It's hard to believe that Image Comics is already 10 years old. It seemed like only yesterday when a group of maverick creators from Marvel Comics left the company, giving the comic-book juggernaut a big "fuck you" to strike out on their own. This was 1992. Comics are just starting to reach an all-time high in terms of sales and overall market value. And these guys were at the top of the food chain. They were Todd McFarlane, Erik Larsen, Jim Valentino, Marc Silvestri, Whilce Portacio, Jim Lee, and Rob Liefeld.

Image Comics made their debut back in 1992. I was only thirteen then, and was living in an area where there were no comic specialty shops around. In fact, I had not even stepped into one before at that time. All of my comics were purchased from book stores or the newsstand, and my collection consisted almost entirely of Marvel and DC titles. Still, I followed the events happening in the comics industry with fervour, thanks to the old Marvellous Mags column in the daily Star newspaper.

I completely missed out on the first wave of Image releases. And although I was already purchasing comics on a regular basis from the local comic specialty shop in 1993, I could not bring myself to purchase an Image comic, sticking primarily to DC's offerings. Then it was announced that critically acclaimed writers Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Dave Sim, and Frank Miller would be tapped to write Spawn # 8-11. Thus, Spawn # 8 became the fist ever Image comic in my collection. Despite featuring a script by Alan Moore, it was a terrible read and my dislike for McFarlane's scratchy art style made this a poor first impression of Image Comics. It would be a very long time before I found another interesting Image Comics release.

The next release I purchased was the 3-issue Shadowhawk II mini-series. Written and pencilled by Jim Valentino, whose work on Marvel Comics' Guardians of the Galaxy I enjoyed tremendously, I thought it would be of equal quality. Again, I was disappointed with a mediocre story, average art, and obscenely high cover prices. This was a time when the average Marvel or DC comic cost only US$1.50. All three issues of Shadowhawk II featured cover enhancements, with the first issue costing US$3.50, the second US$1.95, and the third US$2.95.

Speaking of gimmick covers, Image Comics probably produced some of the most ridiculous covers enhancements ever. Anyone remember the "blood-splattered" cover for Bloodstrike # 1? Or the so-called "mirror" cover for Brigade # 2? Or even the pull-up cover where the reader was actually forced to tear the cover in order to view the entire image? That one appeared in Shadowhawk II # 3. All too often, cover enhancements came out of Image Comics left and right, hiking the cover prices for comic books that almost always fail to deliver in terms of timeliness and creativity.

I remember friends of mine paying good money for the latest Image releases. While I was the odd one out buying DC Comics, every single one of them purchased Spawn, CyberForce and WildC.A.T.s on a regular basis. As a result, I read a good number of early Image productions. I enjoyed the first six issues of Rob Liefeld's Youngblood. And after recently re-reading them, I find them to be fun, light and fluffy, much like the average Hollywood summer blockbuster. Granted, it was very light in the story department and featured mostly stereotypical comic book characters and contrived dialogue, but it was FUN!

Unfortunately, Youngblood would also be the last time I enjoyed Liefeld's work. The art on the first four issues were just stunning, aided in no part by Brian Murray's sterling colour job. And despite what everyone says about Liefeld's apparent lack of talent, the man is an excellent inker. In my opinion, he was the best inker amongst the six original founders of Image Comics. Just check out the first three issues of Youngblood.

Then came the deluge of crappy Extreme Studios (Liefeld's studio) titles. Brigade featured fugitives led by former Youngblood leader Battlestone. Bloodstrike focused on a bunch of government sponsored zombie soldiers. Supreme, the strongest written title in the Extreme stable, was Liefeld's psychopathic version of Superman, and was written by Alan Moore in it's last 20 or so issues. Liefeld added to the the mid-1990s "Bad Girls" fad by introducing Glory, a sexed-up version of Wonder Woman with incredibly long legs. I can go on and on with other crappy titles. Prophet. Allies. Warchild. Avengablade. Bloodpool. I quickly lost all respect for Liefeld as a creator, and it was very apparent that he is no longer the exciting, dynamic young artist he once was during his New Mutants and X-Force days.

Most of my Image purchases were directed at releases from Jim Lee's WildStorm Productions. The first four issues of WildC.A.T.s were very good, as was StormWatch. Not even the T&A nature of Gen¹³ deterred me from enjoying the fun book and J. Scott Campbell's highly sexy, albeit unrealistic, renderings of the female form. To this day, I regret not purchasing Jim Lee's 13-issue run on WildC.A.T.s, and missing out on most of the early WildStorm books.

Anyone out there remembered the infamous Image X-Month? It was a month where Liefeld, McFarlane, Larsen, Lee, Valentino, and Silvestri would swap books with one another. I didn't really care about it as I was not collecting any Image titles at the time, but it left a lot of fans, including most of my friends, angry. Nobody knew who was going to work on which title. I had a good chuckle out of this. They eventually capitulated and revealed who was going to work on what. This quickly fizzled and the only memorable thing to come out of this was Jim Lee's very last pencilling work (Savage Dragon # 13) for a very long time.

And then there was Images of Tomorrow, where readers would be given a glimpse of what the future would hold for selected titles. The 25th issues of StormWatch, Brigade, Supreme, and Bloodstrike were published over a year and a half early to prove to critics and fans alike that there are indeed stories behind the pretty art and countless fight scenes. Bloodstrike was cancelled before it reached it's 25th issue, while Brigade limped along until issue 24 was published, before it was also cancelled.

The infamous Deathmate crossover introduced me to the world of Valiant Comics. Four color-coded prestige format books, two each by Valiant and Image, as well as a prologue and an epilogue, would tell the story where the characters of both universes combined to stop Solar and Void (from WildC.AT.s) from consummating their love, which threatens to break down the layers of reality. I pre-ordered all six issues and was heavily anticipating a great reading experience. Instead, all I got was confused. While the Valiant-produced Yellow and Blue volumes obviously took place in the same world, Jim Lee and Marc Silvestri's Black volume took place in a desolate future, while Rob Liefeld's Red volume featured an alternate present that has nothing to do at all with the Valiant books.

Sickened by all this and other happenings around the comic book industry, I stopped buying comics around the middle of 1995. I returned to briefly to check out the WildC.A.T.s/X-Men crossover, but that was it. When I returned to the fold in early 1999, I found out that Liefeld was kicked out of Image, Lee sold WildStorm to DC Comics, and Jim Valentino was now the publisher of the company.

I believe Image Comics brought about many positive changes to the industry in general. They pioneered computer colouring and Photoshop effects in comic books, as well as giving talents such as Todd Nauck, Pat Lee, and J. Scott Campbell their first professional breaks. And most importantly, they proved that Marvel and DC Comics need not be the be all and end all for comics, and that a new publisher can indeed rise up and take on these giants.