I admittedly know little about the internal workings of the comic book industry. So I'm asking the following as a question, not stating it as fact: Did Image create (or help create) a viable market for "third party" publishers?

When I was growing up, Marvel and DC were it. Charlton was hanging around, but it clearly was a stepping stone publisher where young writers and artists broke in and, if they were talented and lucky, moved on to one of the two major publishers.

Today, it's quite common for A-List talent to work at independent publishers. Just look at JB's work at IDW, for example. Even the quintessential Marvel artist, John Romita Sr., did some independent work last year. Does Image deserve credit for creating such an environment?

But John (Mietus), a lot of the companies you listed were 3rd party publishers to be sure but they also really weren't making much of a dent in Marvel or DC sales. Dark Horse I remember came out really strong but focused heavily on licensed properties until the Legends line (though I know they did their own, thing, too).

Image was a third party publisher that let creators keep their rights to the property and (at least initially) gave you the very likely chance of having your book be in the top 5 against the Big Two that dominated for so long.

Fans born and bred of a mindset of thinking there were only two types of comic books (Marvels and DCs) that would never give a Nexus or Cerebus the time of day followed these 'stars' over to an Indie company and realized that there was more to life and comics than the Big Two. Other companies existed before Image and there were the occassional success stories but Image (I believe) opened peoples eyes about alternatives on a much larger scale.

"Did Image create (or help create) a viable market for "third party" publishers? "

I think Dave Sim alone did more for creator owned comics and self-publishing than all of Image did. Not because he supported people financially, but because he showed that it was possible to keep an independent book going for 25 years, month after month and he tried to share that experience and all his knowledge on the subject with others. His succesful "Phonebook editions" of Cerebus, although sort of inspired by Japanese comics anthologies, are quite probably the reason we now have Showcase and Essential editions. And they succeded through hard work on his part in selling the concept to retailers.

(Note, I'm saying the new things we can reasonably trace back to Sim versus new things done by Image.)

Most of what image did, had been done before. A lot of the mistakes they did had been done before. A lot of the good things about Image had been done before. Image did pretty well, but you might say that it stood on the shoulders of giants. First Comics, for instance, that preceded Image by what, a decade? Produced a lot of work that was much better and more interesting artistically than what Image did in its first 5 years or so. But of course their business affairs were a mess, too.

Image went on to print a lot of great work and become a solid publishing house, but as far as opening the doors for third party publishers?  I don't know if I'd say that.

There was a lot of excitement about third party publishers, imprints and the like at the time, and Image certainly fueled that, but as retailers reserved more of their money for  Image books and other books that came out late or not at all, orders for some other publishers who had built themselves up the hard way were reduced, and later when the speculator market imploded, it took with it a lot of small publishers.

So if you're going to count the doors they opened, I suppose you might also have to count the doors they shut.

Thanks for the thoughtful answers to my question.

John M., you are absolutely right that there were plenty of independent publishers before Image. But did these companies attract top-level, "name" talent in the way that Image, Dark Horse, IDW, etc. do today? When I was growing up, you rarely if ever saw a John Byrne, Erik Larsen type working for these independent companies.

And that's not to say that Image necessarily deserves credit for that trend. But it does appear to be a relatively recent trend.

Ian Moss wrote: ...Being new here...

Oh PUH-lease, "Ian"! LOL!

Really, get a life and stop obsessing over me.

John Mietus wrote: ...Image not delivering was part of the problem. The other part (and I contest the more important and significant part) was Marvel trying to corner the direct distribution market by opening Marvel stores and being the only distribution source for Marvel titles, causing DC to sign an exclusive contract with Diamond, which prompted the other companies to either also promptly sign with Diamond or go under. This forced all the other distributors to go out of business since the only titles they could carry were those who refused to sign exclusive contracts with Diamond. ...

I agree with you about that deal with Marvel having done more harm to the industry.

Trevor wrote: ...There were a lot of problems as I understand it....

There were, certainly. But I agree with John Mietus that Marvel's decision to self-distribute during the mid-1990s was the most damaging, and the industry is still dealing with the aftermath of that action.