Today you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who didn’t know who the Avengers were. Most comic book characters from both Marvel and DC have pretty much become household names these days. The “Big Two” have definitely done a good job of making sure their icons stay within the forefront of pop-culture. However, there is a third company that most people might not know about but are equally as important to the comic book industry. That company is Image Comics.

Before jumping into who Image is as a company, let’s jump back a few decades. It’s 1938 and two young men named Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster just sold their character Superman to Detective Comics. 40 years later, in 1978, Warner Bros. puts Superman on the big screen and neither Siegel nor Shuster saw royalties for their work. They weren’t the only creators to face a problem like this either. Bill Finger, Jack Kirby and many other creators started getting the short end of the stick when it came to receiving proper compensation and credit for their creations. Of course they got paid for the issue they wrote or drew, but any toy, shirt or movie profits with those characters on them went straight to DC or Marvel. And in the 90’s, that didn’t sit well with some of their biggest super stars.

The late 80’s and early 90’s saw a huge boom in the comic book industry, books started selling by the millions and their artists were being treated like rock stars. Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, Rob Liefeld, Erik Larsen, Marc Silvestri, Whilce Portacio and Jim Valentino were some of the biggest names in the industry who were able to sell any book they put their name on; and they were all ready to really shake things up. The story isn’t quite clear based on who you ask, but what we do know is that at least Todd McFarlane and Rob Liefeld got so fed up with how Marvel was handling their creative work that they stormed into the office, told the company off and ran off with the other five artists to form Image Comics.

X-Men #1 broke World Records for selling over 8 million units

What made Image Comics stand out over the Big Two was that the creators had full control and ownership of any character and story they created. Nothing but the name “Image” belonged to the company. This lead to a lot of creators ditching Marvel and DC and flocking to Image. For a few short years they were outselling the competition and titles like “Spawn,” “WildCats” and “Savage Dragon” (it was the 90’s) were outselling Spiderman and Batman. The industry looked to Image as if they were only going to last a few months, but they managed to scare the competition when their books started start to dominate. In an effort to compete with one another internally, each of the six founders formed their own separate studios: McFarlane Productions, Wildstorm Productions, Highbrow Entertainment, ShadowLine, Top Cow Productions, and Extreme Studios (again, 90's!). Each one would spend money to bring in new talent and because of their success they were throwing big money at these new creators; more than what Marvel and DC could afford to match.

Around 1996, the comic book industry had really taken a huge financial beating. A big reason for why comics got so big during the time was because people started figuring out that their old comics that they spent spare change on in the 50’s and 60’s were now worth hundreds if not thousands of dollars. People were trying to collect any new comics released in an effort to cash in the same way down the line. Image, Marvel and DC all cashed in on this trend and oversaturated the market. So much so that Marvel hit bankruptcy. For Image, there was another problem as well, big egos. For a lot of these creators their new found fame and popularity started getting to their heads. Books started getting delayed, ideas were being stolen, and some of the creators were running off to do other things. Todd McFarlane started focusing on toys and merchandising, and Jim Lee ended up moving over to DC to become the new Creative Director for the company.

However, there is an upside, as you know comic books managed to bounce back. Marvel and DC are household name. Image is doing just fine as well. They saw their saving grace back in 2003 with Robert Kirkman. If you don’t recognize the name, you might recognize the name of his biggest creation “The Walking Dead.” "The Walking Dead" and his other hit "Invincible" helped shape the second generation of Image Comics. Image’s impact has also lead to a few changes within the industry as well. Since its creation, creators are starting to see more recognition for their work and slightly better deals when it comes to creative licensing. Image still stands over the rest by maintaining their original position of being a creator’s company.