Out today on DVD comes ‘The Image Revolution’, a documentary following the defection of Marvel’s core talent in the early 1990’s to form Image Comics. From the press release:
“In 1992, Marvel Comics was the #1 publisher of comic books in the world, largely due to its dynamic artwork. At the height of this popularity, in response to what they believed to be years of mistreatment toward creative talent, a small – but influential – group of artists left Marvel Comics to form their own company, Image Comics. Led by the outspoken Todd McFarlane (Spawn), this group kicked off a revolution that not only changed the comic industry forever, but has had an indelible influence on mainstream pop culture that continues to this day. But with great power came great turmoil, as Rob Liefeld (Deadpool), Jim Lee (X-Men), Marc Silvestri (Wolverine), Erik Larsen (Savage Dragon), Whilce Portacio (X-Factor) and Jim Valentino (Guardians Of The Galaxy) almost immediately began to unravel the very bond that united them.”
The film does an incredible job of diving into the history of these artists breaking away from corporations that had held an industry strangle hold for generations. If you loved comics in the 90’s you saw all these events play out on the shelves, but now the behind the scenes story is carefully documented and revealed. Especially impressive is all the major players have participated and sat down for lengthy interviews about their involvement in changing the face of comics forever. The DVD includes even more extended interviews as extras.
Adam Ruhl is a writer and life long Cinephile. He is the Executive
Cinema Editor of Pop Culture Beast’s Austin branch; covering festivals,
conventions, and new releases. When not filing reports, Adam can be
found stalking Alamo Drafthouse Programmers for leads on upcoming
DrafthouseFilms titles. Adam once blocked Harry Knowles entrance to a
theater until he was given extra tickets to a Roman Polanski movie.