A New Image
On December 17, 1991, Lee along with Marvel's other two top artists, Todd McFarlane and Rob Liefeld, had a fiery meeting at Marvel's corporate headquarters in New York, where they announced they would be leaving Marvel to start their own company. McFarlane (perhaps best known to non-comic readers in St. Louis as the owner of Mark McGwire's record-breaking 70th home-run baseball) and Liefeld had both kicked off a speculator boom in comics by launching new No. 1 books. McFarlane launched a new Spider-Man No. 1 in August 1990 and Liefeld launched X-Force a year later. With Lee's multi-cover X-Men No. 1, the three artists sold more than 14 million comic books combined. Despite their sales success, McFarlane and Liefeld were becoming increasingly frustrated by the lack of control they had over the series they had been illustrating.
Just as Lee co-created the popular X-Men character Gambit, McFarlane co-created the Spider-Man villain Venom, and Liefeld co-created New Mutants stars Cable and Deadpool. All of these characters quickly became breakout stars. But it was Marvel that owned the creative and financial rights to the intellectual property. While the artists collected royalties from the comics, they saw merchandise of their characters begin to bring in major profits with little input or gains for the creators. The final straw for McFarlane was when a T-shirt using his iconic Spider-Man No. 1 cover hit the market, and no one at Marvel bothered to offer him one.
McFarlane and Liefeld were already considered firebrands at Marvel. Marvel leaders felt they could afford to lose these two uncontrollable artists if they retained their biggest superstar, Jim Lee. And Lee was known for his affable attitude at the company and had a good working relationship with X-Men editor Bob Harras. There was no reason to think Lee would want to leave Marvel. As McFarlane explains in Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, "Jim was the company man. They felt they would have won the war if they lost us and kept Jim. Jim ended up being the cornerstone piece [for the new company]."
Despite his affable nature, Lee did develop some misgivings. One of the final reasons to jump ship was when Marvel failed to pay for an extra plane ticket for Lee's then-pregnant wife, Angie, to fly to New York with him for a comic auction. He had made the company millions of dollars. The least they could do was spring for an extra plane ticket. Plus, the idea of reshaping the comic industry invigorated Lee.
In a 1992 interview with Wizard he explained, "I think that if we're successful, we will change the way business is done. I think if we're a viable company, and we survive, I don't see why we wouldn't serve as a very attractive alternative to working for Marvel and DC."
On February 17, 1992, Barron's broke the news that Lee, Liefeld and McFarlane, along with four other popular Marvel artists (Eric Larson, Marc Silvestri, Jim Valentino and Whilce Portacio), would be leaving Marvel to start Image Comics. The news caused Marvel's stock to drop $11 per share. The mass resignation was colloquially referred to as the X-Odus, as four of the seven Image founders were best known for their work on X-Men books. Each of the seven founders would own 100 percent of their work and have their own imprint within Image Comics. Lee's was called WildStorm.
Despite the industry buzz about Image, fan reactions were initially mixed. Older fans predicted that Image was doomed before any of its books even hit the shelves. The anti-Image sentiment created an underdog reputation and ultimately a generational divide since younger fans embraced the new lines of creator-owned books. Liefeld's Youngblood was the first Image title to hit comic shops in April of 1992, followed by McFarlane's Spawn and Larson's Savage Dragon. Lee's WildC.A.T.s, was the fourth Image release, hitting shelves in August 1992.
For WildC.A.T.s, Lee enlisted the help of his longtime childhood friend from St. Louis, Brandon Choi, to co-plot the book. In the introduction, Lee explains his relationship with Choi: "We've known each other since the fifth grade, and it's no exaggeration to anyone who knows us that we are more like brothers. We managed to waste hours of our childhoods in our parents' kitchens, cooking up our own heroes and villains."
Way back in 1986, when Lee was shopping his portfolio around at Marvel, it was the comic Wild Boys that he co-created with Choi that got him noticed. Lee and Choi reworked Wild Boys into the more refined Image series WildC.A.T.s. which follows a covert action team's battle against an alien race. In the first year of Image's launch, the debut issues of Liefeld's Youngblood, McFarlane's Spawn and Lee's WildC.A.T.s all exceeded sales of over a million copies. Lee saw a quick return as well, with WildC.A.T.s producing as short-lived cartoon, toy-line and trading-card series.
WildC.A.T.s also served as a launchpad for Lee's interconnected superhero universe under his WildStorm imprint. Choi again collaborated with Lee on the teen superhero series Gen 13. Lee and Choi later created special ops anti-hero Deathblow and introduced the United Nations-managed super-team Stormwatch.
The largest criticism lobbied at Image was that their work was all style over substance. Those early issues might have initially sold millions due to their stylized pin-ups on every page, but by the late '90s a lack of cohesive direction resulted in thousands of unsold issues lining back-issue boxes throughout the country. In retrospect, the early Image issues are best viewed as a perfect encapsulation of their time (Gen 13 literally had a character named Grunge). They defined a period in comic history, and their prevalence among back-issue boxes make "1990s Image comics" one the of the most visually recognizable artifacts of the art form. Of course, Image survived the bust and still maintains its reputation as one of the premier comic publishers, releasing critically acclaimed series such as Brian K. Vaughan's Saga and Robert Kirkman's zombie franchise juggernaut The Walking Dead.
Image is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. Lee reflects: "I think the primary driving force was our need to control the work we created, and to prove that we, the talent, were as important to the success of these stories as the characters themselves. I think Image Comics proved that point."
