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The
Team Concept, Part 5:
What's Our Image?
by: Troy Brownfield
Image
burst onto the comic scene in 1991. Announcing a mandate of
creator rights and pushing the idea of artist-as-rock-star,
Image's seven founders took the world by storm with their
first issues. Of course, it took a while for the second issues
to come out. Needless to say, the sudden emergence of a "third
power" shook comics profoundly. Of the "launch books", four
were team titles: Mark Silvestri's Cyberforce, Rob Liefeld's
Youngblood, Whilce Portacio's Wetworks and Jim Lee's WildC.A.T.s..
(For the record, the other launch books were Todd McFarlane's
Spawn, Jim Valentino's ShadowHawk and Erik Larsen's Savage
Dragon). A second wave would break soon, featuring more team
books, including Liefeld's Brigade, Lee's StormWatch, and
Larry Stroman's Tribe. No offense to any big Freak Force fans
out there, but these seven team books are the ones on which
I will focus.
Image
Teams As A Whole: The initial round of Image teams really
suffered from one thing. The four guys who created the teams
had all worked on Marvel's X-books. Therefore, a lot of the
new characters had striking similarities to X-Men or women.
It seemed like there was a quota: one guy with claws, a hot
chick with some kind of edged weapon, someone with energy
powers, a strong guy, and someone with guns. Granted, there
were variations on the theme, and I found Wetworks to actually
be pretty original anyway.
Youngblood:
This was the team that got it rolling. Liefeld's idea
of a super-team as celebrities was clever, but he alone certainly
didn't have the writing talent to pull it off. It didn't help
that the pronounced lateness of Image's early books made it
hard for readers to follow plot threads without Herculean
acts of memory. As it was, a lot of early Youngblood issues
simply became large fights between characters (that had lots
of gear, buckles, pouches and tiny ankles) that you really
didn't care about.
And
Now?: Youngblood spun off Team Youngblood, among others,
but it ended up failing. There were a couple of relaunch attempts
(one with Alan Moore writing), but they failed. I've heard
the 'blood might come back, but honestly, it was never that
good. It's time is done.
WildC.A.T.s:
Jim Lee's art on this book as it started was remarkable.
Despite the fact that many of the characters were similar
to Lee's work on X-Men, the sheer energy behind his pencils
was striking enough to make the book worth looking at. The
concept was that the C.A.T.s (Cover Action Teams) were fighting
in an alien war, with our heroes being the half-human descendants
of aliens themselves. Lee recognized early on that he needed
strong writing, and he brought in the likes of Chris Claremont,
James Robinson and Alan Moore. When Lee left the book as artist,
he found strong teams to fill in there as well. It was also
a Saturday morning cartoon for a bit.
And Now?: When Lee sold his Wildstorm books to DC,
Wildcats was relaunched with Scott Lobdell and Travis Charest.
It's still going, now written by Joe Casey. While Wildcats
has often been entertaining, and some individual stories by
the likes of Moore and Robinson are oustanding, it never managed
to particularly distinguish itself.
Cyberforce:
A team of cyborg heroes? That was a neat idea. However, ex-X-artist
Silvestri filled out the team with characters like Cyblade
and Ripclaw that looked, er, strangely familiar. Suffering
like a lot of other early Image books from too much emphasis
on art and not enough on writing, it went through a relaunch
and faded away.
And
Now?: Cyberforce is gone, but don't feel bad for Silvestri.
He created hit comics like The Darkness and Witchblade. While
The Darkness showed promise under Garth Ennis, it dropped
like a rock when he left. I personally find Witchblade to
be reprehensible on all levels, and I doubt I would pick up
an issue again even if Warren Ellis, Grant Morrison and Alan
Moore wrote the issue with George Perez on art.
Wetworks:
What happened to Wetworks is, to me, one of the saddest
stories in comics. Whilce Portacio's book was delayed forever
because Whilce put his career on hold to deal with the death
of his sister. I admire any man that puts his family above
his work. However, he eventually had to sell out his stake
to Jim Lee to keep the book going. It closed down later on.
While it ran, Wetworks stood out for a really cool idea (a
military black ops team is bonded with symbiotes that give
them crazy ass powers and they go after armies of vampires
and werewolves). I liked the relations between the characters,
the early art was superb, and the horror edge made it way
different than the other Image teams.
And Now?: There was a Night Tribes special over a year
ago that featured Dane and Pilgrim, but there hasn't been
a peep since. Portacio recently joined his old friend Lee
again at DC's Wildstorm office. Brigade: Liefeld's second
team book, and it somehow managed to make Youngblood look
like Watchmen. Kids, in my opinion, it was bad. It sucked.
There was no discernible concept behind this book other than
Youngblood seemed to be making money, so let's throw more
crap at the wall to see if it sticks. And Now?: Didn't survive
the mid-'90s.
Tribe:
Larry Stroman drew X-Factor when Peter David took over
as writer with issue #71. Stroman got the opportunity to join
Image with a second round of creators, like Mike Grell. Unfortunately,
everyone in round two more or less got screwed. There are
a variety of stories as to why, but all of the second round
books, with the exception of The Maxx, seemed to fade right
away. Tribe was an admirable attempt at a team of ethnic heroes,
and it was different, but it seemed to have almost no support
from Image itself. Tribe emerged later at another company,
but went away again.
And Now?: Gone.
StormWatch:
Lee's other early team had a cool concept. The team was a
U.N. crisis intervention force. It more or less floundered
along until issue #37, at which point Warren Ellis was brought
on as writer. He tore the house down. Writing some truly amazing
stories up through issue #50, then again with an eleven-issue
relaunch, Ellis made StormWatch into something special. Alas,
it didn't last. In the WildC.A.T.s/Aliens crossover, Ellis
smoked most of the team to prepare for a new title that would
launch at Wildstorm.
And Now?: That title was called The Authority. Perhaps
you've heard of it.
So,
what hath Image teams wrought? When Image appeared, they generated
profound excitement. Unfortunately, too many of the title
tried to thrust the readers into fully formed universes without
competent writing or explanations. After a while, it didn't
work. It didn't help either that Image was plagued by late
shipping. It's worthy to note that of the seven launch books,
only two survive at Image (Spawn and Dragon), and that as
titles starring solo characters, they had an easier time of
growing and slowly building a cast.
Maybe
the Team Concept lesson we get from Image is that being a
team isn't enough of a reason to have a team. We need motivation,
interaction, and dialogue. Art can be great to look at, but
it's the "people" on the team that need to come first. If
there's nothing there to care about, then why should we bother?
In
the next Team Concept piece, I'll
look at the Post-Modern super-team, namely Watchmen.
Troy
Brownfield is the Editor-in-Chief of Shotgun Reviews. Don't
send him hate mail for not liking early Image books unless
you go back and read them first. Email Troy at psikotyk@aol.com.
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