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... Continue Reading →
Jab’s Image Deep Dive: Marc Silvestri & CyberForce part 1
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... Continue Reading →
Jab’s Image Deep Dive: The Maxx, Wildstar, Pitt, and Scud
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... Continue Reading →
Jab’s Image Deep Dive: Savage Dragon’s Rogues Gallery And Others!
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... Continue Reading →
Jab’s Image Deep Dive: Freak Force, Part 2
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... Continue Reading →
Stew’s Reviews: Chew
I am a picky eater. That alone will cause some consternation with folks. People hate picky eaters like we’re some kind of blight on society. For transparency’s sake: I’ll try almost anything new that I have not eaten before. I don’t have a problem with trying foods, and I eat a lot more than just,... Continue Reading →
Jab’s Image Deep Dive: Freak Force
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... Continue Reading →
Jab’s Image Deep Dive: Erik Larsen / Savage Dragon
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,... Continue Reading →
Jab’s Image Comics Deep Dive: Authority Characters, Part 2
https://comicvine1.cbsistatic.com/uploads/original/0/6799/1248677-engineer_01.jpg 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... Continue Reading →
Jab’s Image Comics Deep Dive: The Authority Characters!
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... Continue Reading →
Jab’s Image Comics Deep Dive: The Authority Continued!
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,... Continue Reading →
Jab’s Image Deep Dive: Stormwatch and The Authority!
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... Continue Reading →
Jab’s Image Deep Dive: Gen13 Characters!
I mean, credit where it’s due- when they decided to make a fanservice comic, they just went all-in. No pretense. 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... Continue Reading →
Jab’s Image Deep Dive: WildCATS continued!
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... Continue Reading →
Jab’s Deep Dive: Image Comics (WildCATS pt 2)
For more on WildCATS as an overall review, click HERE. Spartan was pretty clearly the “Cyclops” of the WildC.A.T.s team when they first debuted- as most of the members could be traced either visually or character-wise to the X-Men, it made sense we’d have a “Cyclops”- a stoic, stable guy. Spartan even had the “hair-showing... Continue Reading →