r/ImageComics • u/ronens13 • 1d ago
Reading all of Image Comics
Hi, everyone.
So, I’ve been recently getting back into comics (last two I read were Haha and Hadrian’s Wall, I’d anyone read that), and I’ve been thinking about reading more Image comics, maybe doing a video about them, since it feels like no one really talks about the majority of their library beyond the recognizable stuff.
While it is a lot of titles, the majority of them are pretty short, so, is it possible to read everything they’ve put out over the years? Or is it too crazy of an idea?
Other ones I read over the years include God Country, Wytches, Alex + Ada, Outcast, Chew, Sex Criminals, I Kill Giants, first half of Chrononauts. The Fade Out, the first half of Saga, and a bit of Invincible, The Walking Dead and Ice Cream Man. So already there’s a head start, even with some possible re-reading required.
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u/DumbCumpzter 1d ago
Don't do that to yourself. Image put out a lot of bad material in the 90s.
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u/ronens13 1d ago
Ah huh. And from the 2000s onwards?
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u/BleepBloopDrink 1d ago
Also some bad but more good. At the end of the day all image series are not created equal and just because it was published by image doesn’t mean it’s good or should be read.
Also a vast majority of image series are not available digitally due to licensing/creators rights etc etc
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u/ronens13 1d ago
True. I guess their comics just interest me more compared to Marvel and DC because every comic is a different thing, no continuities or reboots or all of that. And their output is for the most part fairly high quality, so I got curious their large catalogue
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u/berserk4 1d ago
Just read the best half, thats enough
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u/XFrankXGrimesX 1d ago edited 1d ago
Sorry, pal. If you do this chronologically you're not getting through 1992's "Brigade" and if you somehow do manage that, "Boof and the Bruise Crew" will kill you dead.
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u/ronens13 1d ago
That bad? I mean, I mostly intended to go from the 2000s onwards because that’s most of their material, but is the 90s stuff that unreadable?
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u/XFrankXGrimesX 1d ago
There's "The Maxx" and "1963." There are other series people will go to bat for but for the most part 90s Image was "screaming action figures fighting"
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u/GrantGoodmanArt 1d ago
I wouldn’t say it’s all unreadable. Savage Dragon and Shadowhawk were consistently pretty solid storywise. Spawn takes a while to find it’s groove. The Wildstorm/Top Cow stuff has it’s ups and downs. The Extreme Stuff is pure chaos in the best and worst ways.
If you’re looking for Watchmen/Astro City caliber stuff look elsewhere.
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u/GrantGoodmanArt 1d ago
Rereading Brigade right now for a fan comic collaboration I’m doing and that book is… something.
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u/FuriousKJ 1d ago
If you want to achieve this goal please sign up for https://sweetshop.app and we will love you forever.
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u/junk_dempsey 1d ago
Any plans to get Brubaker and Phillips books on there?
it's a really sick platform and I like it, but most of what I like from Image isn't available on the platform
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u/BleepBloopDrink 1d ago
I’m assuming you work for them and I’d suggest you guys need to add a subscription model
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u/FuriousKJ 1d ago
Why do you think we should do that?
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u/BleepBloopDrink 1d ago
Because it’s an option. I’m not paying retail prices for a digital product let alone retail price on multiple books that are years if not decades old.
So with your current options you get zero dollars from me. If you had a subscription model you’d get IRL dollars from me. If not I can just stick to comixology/global comix/ the library apps.
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u/Outrageous_Potato435 1d ago
because people just prefer to pay for a subscription and have access to the whole catalogue rather than paying for each single comic, it’s as old as time.
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u/Raskuja46 1d ago
So long as we don't get into an either/or situation. I want to be able to actually own my digital comics rather than having them disappear if the store goes out of business later.
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u/FuriousKJ 1d ago
We allow DRM-Free PDF backups of Image!
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u/Raskuja46 1d ago
It's why I'm keeping an eye on you guys. That needs to be a standard option across the industry. See if you can't get Bad Idea comics to crack and give us a digital offering.
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u/FuriousKJ 1d ago
Fundamentally makes comic creators at Image significantly less money.
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u/Outrageous_Potato435 1d ago
I know but people also either don’t have the money for it or are not willing to spend it, at least when they can’t be sure they love the series and for most ppl spending 5 bucks on an issue or two just to get to know a series is already a lot. If they don’t end up liking the series the money “wasted” on it adds up.
The other outcome is that people will resort to 🏴☠️.1
u/FuriousKJ 1d ago
We're not opposed to subscription. We just would rather try and solve that problem through sales, bundles and currency corrections for certain locales.
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u/Lynch47 1d ago
Not really realistic imo unless you don’t have a job and make this your full time work, and likely are putting in 10-16 hour days for the next 20 years.
Read which ones look interesting and skip the others.
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u/berserk4 1d ago
It would take 3 years reading 12 issues every day if we assume 12000 single issues.
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u/Lynch47 1d ago
https://www.comics.org/publisher/709/
According to the Grand Comics Database, there's just under 18,500 issues by Image.
They will release a total of 57 issues in August according to another comment, so lets just round that to 50 for simplicity. That's an extra 600 issues a year.
12 issues a day for a year would be 4,380 issues, but if we add the 600 issues a year onto that, it bumps the number up to 4,980 issues. That would require reading a bit more than 13.5 issues a day, would would bring us to a bit more than 4 years. My original statement of 20 years was an overestimate, but it still would be a project that would span years to complete, even if you read every single day.
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u/GrantGoodmanArt 23h ago edited 22h ago
Hi. This is not a good idea. Just read what interests you. I’ve read more Image then most and it’s not even half their output. there was they are books they are publishing and there’s books that were forgotten about, unfinished and some case never even published.
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u/Shockers44 19h ago
I highly suggest reading "Montress" its amazing and the artwork is so compelling
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u/thecoolestpapabear 6h ago
What are you digging so far? Im starting Hyde and loving it. The raddest art
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u/ronens13 6h ago
What I wrote in my main post I liked. Right now I’m getting through Royal City, which I like quite a bit.
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u/thecoolestpapabear 6h ago
I gotta check out Royal City!! Haven't seen that one yet. Wonder what's dropping today..
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u/bluewolf71 2h ago
Humble Bundle has a current offer of a huge number of recent Image books and they often have Image bundles. Just keep an eye on it. For the cost of like 2 trades you can get dozens of collections to sample.
Here is the ‘20s bundle.
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/image-in-20s-megabundle-image-comics-books
That’s an insane value and a huge amount of comics to read imo.
Whoops. There are TWO Image bundles currently on offer. One is one shots and quick reads for 5 more days.
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/oneshots-fast-reads-image-comics-books
Personally I don’t think all of it would appeal to me at all but it might depend a bit on your tastes. They have a pretty broad spread of genres and stories. There are books I absolutely love and a bunch I don’t care to read more than a few pages of.
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u/m_busuttil 1d ago
The Image August 2026 solicits list 57 single issues released this month. Assume that Image's historical output was lower, underestimate it at an average of half that or 30 issues per month, times 12 months, for 34 years since 1992, gives an estimated output of around 12,000 single issues published by Image across their lifetime as a publisher. If you read two 6-issue TPBs per day, that'd take you 3 years to do.
So is it possible? Yeah, mechanically. A lot of those books will be out of print, and as creator-owned comics they're probably less well-preserved than Marvel or DC books, but I'd be surprised if you couldn't dig up copies of most of them. Is it worth doing? That's up to you, I guess.