Donald wrote: ...When Marvel lets titles come out late, the people on this board get up in arms and complain about a lack of professionalism. But Image canceling a few titles for being chronically late over a decade ago is consistently used as evidence of their lack of professionalism...

I never criticized anyone at Image for cancelling titles for being late. Maybe the founders should have led by example, but I don't think it was wrong to cancel the books because of lateness. But, as Erik admits, some of his fellow founders had books cancelled simply because they didn't like the books. Paint that however you might, but that's not being creator-friendly.

I was actually very supportive of Image as a company at first, but when they booted those other creators the way they did, that's when I realized that Image was just another publisher like any other.

Creator's rights doesn't have anything to do with what types of books are being published or whether the titles can be canceled or allowed to stick around. It pertains to whether the creators have creative control and ownership over their work, which they do at Image.

Whether the newer books were canceled because of deadlines, poor sales or the publishers didn't like the books doesn't mean they weren't standing up for creators. They let those creators keep the rights to the characters they created after they left image and they were free to take those characters elsewhere.

I saw you going back between creator rights and creator friendly and I think this is where some people are having issues.

They may have had questionable taste depending on ones POV but but dumping a book (for any reason) isn't infringing on a creator's rights. The creator still retains ownership of their property and can do with it as they please. I would argue that it's not all that 'unfriendly' either. They gave these new teams a chance, felt it wasn't a match for whatever reason and parted ways. They still gave them an initial opportunity to publish their books with the big 'i' logo which was a catch for many readers at the time and left them with ownership over their characters when they left. Pretty cool opportunity for a creator.

Not taking sides in this whole debate, but Andrew is right about this point. "Creator's rights" means that creators retain ownership of their work. It doesn't mean Image is or was going to publish any ol' thing.

Like any other comic book publisher, they were in business to make money. As a for-profit business, making quality control decisions is just part of the deal.

Fighting American is a Joe Simon character for your education, Al Cook.

http://www.amazon.com/Fighting-American-Joe-Simon/dp/0871356 007

And here I was thinking it was one of the least (or at least lesser) awful
pieces of his I've ever seen. Excepting, of course, that that 'character' was
such a blatant and dreadfully executed rip off of Captain America...

***********

Was this a real comic book character? Not a spoof, but a real character?

If so, I have a completely original, totally inspired idea for a book entitled "Flying Rodent-Man and his sidekick Sparrow."

"They may have had questionable taste depending on ones POV but but dumping a book (for any reason) isn't infringing on a creator's rights. The creator still retains ownership of their property and can do with it as they please. I would argue that it's not all that 'unfriendly' either. They gave these new teams a chance, felt it wasn't a match for whatever reason and parted ways."

But from what I can tell, that wasn't the deal the new creators thought they were being offered. They were told "do whatever you want", and they were professional enough to know that didn't allow for anything obscene, illegal or outrageous. They would also know that timeliness or the ability to break even would be a concern. One hopes. They were not being told that whatever they did, if somehow the Seven weren't too crazy about it, they'd cancel it whether it was profitable and timely or not.

And if it was subject to the taste of the Seven, why couldn't that be part of the upfront processs, where they said "Show us what you plan to do, and if we like it, you're in, if we don't you're not"? If approval was needed, a pre-approval would be better. A lot of companies were offering openings for Creator owned books at the time. And it's a hell of a lot easier to sell a book through e.g  Dark Horse from number 1 than try to get them to revive it a year or so later when it's been canceled by Image in mid-run.

It's like they were trying to give off the idea that Image was a sort of co-operative for a bunch of working class guys (the first group) who had thrown off the corporate yoke to go into business for themselves and they were bringing their buddies (the second group) with them and everybody was going to get a better deal as long as they put in the work and the hours to build this thing.

And even though some of the first group of guys were already showing up late, hogging the cushy jobs and not getting things done right, the second group decide what the hell it sounds better than the deal we've got. So they do their best. For some that's very good, for others not so much, but none of them do worse than the first group.

And then the first group  told the second group that it wasn't a co-operative at all, it was a business - wholly owned by the first group, and they were going to start firing people not just based on work performance but on whether they liked their faces or not.

A clunky metaphor, but that's how it looks.