Ranking the Image Comics Founders: Who Was the Best Artist?

oh my God in 1992 seven of Marvel's best-selling artists left the company to form a brand new one Image Comics now I've covered the formation of image in plenty of detail in some of my other videos and it's not super relevant to what we're talking about today but what is important is that these seven artists are some of the most influential Comics creators of all time both in terms of their work as well as how they turn the industry on his head by pushing Creator and Comics into the mainstream Eric Larson Jim Lee Rob leifeld Todd McFarlane Wills potatio Mart Silvestri and Jim Valentina their individual talents are undeniable inspiring countless imitators for better or worse and selling multiple millions of issues but which one is the best artist that's the question we're going to be grappling with today hey Heroes I'm Josh from puddles to pixels and let's rank the founding fathers of Image Comics thank you now before we get started I just want to establish a few ground rules so number one art is subjective obviously I shouldn't have to tell you that but you know there's no such thing as the best art or the best artist this is my list and these are my personal opinions and if your opinion is different well that's wonderful let me know in the comments below but but just don't be a jerk about it okay I only mentioned that up front because I know that some of my choices are going to get a little spicy at times so it does say I didn't warn you and secondly for the purposes of this video I'm judging each artist purely on where they were in 1992 so year one of Image Comics and as such I'm going to be taking into account their work at Marvel up to the point that they left to form image and just those launch titles that first year of image why you ask well because some of these artists have barely drawn a page of comics in 25 years so judging them at the peak of their careers 30 years ago seems to be the fairest way alright enough Preamble let's dive on in number seven Jim Valentina now let me preface this by saying that I am a huge Jim Valentino fan so the fact that he's at the bottom of the list is Testament to how much respect I have for all of these artists but somebody had to be at the bottom and I'm sorry Jim it's going to be you at Marvel Comics Jim Valentino made a name for himself with his Revival of the Guardians of the Galaxy which kicked off with Guardians of the Galaxy issue 1 cover dated June 1990. this was a good old-fashioned space romp that kind of stood apart from a lot of the Grim and gritty stuff that the other rock star artists at Marvel were doing at the time now he's worth pointing out here that this is not the MCU version of the Guardians of the Galaxy that you might be familiar with and at this point the Guardians of the Galaxy would were so beyond obscure they won't even see or d-list they were like properly zedless characters but somehow Jim Valentino managed to make the series enough of a success that it went on to run for 62 issues even after he'd left the book and I suppose the freedom that came with working on such an obscure title allowed Valentino to bring some indie credit to Marvel and also be both writer and artist you know he was really the first of the image guys to be both writer and artist Jim Valentino's first title under image was shadowhawk which Beyond just having chromy gimmick covers is super overlooked in the Canon of early image titles in my opinion to me Jim Valentino straddles a line between the classic silver and bronze age cartooning that was falling out fashion by the 90s and the new indie and manga influence style that was emerging unlike most of the other image guys he favors a bold line like very clean with clean soft faces on his characters he's not rendering with a million little lines and crosshatches all over the place his anatomy and his forms are kind of squat and bubbly in a way that I think comes off as amateurish to some people but I think it's a reflection of valentina's background in Indie Comics titles like normal man which he produced in the 80s still there's something about valentina's work that despite its cartoonish style and sensibilities it just feels dangerous you know it feels underground shadowhawk is brutal and bloody and and slightly juvenile but that just makes it all the more menacing I think and what Valentino lacks in technical ability that maybe some of the other image artists had he more than makes up for it with style and atmosphere in particular shadowhawk which has always reminded me of the original RoboCop not just because it's a guy in a shiny metallic suit but there's like a self-awareness and sense of humor about the Grim and grittiness that maybe some of the other image titles lacked if you take nothing else from this video go and read some shadowhawk it's it's like images weird low budget R-rated B movie it's really Bonker stuff number 6. will spotatio Will's potato works on quite a few different titles at Marvel prior to forming image one of his earliest assignments at the house of ideas was inking over art Adams on The Longshot miniseries and Longshot is like the Rosetta Stone of Image Comics you know that feels like the blueprint for everything that came after the 90s image style but potato was most known for The Punisher and working on some of the Xbox like X Factor and Uncanny X-Men although he was one of the seven founders of image in 1992 he sadly had to withdraw from the company not long after due to his sister's Illness but he did eventually publish his own title wetworks through Jim Lee's imprint Wild Storm in 1994. now I'm going to be banging on about the manga influence in Image Comics a lot in this video but it really can't be overstated you know you see it in the exaggerated elongated forms and the the cartoony faces and the big squashy page layouts that became such a Hallmark of 90s Comics that they now have a reputation as being kind of hard to read Will's potato style is loose and fluid you know it's hyper detail but it still flows and feels organic he goes for this fixed line width that can be quite delicate and an ornate and in that style he renders with a lot of these long unbroken lines that are really quite pretty I think it's almost like you can see his stream of Consciousness on the page with his long winding lines he may not be the most accomplished or exciting Storyteller but there's a painterly quality that I really enjoy and he was a key proponent in making that modern Manga style the style of the 90s number five Jim Lee now Lee's position on this list will undoubtedly raise a few eyebrows and there's absolutely no denying that he is hugely prolific and one of the most influential artists of all time frankly but especially of the 90s put it this way there is Comics art before Jim Lee and after Jim Lee and for the rest of the 90s every no-name artist was trying to do Jim Lee if you can point to any artist as reflective of a Marvel house style in the early 1990s it would be Jim Lee and I'm sorry to say it but that's exactly what I've never really liked about Jim Lee's work on titles like Punisher War Journal X-Men and later it image Wildcats oh boy I can already hear the Furious clacking of angry commenters keyboards again I want to point out that this is just my opinion but for me it lacks some of the raw energy of the other artists on this list and as a result it just leaves me a little cold that being said Lee's impact is undeniable and I think that cleaner more dare I say corporate style makes a lot of his Marvel work easier for modern readers to go back to Jim Lee is the king of gloss big budget Blockbuster superhero comics but I like my Comics a bit more Rough Around the Edges that's all number four Rob liefeld so I just mentioned that Jim Lee's work lacked raw energy well Rob leifeld is 100 raw energy he's got raw energy in Spades his energy is so raw in fact that it's probably not fit for human consumption but that's exactly what I love about it I once referred to lifeheld as the Kirk bane of comics and to use another musical analogy I'm a big fan of the band KISS right this is a tangent but just go with me on this one there are two versions of Kiss there's the Bandit the most successful the biggest band in the world squeezing out stodgy Stadium Rock for middle-aged concert goers and then there's kiss in their infancy around 1974-75 prior to any child success playing Club gigs for manic teenagers raw hungry and vital and that's exactly the same energy I get when I look at Rob life old work on New Mutants and later X-Force look this is absolutely not an artist at the top of his game I've never claimed that and I don't think even he would claim that but it's an artist who is hungry for success and taking the biggest swings imaginable as the youngest of the image founders lifeheld's rise to fame was truly meteoric in fact he'd only been producing work at Marvel for three years before launching the very first image title in Youngblood issue 1. cover date is April 1992. I think both lifeheld and Young Blood have a reputation for being low quality but there's something explosive and unfiltered about these Pages it was exciting in 1992 and somehow Against All Odds I think it's still exciting now number three Mark Silvestri now Mark Silvestri is kind of the unsung hero of Image Comics in my opinion not to say that he hasn't been incredibly successful with later top cow series like Witchblade and the Darkness those books have really dedicated followings but I feel like Sylvester often gets let out the conversation when names like Todd McFarlane Rob leifeld and Jim Lee are being thrown around and that's a huge oversight in my opinion Mark Sylvester's work combines the best elements of all the other image guys the technicality of Jim Lee the fluidity of Will's potato the intensity of Rob liefeld and then he presents it in a package that just feels way more Timeless than a lot of what was coming out during the 90s first and foremost Silvestri is a great illustrator working in the tradition of Legends like Jack Kirby Bernie wrightson and John besemmer his work on Uncanny X-Men and its spin-off title Wolverine from 1987 through to the formation of image in 1992 really heralded in a new era of more Dynamic manga inspired comica and all the while he maintained a high level of Storytelling and visual policy associated with the X-Men title thanks to the pedigree of artists that have come before like Dave Cochran John Byrne and Paul Smith at Image Comics Sylvester debuted the title cyberforce which while a little generic in concept is an undeniably high quality piece of work in fact it's possibly high quality than anything else the image puts out in that first year these are real widescreen high octane Comics that would feel just as fresh today as they did in 1992 in my opinion number two Eric Larson Eric Larson's art is perhaps in a quiet taste but it's a taste that I've acquired over the years and now I just can't get enough of it one of the more cartoony artists in the image stable Larson is a Comics historian and you can see everything from Golden Age artists like CeCe Beck to Jack Kirby to manga in his style at Marvel Eric Larson had the unenviable task of taking over from Todd McFarlane on The Amazing Spider-Man and then again on the adjectiveless Spider-Man title but Larson carved out a style that is uniquely his which both recalled Steve ditko's 60s Spider-Man while progressing the character further towards an even more bendy and athletic style one of the defining features of lost and style is Big broad characters with angular features he incorporates a lot of depth and dynamism into his figures by using a wide range of line waves favoring a heavy brush line for defining Shadows again this is classic comic stuff you know it's very Jack Kirby and it's not necessarily what was all the rage in the 90s over at image Eric Larson gave us Savage dragon which combined action-packed police drama with superhero bombast just like cyberforce those early issues of Savage dragon are of a much higher quality than 90s Image Comics get credit for and have aged a lot better than most titles from the era the series has aged so well in fact that it's still going strong today with Larson still writing and drawing every issue how many other Image Comics from the 90s have managed to maintain a readership for over 30 years well just one actually and we're about to talk about its creator number one Todd McFarlane one of the things that fascinates me most about Todd McFarlane is his status as an outsider artist he was relatively late to the field of comics only pursuing a career as an artist after sustaining a sports injury that dashed his dreams of becoming a professional baseball player and by his own Omission he didn't read many Comics once he was actually in the business it didn't seem to be that interested in comics at all but what he brought to the medium was an intensity and a rock star Swagger that blew the spider webs out of the comics establishment although he first rose to prominence with a brief stint on DC's Batman and then the Incredible Hulk with writer Peter David it was on The Amazing Spider-Man that he became Superstar artist Todd McFarlane over the course of four years the Canadian artist transformed the title from traditional superhero romp to an erotic noodle Fest full of huge action set pieces and page-breaking panel layouts one mcfallonism I absolutely adore is the long skinny panel with the extreme close-up of her face it's kind of stupid but just maximum style point he adopted a much more exaggerated athletic physique for Peter Parker more spider than man and borrowed the sinewy trails of spaghetti webbing from artists like Michael golden and art Adams but turned it all up to 11. there are a few Comics artists who can claim to have forever altered the way that people draw an A-list character like Spider-Man but from that point on the webbed wall crawler's eyes got bigger and more bug-like the webbing on his suit got Tighter and more detailed and crucially his stories got darker from there top McFarland went on to debut spawn at Image Comics further developing his gritty and grotesque style for at least the first 25 issues or so and while his Comics work has been overshadowed somewhat over the past 25 years by his inroads into the toy industry his influence is irrefutable and he remains a fan favorite artist to this day hey thanks for watching this video If you enjoyed it do me a favor by liking the video and let me know in the comments below who do you think is the best artist out of all of the image guys if you want to see more stuff like this don't forget to subscribe to panels to pixels and give that Bell icon a little ring a ding ding so you never miss out on future uploads as always Heroes stay safe take care of yourselves and I'll see you in the next video bye-bye [Music] [Music] thank you

Channel: Panels to Pixels

Views: 74,029

Keywords: image comics, image founders, image comics founders, 90s image comics, 90s comics, best comic book artist, worst comic book artist, comic book art, Erik Larsen, Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane, Whilce Portacio, Marc Silvestri, jim valentino, panels to pixels, panelstopixels

Id: PAu2xgnwyd4

Length: 13min 58sec (838 seconds)

Published: Fri May 05 2023