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Post by Icctrombone on Jul 27, 2022 23:11:09 GMT -5
In 1992 seven star artists banded together to form their own company that was first published as an imprint by Malibu comics and then Its own Company . The very first book to be released was Youngblood by Rob Liefeld. It ran for a total of 10 issues plus an 0 issue and an annual. I will be reviewing this inaugural series by superstar creator Liefeld. Youngblood # 1Artist /Inker/Creator Rob Liefeld
Scripter Hank Kanalz
Color Brian Murray Date of release: 4-17-92
Story #1 Youngblood Home Team Members : Shaft, Bedrock, Combat, Chapel, Vogue, and Diehard Synopsis: The first story introduces the Home team of a super team that is called Youngblood ,apparently an American government sponsored team. The story opens with an assassination attempt on the character called Shaft who is walking through a mall with his girlfriend who is called Shelly, she is an Assistant DA. As he kills the attacker with a pen thrown like a knife, he is swarmed by reporters trying to find out what happened. His beeper goes off and he leaves. The following scenes show the rest of the team being beeped and summoned to gather at the headquarters located in Washington DC. They were summoned to stop 2 criminals that were in a transport from escaping. The 2 criminals are members of a villain team called the FOUR and they are being freed by their 2 remaining team mates. When they arrive on the scene Diehard attacks the member called Strongarm as the rest of the Youngblood team arrives to engage the others. To be continued in issue # 2 Story # 2 Youngblood away team: Sentinel, Cougar, Photon, Brahma, Riptide and Psi-Fire. Synopsis: We are instantly thrown into a scene of the Away team attacking an army located in the Middle East led by Hassan Kussein. He has occupied Israeli territories and it looks like the team has been sent to capture or dispatch him. A quick battle ensues where Kussein is killed by the member called Psi-Fire. The newspapers the next day report to as a suicide. Impressions: This first issue is a flip book with two covers . The home team story is 13 pages long and the other story is 18 pages, but it seems like there is more story in the shorter tale. Liefeld made his fortune with big action two page and splash page layouts and he copies that formula in this book. The scripting is by Hank Kanalz and from my reading , Liefeld was not satisfied with the script and I understand that it has been rescripted by someone else in reprint editions. I'm guessing that this book serves to introduce his team which is patterned after the team books from Marvel comics , particularly the Avengers and it was short in plot for that reason. It was the first Image book and the first to test the waters for the other creators. Rob was single without kids and was deemed as having the least to lose if this venture bombed. It was a big success , breaking the sales record for an independent comic book with over a million sold and a second printing. The day of this books release, Liefeld was doing a signing at a comic shop in LA. He was asked to appeared in the Dennis Miller show the same day it was released, where the entire audience was given a copy of Youngblood # 1. This book captured the imagination of many people including the Newspapers, who wrote articles about the comics release.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jul 28, 2022 10:44:42 GMT -5
I don't believe initial sales figures reached one million copies; if memory serves that milestone was achieved by Spawn, but not Youngblood. It did set a record for an independent comic; but, Spawn was the one theat passed a million and shattered Youngblood's record, as I recall it reported, in CBG.
The series had its origin in a fan project that Liefeld was supposed to do for Megaton Comics; but, the book was canceled. It grew out of a Teen Titans fan idea and Liefeld broached the subject, with DC, but they didn't make a deal.
I laughed my head off when Shaft, a normal human being, according to the information pin-up, in the comic, kills a man, with a blunt instrument, like a ballpoint pen, thrown upwards (against the pull of gravity), a distance of at least 20 feet, with enough force and velocity to penetrate skin and bone and hit an artery. Pretty sure that if I had shown that to my college physics professor, his head would have exploded.
The scripting was pretty darn bad; like junior high English assignment bad. The art? Well, it was Liefeld.
Let's not be under any illusions. Yes, there were people who bought Liefeld's work because of dynamic, if erratic and flawed art; however, the sales of this and X-Force #1, prior to it, were very heavily affected by the Speculator Boom. Speculators were pouring money into the market, buying up first issues, special covers and similar gimmicks. In fact, this activity was driving the reliance on such gimmicks and embossed or foil covers, trading cards bound with the comics, pogs (even Alf pogs) and such. Every company, major and minor, was launching a plethora of one-shots, mini-series and new first issues, trying to cater to the mentality. Comic shops were buying cases of such titles, not just a stack of the comic. This book was heavily speculated upon, due to X-Force #1, which had experienced the same thing, because of Spider-Man #1. Sure, popularity meant much higher than average sale; but the levels achieved were due to the heavy speculation. Once Spawn was solicited, it shattered the numbers because it was both McFarlane,a bigger name; and, the guy whose book sold record numbers when it launched.
Of course, the problem with all of that meant that the comic was massively oversold, beyond actual demand for it, from a reading audience. Those comic shops that bought cases of them were still sitting on cases of them, a year later, if they were still in business (such buying drove a huge segment of the retail market out of business). You could buy a copy of Youngblood #1 for years, with no appreciable increase in value, except the more crooked dealers, who arbitrarily slapped higher price tags on it. All you had to do was go to another store to find it in the quarter box.
So, don't look to sales as a measure of popularity of the series, for this first issue; it's a questionable metric. They were sold, non-returnable, to comic shops, who ordered well above subscriber and casual demand. Look at the course of the series and you will see the real sales levels, to readers.
From a content point, a kid would read stuff like this without too much objection, based on the dynamic scenes; anyone looking for story would find it pretty weak.
Rob got a lot of press out of the endeavor; so, it was really not that much of a gamble. he had a name, from Marvel, a solid publisher, in Malibu (which was owned and operated by a guy with extensive experience in the distribution market, who hired the former editor of Amazing Heroes to run the publishing side), and plenty of receptive access to the fan press. CBG and others ran pieces promoting the upcoming release and Comci Scene, the Starlog-published magazine, had a whole feature and interview (which makes for comical reading, as Rob's grasp of biology is revealed to be pretty bad). It was a pretty safe bet.
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Post by tonebone on Jul 28, 2022 15:34:43 GMT -5
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Post by tarkintino on Jul 28, 2022 15:47:42 GMT -5
Image: the culmination of everything that was wrong about the comic book industry in the 1990s, but in a way, the kind of over the top, divorced from a mature thought kind of writing lives on, only it can be found in many of the MCU films.
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Post by Icctrombone on Jul 28, 2022 17:55:52 GMT -5
Youngblood # 2Writer , Artist, Inker Rob Liefeld
Color Bran Murray Date of release: 7-3-92
Synopsis: We open with a team called the Berzerkers breaking into a facility and battling what appears to be men in armored suits looking for Someone called Kirby. Where and when they are is a mystery as the caption states they are " Otherwhere ". After the battle is won, the scene shifts to Berlin, East Germany where the away team is waiting for someone that is stored in a Cryogenic Chamber to be released in their custody. The person inside the tube is John Prophet someone who has been there since WW2. Apparently he is a super soldier created by Dr. Garnet Wells in 1937 and had Experiments conducted on him to test his abilities. It is not clear if Prophet is involved in any actual combat in that era, but the tech used to create him is described as something not from Earth or this time. As they are handling the chamber ,to be transported to the states, he awakens and attacks Combat and Cougar mistaking them for some people called Disciples. The battle is joined by the other members of Youngblood until 2 robot looking creatures enter the area calling themselves the actual Disciples. Before anyone can respond, the Berzerkers enter the room led by Kirby. To be continued. Impressions: Lots of new characters and lots of mindless fighting mark the second issue. This Youngblood team is mostly the away team but they are joined by Combat who was with the Home team last issue. For that matter, the cliffhanger involving the home team from the previous issue is not resolved, so the reader is to assume this story takes place sometime after those events. It's mentioned that Psi-fire , who is not present, is suspended for killing Kussein in issue # 1. Issue # 2 was released in August of 1992 , 3 months after the first issue. This would be a problem with this series as well as the other image books. This issue marks the debut of Jim Valentinos Shadow-Hawk in another story which was also in a flip book format like the previous issue. Double page spreads would be a regular thing with the Liefeld issues but they are horizontal instead of vertical. The Kirby character is patterned after Artist Jack Kirby and there is also a dedication to him that opens the book.
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Post by Icctrombone on Jul 28, 2022 18:11:30 GMT -5
I don't believe initial sales figures reached one million copies; if memory serves that milestone was achieved by Spawn, but not Youngblood. It did set a record for an independent comic; but, Spawn was the one theat passed a million and shattered Youngblood's record, as I recall it reported, in CBG. From different sources, I read that Youngblood 1 was in the million range and that Spawn surpassed it with 1.75 million units sold afterwards. Whatever and whereever the copies landed, It's a record.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jul 28, 2022 22:02:42 GMT -5
Comics Scene #25 (cover date April 1992), had a cover feature and article/interview with Liefeld, about the series. It's referred to as a 3-issue mini-series, from Malibu, in the article. Within the piece, Liefeld said 3 issues was all he could handle, at the time, after confirming the deal with Dave Olbrich, of Malibu. My favorite part of the article was this paragraph: The plotter/artist's idea for another away team member, Brahma, developed from a conversation he had with triplet friends. "One day I was sitting around, talking to them, and I asked, 'How do triplets happen' They said it's one big egg that splits into three eggs, so, my warped mind goes 'What if the egg never split? Would this giant person come out?' So Brahma is a triplet cell that never split. He killed his mom during childbirth, because he is so damn big.I read that passage and sat there, for a moment, stunned. Then I started laughing. What happens if the egg never split? Uh, normal birth Robbie. It's not a giant egg. The size of the egg doesn't determine the size a person will grow to; their DNA does. Didn't you take biology in school? I thought it was here; but, it must have been another article that I read where Rob said he was ready to quit high school, to try to break into comics; but, his parents forced him to finish, before he could try to break in. That answered my earlier question. I don't think science was Rob's strong point. The article is interesting to read, as his enthusiasm for the project comes through and he throws out a ton of things, with back stories to characters, how the team works, the idea of growing up with MTV and the idea of superheroes in a real world. The last part is not the setting for Youngblood; but, you can kind of see that warped MTV idea of the "real world" (not the show where people live in a big house, rent free and whine about it) in the way he describes things. At the time, the article had me intrigued enough to pick it up, upon release. However, looking at it in my local (and they had a big ol' stack of them), I just couldn't lay down money for it. I hadn't really looked at anything beyond covers of Rob's work, post Hawk and Dove; so, I hadn't really seen his stuff, without Karl Kesel fixing the flaws. It was shocking. The writing was terrible. Kanalz was involved, initially, when it was going to come from Megaton Comics. The article and interview were done before Liefeld and the rest walked out of Marvel; so, it still talks about X-Force as a going concern, with a sidebar feature on the current storylines and what was to follow. Two issues later, in Comics Scene #27 (June 1992), they have an editorial page feature about the Image crew walking out of Marvel. Later in the issue, they have a feature with Todd McFarlane, about Spawn. I wish I still had my CBG's, from that period, or scans of them, because I can't recall the exact timeline from the initial publicity about Malibu doing Youngblood and Spawn and the walkout. My memory is that Spawn was announced before the walkout and there had been advance art. In that issue, they refer to Image as an imprint of Malibu, which was true and how the initial launch was handled; and, then, it turned into their collective company, with Malibu acting as publisher, until 1993, when Image ended the relationship and went out on their own. Again, if I had my CBG's, they were weakly and I could better see the timeline from Liefeld and Malibu announcing Youngblood, to MacFarlane and Spawn joining and then the walkout and the formation of Image. In the Liefeld article, he says the genesis of the series went back to 1985 and he mentions being a fan of X-Men and New Teen Titans and also about the negotiations, then-recently, about doing a Titans book (which was a proto-Team Titans), which fell through. One thing he didn't mention was the 1984 published issue of The DNAgents (#14) which featured the team battling a group, known as Project: Youngblood. This was the Eclipse side of the unofficial DNAgents/New Teen Titans crossover, which saw analogs of the DNAgents, the RECOMbatants, in issue #48 of Tales of the Teen Titans. Somehow, I doubt that was coincidental. I kind of doubt Rob was influenced by the Coasters 1957 hit (also covered by the Beatles, Bad Company and Flash Caddilac and the Continental Kids, and performed on Happy Days). Here is the original 2-page promo for Youngblood, from Megaton Comics' Explosion...
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Post by codystarbuck on Jul 28, 2022 22:15:26 GMT -5
ps Looking at that old promo, it's weird how more polished Liefeld's work looks, compared to the art published in Comics Scene #25 and the actual; published Youngblood #1. Proportions are better, perspective is better, he is drawing irises. His costuming, though, is showing his influences, as Cougar pretty much screams Timber Wolf and the Imperial Guard member, Fang, who Dave Cockrum created as an analog of Timber Wolf, in X-Men. Sentinel is very Colossus.
It makes you wonder about the New Mutants/X-Force art and Youngblood. Was it deadline pressure that caused him to draw more loosely and cut corners? Was he more slavishly copying other work, at this point? I kind of doubt the latter, as he resorted to swipes all through X-Force and into Image. I suspect deadline pressures factored into it and Marvel must have been more okay about it than DC, as his DC work is tighter; but, without seeing uninked pencils, it is hard to say if the work was pencilled tighter or if the inkers were compensating. Karl Kesel definitely was, though how much?
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
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Post by Confessor on Jul 29, 2022 5:13:25 GMT -5
Ha ha...the review thread that nobody knew they needed! Good work, Icctrombone, I shall follow along with interest (though it goes without saying that I have never read any of these comics).
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Post by Icctrombone on Jul 29, 2022 6:20:24 GMT -5
Ha ha...the review thread that nobody knew they needed! Good work, Icctrombone, I shall follow along with interest (though it goes without saying that I have never read any of these comics). Hahah. Well, it’s a stretch for me to read and review any type of series , so I figured to review a series by a creator that’s controversial.
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Post by commond on Jul 29, 2022 7:43:07 GMT -5
Rob is a cool dude. Loves comics and has a ton of energy. He's like a big kid who never grew up. I bet most of us went through a phase where we fancied ourselves as future comic book creators. Rob may not have been the best artist to work in the medium, but he had enough energy to go ahead and make a career out of it. He's not the worst artist I've seen, and he's a damn sight better than his imitators. I was disappointed when the Image guys left Marvel, especially the X-guys, but I got caught up in the hype behind Image. The production delays were a killer when it came to Youngblood. I can't remember which issue I made it up to. It was probably #7.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Jul 29, 2022 8:16:23 GMT -5
I swear I looked up and double-checked to make sure today wasn't April 1st.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Jul 29, 2022 8:21:50 GMT -5
Lots of new characters and lots of mindless fighting mark the second issue. I think this captures the essense of why Youngblood could never make it in the longterm. Liefeld wanted to do too much and so wasn't doing any of it well. Instead of helping us to get to know one team in that inaugeral issue, we are introduced to two, with even more characters appearing in the second issue. I was as excited for Youngblood as anyone when it debuted. I still remember reading that first issue, deciding that Shaft seemed a little lame to be a head honcho (wait...he's just another Green Arrow/Hawkeye?), and having absolutely zero sense for who anyone else was. It was really the second issue that killed me though -- how am I supposed to be excited about this Prophet guy when I still don't have a grasp on anyone else? And then there was a second Youngblood title already, and the whole thing just seemed to be too much without any real sense of reward. Reading wasn't supposed to feel like homework.
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Post by MDG on Jul 29, 2022 8:37:17 GMT -5
Youngblood # 2 Apart from a couple issues of Splittin' Image I picked up in dollar boxes, I'm not sure I read any of the books, but I think what turned me off of mainstream comics at this time was this type of art that was all technique and irrelevant details. It was totally divorced from the idea of art that's supposed to tell a story and reveal character.
And ugly, ugly coloring.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jul 29, 2022 8:44:35 GMT -5
I agree... I was just starting having a pull list when Image came out, and I loved the idea of being there at the start... I got most of the first issues. I didn't stick with Youngblood past these two though.. it was confusing (Liefeld doesn't even know the names of his characters, they changed Bedrock to Badrock IIRC). The energy is there, sure.. if a non-professional posted something like that here, I could appreciate it and maybe offer feedback. For it to be the launch of a new line and pay real money, no thanks.
I stuck with Stormwatch and Brigade until the 'Image for Tomorrow' thing, and ended up getting Shadowhawk in back issues, but none of the other stuff really ever caught my fancy.
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