Category:Image

One of the most influential comic book companies of the modern era, Image Comics was a creator-owned company that consisted of six smaller studios- Jim Lee's Wildstorm, Rob Liefeld's Extreme, Mark Silvestri's Top Cow, Todd McFarlane Productions, and two others owned by Jim Valentino and Erik Larsen. They were originally distributed by Malibu Comics, then went fully on their own. Image Comics produced some of the best-selling comic books of the 1990s, including WildC.A.T.S., Stormwatch, Youngblood, Cyber Force, Spawn, Witchblade, The Savage Dragon, The Maxx, and more. They even collaborated with Marvel Comics in the short-lived "Heroes Reborn" event, with Wildstorm taking on Iron Man and Fantastic Four and Extreme taking on Captain America and Avengers. However, internal pressures led to the fractionalizing of the company, so that first Extreme Studios, and later Wildstorm, broke off to form their own fully independent companies. (This was represented in comic books by Kurt Busiek's Shattered Image mini-series, with Extreme Studios' characters disappearing mid-series.) Image Comics now produces a handful of core titles, along with numerous licensed titles, and is less of a shared universe.

Canon Material

• All Image comics

Connections

The Image universe split from the post-Zero Hour DC Universe in events shown in JLA/WildCATS. The Awesome and Wildstorm universes split from Image to become separate realities.

Resources