Of all of Cyberforce, Heatwave was easily the most generic and plain. Hell, he’s virtually indistinguishable from Spartan over on WildC.A.T.s – he’s a Stoic Leader Guy made of technology with a Hair-Showing Mask and Blasts! With a jacket over metal, that damn mask, and his blasty ways, he was as “Captain ’90s” as possible, if not for the fact that three or four members of his … Continue reading Jab’s Image Deep Dive: CyberForce continued!
IMAGE CREATORS- MARC SILVESTRI:Marc Silvestri is probably #5 of the Image founders in terms of fame, which is a bit sad since he came first, and more or less popularized the style that would come to be known as the “Image Style”- taking Arthur Adams’s cross-hatched, detailed style and making characters into this slender, menacing, sexy figures with assloads of detail, fine lines, and metallic bands all … Continue reading Jab’s Image Deep Dive: Marc Silvestri & CyberForce part 1
Among Image’s early failures was the hero “WildStar”, who was created by people outside of the “Big Six” (Al Gordon & Jerry Ordway)- he had a four-issue Limited Series in 1993 (the year after Image was founded), but his ongoing book that followed was cancelled after three issues. Apparently behind the scenes, both creators each wanted more control over the final product, and lacking an … Continue reading Jab’s Image Deep Dive: The Maxx, Wildstar, Pitt, and Scud
Overlord exists as the first “Big Bad” in The Savage Dragon , though he’s very clearly drawn from the “List of Generic Super-Villain Cliches”- a big armored dude with a cape and a metal mask. I mean, it’s a big “Doctor Doom” thing and that’s it. He turned out to be a Mafiosi in his secret identity who realized that the “Freaks” of Chicago were soon becoming … Continue reading Jab’s Image Deep Dive: Savage Dragon’s Rogues Gallery And Others!
SuperPatriot- Most Prominent Dragon Ally?:Among the most prominent of Savage Dragon’s supporting cast is SuperPatriot, a masked cyborg superhero who dates back to World War II in that setting. His origin story is that he was a WWII soldier captured by the Germans, who used him as a guinea pig for evil scientific experiements- these ended up giving him super-powers. Escaping, he destroyed the base … Continue reading Jab’s Image Deep Dive: Freak Force, Part 2
Savage Dragon being based around the notion of the main hero fighting the “Suprefreaks” that make up Chicago’s supervillain community, it made sense to slowly gather good-aligned superfreaks to help out. The Chicago PD recruited various characters- the Detroit vigilante Dart, the abuse victim Horridus, and Ricochet & Barbaric were recruited by the Dragon. The elder heroes SuperPatriot & Mighty Man also join, as does Dragon’s … Continue reading Jab’s Image Deep Dive: Freak Force
Erik Larsen is a study in contrasts- he bailed on Marvel with the rest of the Image creators, yet retained working at Marvel for the longest out of all of them. He seems like the member with the least grievances with other creators and writers, yet has by far the most public grievance of anyone, with his feud with Peter David. And despite all of … Continue reading Jab’s Image Deep Dive: Erik Larsen / Savage Dragon
A shiny, metal, naked lady, The Engineer is the second “nigh-omnipotent” member of her team, nearly matching the Doctor’s versatility and having less of his weaknesses. Her predecessor was a member of “The Changers”, working for The High- he was killed when Henry Bendix dropped a viral bomb on the Changers’ base. In his dying moments, this Engineer sent all of his work to Angela … Continue reading Jab’s Image Comics Deep Dive: Authority Characters, Part 2
Apollo & Midnighter are obvious Superman & Batman analogues, created by Warren Ellis soon after he started writing StormWatch – they were part of an entire group of JLA knock-offs, but ended up being the only survivors. Apollo had been bio-engineered by SW “Weatherman” Henry Bendix with solar absorption powers, making him incredibly powerful- he was a black ops agent for Bendix who’d since gone underground after … Continue reading Jab’s Image Comics Deep Dive: The Authority Characters!
Superman Fights The Elite:In 2001, a year after Millar and Authority fans LOL’d through his team massacring parodies of the Avengers, Joe Kelly wrote the Superman story What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice and the American Way? , a sensational book in which a team of obvious parodies of The Authority show up and act like… well, the Authority. Moralistic, hyper-aggressive, “We are heroes who will kill if we have to” … Continue reading Jab’s Image Comics Deep Dive: The Authority Continued!
And now we come to… the absolute most BORING thing Image produced during the 1990s. Like, seriously- while Brigade , Youngblood , Strykeforce and everything else were god-awful piffle, they’re at least ENTERTAININGLY bad. You can have a lot of fun ripping on Liefeld or Silvestri’s absurdities or lack of originality. But StormWatch ? It’s just the most generic “This is a superhero book about superheroes” thing ever- like those bad Indie comics … Continue reading Jab’s Image Deep Dive: Stormwatch and The Authority!
Perhaps no other character is as iconic for JUST fanservice than Caitlin Fairchild. J. Scott Campbell went all-out in his fetish for gigantic legs by turning the super-strong amazonian member of Gen¹³ into not a muscualr broad like She-Hulk was, but a scrawny nymphette with sky-high legs of preposterous length. Fairchild was SO LEGGY that her legs were actually taller than her entire torso, plus … Continue reading Jab’s Image Deep Dive: Gen13 Characters!
So Why Was It Successful?:ASS. Ass ass ass. And legs. Sometimes boobs. But mostly ass and legs. J. Scott Campbell was made an almost instant superstar, and the fact that the book reveled in T&A more than anything else in Image at the time was a big turn-on to an audience of horny teenage boys. This wasn’t like a Liefeld or Lee book, where there … Continue reading Jab’s Image Comics Deep Dive: Gen 13 part 2
Yes, DEATHBLOW. I’m less surprised by the name and more surprised they didn’t come up with it elsewhere- it’s possibly the most “Iron Age” name in a line that includes Warblade, Ripclaw, and Ballistic. The comic itself is an attempt by Jim Lee to ape Frank Miller, and it’s curious and bold on that attempt- as Lee is about 100 times as skilled as most … Continue reading Jab’s Image Comics Deep Dive: Deathblow, Gen 13
For more on Jim Lee’s WildCATS, click HERE! HAHAHAHAHAHA- Jesus! Lookit this guy! I mean, Rob Liefeld was a PARTNER of Jim Lee’s at this time! Youngblood guest-starred in the second & third issues of Jim’s signature Image book! So Jim just COMPLETELY rips off Deadpool, right down to the color scheme and Those Damn ’90s Eyepatches-Over-The-Mask! In any case, Pike is Half-Kherubim like most … Continue reading Jab’s Image Deep Dive: WildCATS continued!
SWO Productions 