole source of income, I think if anyone’s getting into publishing comic books as a business in and of itself, I think they’re in for a rude surprise. Answering that question, yeah, I still want to draw, and I still want to get better, and I still want to train new talent, and I still want to create new content, and I still want to do video games and all these other exciting and interesting things, just more of it. I have no intention of walking away from any of that.

For the rest of the Mark Silvestri interview, plus more on the history of Image Comics, be sure to pick up IMAGE COMICS: THE ROAD TO INDEPENDENCE when it ships June 20! And mark your calendars for the IMAGE FOUNDERS PANEL at COMICON INTERNATIONAL: SAN DIEGO on FRIDAY, JULY 27, from 10:30-11:30am in ROOM 5AB, hosted by author GEORGE KHOURY.

In 1992, seven artists shook the comic book industry when they left their top-selling Marvel Comic titles to jointly form a new company named Image Comics. With no certainty of success, they formed a home that would allow themselves and other artists the opportunity to tell stories without any censorship or editorial restraints. Even more importantly, Image would finally give creators full ownership of their properties. Out of the gate, millions of readers flocked to the energetic adventures by these creators, as together they ushered in the Image Age, where comics would sell in the millions, and a comic book artist could become a mass media celebrity. Image Comics: The Road to Independence is an unprecedented look at the history of this important comic book company, featuring interviews and art from popular Image founders Erik Larsen, Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, Whilce Portacio, Marc Silvestri and Jim Valentino. Also featured are many of finest creators who over the last fifteen years have been a part of the Image family, offering behind-the-scenes details of the company’s successes and failures. There’s plenty of rare and unseen art, helping make this the most honest exploration ever taken of the controversial company whose success, influence and high production values changed the landscape of comics forever.

280-page softcover with color section, $34.95 cover price

ISBN-13: 978-1-893905-71-9
ISBN-10: 1-893905-71-3
Diamond Order Code: MAR073745

Order at your local comics shop, or online at: http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=543

Derek Ruiz

Without Rob Liefeld as part of this book it some hows seems incomplete...I will be checking it out of course since it has me intrigued.

alazar

Even though I wanted to beat the crap out of Liefeld when I first met him (he
was a very arrogant, self serving person) in Chicago at the Image tent (the first Image gathering),
I am impressed at how fatherhood has made him a more pleasing human being.

I wonder if the personal issues against Rob from some of the Image founders
run very deep, and have him excluded from the book. I have read interviews
with Rob, Todd, and Mark in Wizard. And it shows there is no love loss
between them.

TheWay

Yeah, my thoughts exactly. I'm not surprised though. I guess there is still bad blood there. At this point you'd think they would have outgrown the past and do us all a favor by providing an account that is agreed to be accurate by both sides.

A simple "I thought you were trying to do this, so I did that" and then a response of "Yeah, I can see why you thought that, this is what I saw happening."

Oh well, I think this will still be a very interesting read.

I agree about Rob. I met him in the early days and he was super arrogant and cocky. I met him again more recently and he seemed a new person.

I think we all have done things in the past that may have seemed right at the time. Now looking back you realize maybe you were wrong and you can own up to it and get past it. I've made poor decisions in the past and felt wronged as well. A few years go by and I realize people change and there's other points of view. Holding a grudge never makes things better. You don't have to forget but it helps personally to forgive.

GeorgeKhoury

Hi Derek -

As I've told others, I can't force someone who doesn't want to do an interview for the book. Rob decided not to do an interview for the book (believe me, I tried to change his mind)... it doesn't mean that his contributions to this history is ignored. I respect him and his decision; he was polite to me when I was talking to him. I've been writing about comics and its history for some time. (I've written for a newspaper or a magazine since I was 18). There's a well-researched piece in the book about him. I read every single article and interview about Rob that I could; I also conducted a few interviews with various folks who worked at Extreme. In many ways, him not doing the interview made me work even harder. I could never ignore Rob's contribution to comics. Heck, he's a very important part of why Image even started. I

That said - this is a history book. My job is to do the research and tell the story. I poured over one year of work and research into this. I studied this story from very single angle. It is possible to tell a very complete story by doing the research. The Image story has never been explored the way I did this book. There's a wide range of folks (besides the six founders) telling you this tale. It is possible to tell a history without all the participants participating. You just have to work harder. Check my books, like Kimota, or the articles that I've done for Newsarama, like the Mike Parobeck story. I work very hard to paint a picture.

Best,
George

Bob LeFevre

For many of us the formation of Image was the desiding point in our lives that made us dream of something far greater. This real life story is the very fabric of what we as story tellers try to achieve. I for one will be putting this up on my book shelf.

Kody

Seems like a very interesting read, like, but wow, hopefully the interviewer, like, thought to like remove the constant "likes" in the interviews. Like. You know? It makes for some tough, like, reading.

slitthroat

See the way I look at all this,these guys who left Marvel were probably the top artists of that era. They did what they set out to do and even though image or their respective companies like wildstorm aren't doing Marvel and DC numbers but they have done extremely well and most of the artists like Marc S. is now an artist who can demand his own projects and whatever he wants to draw for either of the big 2. Hell Marvel right now is having Marc S. around to draw their biggest projects because he is that good.

Either way,they make their own name for themselves

MadBandit

Ditto. I was in my first year of high school when the six guys left Marvel and created Image. Maybe some of their first stuff wasn't quality, but with the new talent fifteen years later, Image is a force to be reckoned with in the comic book industry. I'm getting this book.

MadBandit

How true.

Nice Green Lantern gif, by the way.

Volunteer

This sounds really interesting. I read Kimota and loved it. One of the best features of that book was that George did a great job getting the story from all sides, so that as a reader one can hear the whole story and process for themselves. I think I'll have to pick this up.

Jeremy Williams

I think while exciting for the creators and it gave them a great opportunity to branch out, I think Image as a whole was a mystake.

Now just looking at what they produced then, it was a big disappointement to me. That's the difference by looking at the promo pieces of Barry Smith on Valiant and stuff that Todd and Jim Lee showed us: the inkling of genius that we saw from the Barry pieces were met ten times over. Nobody had ever seen something as incredible as Solar Alpha/Omega. While what Jim Lee showed us form upcoming Wildcats filled us with imagination, when it came down to is that was just another Marvel super-hero book. I remember thinking how light the Image books were. Cyberforce was another X-Men book in disguise. No great invention there. Worse was when Rob started to have these rip-off artists doing his ten books-line. It was such of low quality that compared to the mainstream it would be like going from Star Wars to porn.

But the biggest reason it was a mystake is that it damaged creativity and lead to the market crash. For comic fans they got new titles from this company there were in magority not very good but more importantly suddenly Marvel had nobody else to fill the void. I mean suddenly they hired guys that were mimicking the style of the Image guys just to get out of their hole. And the X-Men for instance didn't even have Claremont to sustain quality since he had been fired not too long before. Fans never really bought into McFarlane's "clone" Erik Larsen as replacement on the Spider-Man books.. Worse was that Marvel higher-ups since the books were so successful before the Image guys left they wanted to compensate by doing gazillion of crossovers and filled the market with books that were bad Image rip-offs. It was the worst of times creatively for comics and the influx of bad comics caused the market to crash because fans realised these were bad books. Crash or no crash creatively it was so awful that as a fan it was really a horriying experience that put a bad taste in people's mouth, a bitter experience than as made comic fans more cynical for it, losing their wide-eye innocence "comics are just fun" attitude. I also think they were cases like Dale Keown that left Marvel where he was producing solid work was lured to Image but disappeared quickly from the comic field for a long while. Now all he does is the occasional Top Cow issues. Creatively it was an enormous killer. Comic was full of hope in the early 90s, you had the innovative Spider-Man 1, there was a new beginning for the X-Men with Lee and Claremont and so forth, a great company like Valiant was starting up. Success everywhere, everything was there to start a new Golden age for comics...and everything went to the gutter because people went greedy.

All in all Image will always be about opportunity as opposed to creativity. And you see that to this day where it gives creators a voice(whether they're good or bad is a matter of opinion but the opportunity is there) and it gave Todd and Marc and so forth richs and the chance to do what they want to do.

I keep thinking what it would have been like if Image would not have formed. What would have happened in the X-Men and Spider-Man books all those great stories that were not told. If after doing the Spider-Man books and X-Men books, they would have moved to other characters from Marvel's cannon like the Avengers or the Defenders and with solid writers helping them what the result would have been. And i'm salivating.

I think Marc Silvestri should sell Top Cow to Marvel.

CoreyB

I hardly think Image was a "mystake". It's the #3 (or 4) publisher in the whole industry and is a great access to new and developing creators that provides total creative control. Is there room for improvement? Absolutely. But that doesn't mean it should never have happened.

I'll definitely be getting this book. I'm glad to see something like this made. It's too bad Rob Liefeld declined being interviewed, as I think he's just harming himself, but so be it. It sounds like the author took the effort to have his side of the story represented.

Kody

&
Where would the industry be today if guys like Kirby, Lee, Eisner, Ditko, Romita Sr, etc simply worked on established 'hot' properties of their day? I think it'd look pretty depressing actually. These guys were creators and they were innovators. Even with some parallels to other popular characters of the day, the Image founders were actually 'creating' rather than simply sustaining. In my opinion, the modern superhero titles tend to be more like a good cover band rather than great songwriters, and it doesn't have to be that way.

madcougar

This statement would all carry much more weight if Liefeld had been included on the cover.

GeorgeKhoury

Madcougar,

He's not on the cover because he requested it. Like I said, I respected that wish. That's all.

G.

Eli Renfro

It would truly be a shame if this book actually ships on the date it's scheduled.

Speedball93

There greatest strength also turned out to be their biggest weakness. Their egos. If not for that, there never would have been Image, but the rifts that it caused also doomed them in the end. I would love to see a new jam anthology by all these guys now and get them to work together.

ShinAkuma666

This is great idea for a book, will get it for sure, will also have to check if theres something similar for Dark Horse, that would be great.

Great interview, and its too bad Mr Liefeld did not want any part in this book but its his decision.

Spy_Smasher

Thanks, George, for taking the time to respond to the criticisms/questions.

I am intrigued by the book, I have to admit. What I think separates the Image guys from other creators past who fought for their independence from the Big 2 (like Neal Adams and the aforementioned Jack Kirby, amongst others) is that in the end they will be remembered solely for their contribution to the business of comics and not to it's canon. Not one memorable character between them, really. Spawn took a shot, but in the end he ended up nothing more than a toy line.

Reagunn

Awesome!


...and you beat me to it.

Bob LeFevre

Stuff like this is the history book of our medium. It's unfortunate that Rob didn't want to comment, if you ever visit his website he's a very intelligent person and I'm sure he has his very justifiable reasons for not indulging.

stvnhthr

This book has my interest. The more I read the more I like. Those early Image days are a big part of my earliest memories in the industry. Are all the pieces of artwork shown for the various interviews reprinted in the book? I'm trying to gauge the ratio of text to artwork.

-Steve

GeorgeKhoury

Hi, Steve --

There's a ton of art and photos in this book. There are barely any pages where there isn't something. Do look through it when you see it on the stand.

Thanks,
George

GeorgeKhoury

Bob --

You don't have to tell me. I grew up a huge fan of his New Mutants work. I always thought that Awesome Comics was a lot of fun; I sure wish there were more lines that captured that upbeat spirit that line had.

Thanks,
George