Thread by @Comrade_Bullski

We are back for part 2 of our deep dive into the many canceled and lost comics of Image's early years. Next up, 1995. Image at high tide! Publicity! Conventions! Merchandise! Impending financial collapse!

By 1995 Extreme Studios seemed to be doing well. Like most of the founders they had a number of ongoings and a few limited series as support, tho they were the studio with the biggest problem with delays, and few title even had 10 issues out.

As seen previously, a number of very delayed projects from 93/94 finally manifested in 95, meaning the Image product line grew substantially across the board (with a few studios keeping a very small, focused line such as McFarlane and Larsen).

Remember that Executioners group that Rob pitched for his Cable mini? The ones whose mini-series never happened? They were renamed the Berzerkers and appeared in a few Extreme books but in 1995 they finally DID get a mini-series, tho one with negligible involvement from Rob.

Written by Beau Smith with art by one of Rob's earliest Extreme recruits Dan Fraga, Berzerkers told the story of this renegade groups struggle against Darkthorn, Rob's version of Darkseid. Or it would have if issue 4 had ever been published. Uhoh. A canceled mini-series?

Another series I already tweeted about is the Allies, written by legendary comics writer Len Wein with art by Fabian Ribiero. Scheduled for 1995, this was "delayed" and then quietly dropped with no given reason. This is one mini I would have LOVED to have seen.

Wein was always a very stable writer and I love golden age stuff, so this would have been a treat. A teaser for the mini appeared in Supreme Annual #1, 1995 but that was all we ever saw. But the Allies concept would not stay dead...

Announced in 1995 and spilling into 1996, Grifter/Badrock was a mini-series teaming up Wildstorm's popular gunslinger with Rob's boy of stone. Spinning out of the earlier Badrock and Company mini which established that Badrock's mom was once Grifter's lover...

...this mini had the two team up to save Badrock's parents. Again. One issue made it into print written by Liefeld and constant sidekick Eric Stephenson with art by Liefeld, Chap Yaep and Jonathan Sibal. And then... nothing. Well almost.

Also announced in 1995 was a Badrock ONGOING comic exclusive to Overstreet Fan, a short-lived Wizard-esque spinoff to the venerable Overstreet Price Guide. With art AND writing by Rob! How can this not be awesome?

The first batch of strips were collected into Badrock #1, and then... nothing. And THEN in 1996, Badrock #2 and Grifter/Badrock #2 manifested as a FLIP BOOK with very short installments to both series, and after that nothing more was ever heard of them.

If you're keeping score, that's 1 1/2 issues published of two series. The Grifter-less Badrock was also somewhat notable for being a team-up with Savage Dragon against the Dragon's arch-villain Overlord.

You may know the Dragon and Badrock, but I promise you don't know Warcry. Created (and owned by) Danny Miki, this samurai... native american... (yeah) warrior appeared in a couple of Brigade issues, and then out of the blue in a FLIP BOOK "Warcry #1" on the back of Knightmare #5.

No sequel was ever produced.

And now, time for us to branch out from Image and follow Rob's wild ride to Maximum Press. Remember all those one-shot characters from Extreme #0? Rob funded a secondary publisher which was entirely unconnected to Image to publish many of these, presumably for greater personal $$

Maximum Press was not a replacement for Extreme Studios. The two co-existed and shared advertising, but at first had no crossover between characters. The most successful of Maximum's characters was Avengelyne, a comic about a renegade earthbound angel fighting demons and...

...other supernatural baddies, Buffy-style. The comic also had an official real-life Avengelyne model, Kathy Christian who had some sort of financial stake in the property and would portray the character at conventions and in photo art.

One strip from Extreme#0 that got a Maximum book was Law and Order by Marat Mychaels. This actually got published but only 2/4 issues of the mini made it to shelves. Likewise Rob's own Cybrid series from the same anthology lasted 2 whole issues while the spinoff for the character

...Risk was solicited but never manifested at all. Many of these strips would appear in a later Maximum book that I will adress further down the line.

As more of an aside, Todd Nauck's Wildguard was originally solicited as a Maxmimum book for 1995, but eventually was published at Image much later. And good on Nauck, it's a fun little series.

We finish up 1995 with a real humdinger. Warchild was one of the first Maximum titles, a 4-issue mini about an Arthurian Knight reincarnated in a cyberpunk-ish future to fight Mordred and Morgan le Fay, aided by a cyborg and loli Merlyn. And the sequel series was gonna be...

At this point Moore was already a few years into collaborating with Image, having started with a Spawn issue way back in 1993, a Violator mini and some other stuff, but man I want to know what his take on Warchild would have been. "Farmergeddon" and "holy woods"?

Sounds like Moore doing Terry Pratchett with Liefeld art.

ALAN MOORE WILL RETURN DON'T WORRY.

It's 1996. Comic sales are slowing down. Bargain bins across the world are filled with previously "hot" comics, over-ordered and then resold and resold until they lost all value. Image is experiencing the trend directly, but at Extreme Studios the start of the year seems normal

The third volume of Youngblood promised a create-a-character contest in late 1995 with the winner getting their character into the comic, a Skybox trading card AND a McFarlane action figure. Wow! The winner was 14-year old Glenn Lewis and his creation Kia.

To my knowledge, the promised trading card never happened and the action figure DEFINITELY never happened due to... well. Kia showed up a few times in Youngblood, but the series sort-of-ended with issue #10 except...

Okay so Youngblood #11-13 DO NOT EXIST. The series resumed with a single issue #14 at Maximum Press and the reason is... well. Apparently the two crossover comics X-Force/Youngblood and Youngblood/X-Force count as issues #11 and #12. Issue 10 even showed preview pages of this.

Issue #13 has a full-page ad where it's supposedly about Diehard fighting "the nazi death merchant Iron Cross" but this comic was never published, nor could I find any art for it. When the comic ended, Kia and her whole plotline vanished into thin air, never to be seen again.

1996 also saw the death of a long-promised storyline. "Extreme 3000" which would be about a 1000-year old Badrock leading Youngblood squads in the far future coming back to our time with his pupil Jeriko, yet another generic Liefeld time traveling warrior.

Remember how there was an also unpublished Prophet 3000? The Extreme 3000 story kept getting interrupted by crossovers until it faded quietly. Liefeld tried reviving it once more in Youngblood (2008) #8-9 but the series was canceled right after Badrock and Jeriko appeared again..

Youngblood #10 was also a FLIP BOOK with a preview for another Marat Mychaels creation, Blindside. A somewhat Daredevil-Spider-Man esque character, Mychaels did actually manage to get a few issues of this guy published despite him never making it at Extreme.

1996 had Extreme publish a LOT of crossover comics. After a series of crossover issues with Rob's Glory and Angela from the Spawn comics, they tried spinning things off with a series with Glory and Celestine. Who's Celestine you ask?

Created by Alan Moore as a one-shot character for the Badrock/Violator mini, Celestine was an angel of the same type as Angela, tho much more violent. The Glory/Angela storyline resurrected her, and then they put her up for both a solo and a team-up arc.

Her solo series lasted 3 issues, but the Glory/Celestine series hilariously consisted of issue 1 and issue 3 with no issue 2 ever published, rendering it utterly non-sensical. This was also the last time Celestine was ever seen.

1996 also saw the debut of two series spun off from the by now long-running Supreme title. Spinning off JUST before Alan Moore's takeover of the main title, Lady Supreme was written by Terry Moore, famous for Strangers in Paradise which won lots of awards at the time.

The series lasted only 2 issues, despite being solicited well into 1997, and seemingly totally ignored Moore's writing out of Lady Supreme in his first Supreme story. Kid Supreme also never made it past issue 3 despite solicits for it going as far as issue 7.

Probably the funniest instance of a canceled comic in this whole mess is Lethal. Announced as a 2-issue mini-series (Extreme did these a lot), it would finally reveal the fate of the Brigade member who had been missing since the team's destruction in Extreme Sacrifice. Aaaaaaaand

...only one issue was ever published. How do you cancel a 2-issue miniseries?

Well, I suppose it's time to talk about the elephant in the room.

In 1996 tensions between Rob and the other founders were running high. Marc Silvestri accused him of poaching talent for Extreme from Marc's Top Cow imprint and became the first founder to leave Image, going solo. A little later, Rob announced he was also leaving Image.

Though the exact details remain unclear, it appears Liefeld was funneling Image money into his Maximum imprint (which was not connected to Image) and that the other founders were about to fire him when he quit. Thus, many of Liefeld's 1996 books went on hiatus or were canceled

And that was probably the cause for ALL these 1996 cancellations. Rob took a few books with him to Maximum Press and continued them there (Moore's Supreme being the most prominent), but he had to make new plans... Extreme was no more.

Rob's quick departure also affected another Image book, namely the first true inter-company crossover Shattered Image, written by none other than Kurt Busiek. The first two issues were already printed by the time it was clear Liefeld was gone, but issue 3 saw massive revisions to

...the art and story to erase all Extreme Studios characters from the narrative. This involved replacing Badrock with Erik Larsen's Barbaric, even though he still got called "Rocky" by Spider-Man because... well it was a reference to Spider-Man/Badrock. As such, Shattered Image

was LITERAL. The company was broken, and Liefeld and his creations were gone. Hilariously, Marc Silvestri and his Top Cow creations returned just in time for a comment in issue #4 about how they were back.

There is evidence that Liefeld planned to continue some of the abandoned Extreme series at Maximum in an anthology comic, which had a few previews done before being quietly dropped. Despite a few issues trickling out at Maximum, long-running series like New Men and Glory...

...petered out and vanished, the final issues solicited (and sometimes even advertised) never manifesting.

And so in 1997, Liefeld only had a few comics at Maximum going, and he seems to have recycled half-finished stories for many others in the anthology "Asylum" which featured characters like Cybrid, Risk, Lady Supreme and others mentioned before.

Asylum also featured Liefeld and Pop Mhan's Christian (pictured above), which was originally scheduled for a 1997 solo series but never happened.

I saved the best and worst for last. Maximum advertised a return of Wally Wood's legendary T.H.U.N.D.E.R Agents in 1997 which MERCIFULLY never happened.

They also managed to get the Power Rangers license and managed to get ONE whole issue of a Zeo comic out. The pictured advertised crossover never happened.

And so with 1997 drawing to a close, I must take a break for now. I shall try to return tomorrow and finish up the 90s as well as look at some unproduced series from the 2000s. Please feel free to comment and ask questions, and thanks for reading!