1992 was a crazy year for comics. The founders of Image Comics changed the entire medium and joined together to break away from their corporate gigs – all of them the biggest names working in comics and Jim Valentino.
When the big news came out – Todd McFarlane, Rob Liefeld, Jim Lee, Erik Larsen, Marc Silvestri and Whilce Portacio were all superstars and working on the biggest books around at the time. And Jim Valentino. If you’re a person who a) knew who the hell he was; b) liked and was aware of the book he was working on (Guardians of the Galaxy); and c) was excited and understood why he was involved in the formation of Image, then you are a better person than I am. My only reaction was “Who?” And then Shadowhawk came out. And my only reaction was “What? Why?”
But of course I bought that first issue. I bought every first issue of every Image book coming out at the time. I never bought another issue of it. While working on this, I looked the character up on Wikipedia. I think I made the right choice.
To be fair to Valentino, if it wasn’t for him, Image never would have broken out of the stigma of being plotless, empty superhero rip-offs done by flaky creators. He brought a lot of diversity to the company as the publisher and as spearheading the ShadowLine imprint.
So anyhoo, Shadowhawk.
3 comments
I was just too young to know about Image before it “became” Image. All comics were comics and all creators had no names to me back then. But in buying back issues during the early-mid 90’s I fucking loved his run on Guardians of The Galaxy.
Never got into ShadowHawk though. I like the red piping on his wings.
Did you see Falcon in the new Cap trailer?
Author
I have not seen the trailer. I try not to watch trailers anymore unless I go to the theater.
I will say, sometimes I miss just reading comics (or any form of entertainment) and not really caring about creators or companies or anything of the like.
This is really nice… I dare say it trumps the original costume.