2015 In Review--Publisher of The Year

An Odd Award, In Some Ways

None of these fine publishers or imprints...

Declaring someone a publisher of the year is in some ways an odd award. I mean, the creative team behind a comic generally deserve the credit for what comes out, don't they? Sure, a publisher can sometimes have the rights to certain characters or such, but it comes down to the creators to make something special. Therefore, what if I gave the award to a publisher who did something cool like let the creators keep the rights to their comics? A publisher who helped people with cool stuff get access to some of the resources that might otherwise make publishing their comic a bit too prohibitively expensive? There is such a publisher, and they are my publisher of the year.

Image Comics

Image has been around since the 1990's, but it much different now than it was then. Basically founded by a bunch of artists fed-up with their treatment at Marvel, Image at first had a bunch of horribly-written super-hero stuff of little note other than it helped create the mega-popular (for a time) character, Spawn. Things shifted over time however, and Image kept their concepts about letting creators have the rights to their properties but started launched more and more unique and different things. Whereas once Vertigo had been thought of as the place to go for mature and intriguing comics, Image started to get that focus Now today huge hits such as, "Saga," or the behemoth that is, "The Walking Dead," call Image their home, and this littler publisher that could turned into the big publisher that did.

That's Image, and seeing as how they make-up much of my reading-list of comics, that tells you I'm pretty impressed with their output--in general--there are always some stinkers that come out, remember, "Happy"? The occasional bomb aside, Image is a publisher I am pleased to be reading! I am excited to see what 2016 brings for the publisher and look forward to great things.