Thread by @Comrade_Bullski

It's time to wrap up our look at the many, MANY failed, abandoned and plain disapparated projects spearheaded by Rob Liefeld.

This took considerably more time and effort than I expected when I started. I thought I would have had time to check the other Image founders as well.

But the thing is, while it's a commonly held truth that Image flooded the market of the 1990s with titles, most of the founders kept their ranges small and focused. Todd focused on Spawn and a few spinoffs. Erik focused on Savage Dragon and a few spinoffs.

It's not that the other founders didn't have plenty of canceled titles and titles that never came out. It's just that there are so much fewer of them due to how much Extreme published that they're drowned out by the tide.

That's also why I wanted to pursue Liefeld on his continued trajectory, despite Maximum and Awesome technically not being Image imprints. In spirit they were in many ways very true to the original Image spirit, however (or at least Rob's take on it).

But now it's time to wrap up this journey.

In 2001 Liefeld brokered a deal with publisher Avatar Press (in)famous for their copious amounts of "bad girl" comics to resume publishing what Liefeld had of Moore's leftover Glory scripts as Alan Moore's Glory.

Issues #0, #1 and #2 made it to press, prefaced by a strange hybrid summary of Glory's story thus far and with art by Brandon Peterson and others.

Avatar also published one 2-issue and one 3-issue series with the Coven, minus creators Jeph Loeb and Ian Churchill.

And that was it for Liefeld and Avatar. Why he never continued working with them I do not know, since both Glory and Coven are properties that he still owns to this day, AFAIK.

In 2003, Liefeld formed a partnership with yet another financer to resurrect some of his old properties. He still had a good working relationship with the investor who owned the rights to Youngblood and Prophet at the time, and so Liefeld launched Arcade Comics. The first title..

...was the ill-fated Youngblood: Genesis, the re-used scripts from way back in 1994 that Kurt Busiek wrote for Extreme Studios. Busiek was not pleased with the sudden publication of these scripts, and the series never made it past issue 2.

Liefeld also discovered that hotshot newcomer Robert Kirkman (yes, he of Walking Dead and Invincible) was a big fan of Liefeld's work, and lured him over to write another Youngblood relaunch: Youngblood Imperial.

This was a substantially more graphic and explicit comic than any previous Youngblood series, dispensing wholly with Moore's retro-optimist for a bloody, morally dubious story more in line with other 2000s superhero comics. Only one issue was ever published.

By FAR the most infamous of Arcade's offerings was Youngblood: Bloodsport for which Liefeld somehow managed to get Mark Millar, already famous by then. This series was extremely bloody and foul-mouthed, promising the death of many of the characters...

...as Youngblood was pitted against each other, Hunger Games style to see who would survive to join the new team. This comic is... something. It's absolutely not safe for work and also manages to be quite offensive in other ways, so careful if you want to check it out.

Only one official issue of Bloodsport exists, but a bootleg of the finished pages of issue 2 is floating around out there for the morbidly curious. Suffice to say things had decayed quite far since Moore's time.

And just the drive this point home excessively, Kirkman also wrote a first issue of what was to be a Supreme-themed event called Supreme Sacrifice. In this story, Supreme finds his silver age values clashing against a truly horrifying bodystealing cult in a very dark story

The beginning of another story of the Supreme Sacrifice arc exists, drawn by Liefeld himself, where Suprema confronts several other Supremes from the Supermacy due to... something? There's not enough pages to get any kind of idea where the story was going, as this was a flip book

Fascinatly, while researching this series I discovered several pages of a never published LADY Supreme story, described as "Supreme Sacrifice" drawn by artist Wayne Nichols where Probe/Lady Supreme fights Overtkill! Surely this was meant for Arcade as well.

Only a handful of other comics were published under the Arcade banner, with the most notable one being "Nitrogen: Extreme Forces". Is this a re-use of the Loeb series from Awesome that never made it? No idea. It is the start of a crossover starring Prophet...

...and Extreme Sacrifice villain Crypt. This issue also features some Alan Moore characters and the art of Jon Malin, a name we will encounter again. Another creative that Liefeld would take with him from Arcade was colorist Matt Yackey.

With less than 10 comics published, Arcade Comics collapsed within a few years.

Years pass.

And then... the most surprising of all news. Liefeld is back at Image! Some of his titles are coming home!

Starting with Youngblood in 2008, Liefeld mended the long-broken bond with his old publisher and returned to let new creators try their hand at his old properties

This involved titles such as Joe Casey and Derec Donovan on Youngblood, a title which ignore the Arcade titles entirely and focused on a retro-style heavily Moore-inspired run.

As well as Brigade, an attempt for a full reboot on the original Youngblood spinoff with original artist Marat Mychaels now helping with the writing. Only one issue of Brigade came out.

Casey and Donovan produced 7 issues of Youngblood before Liefeld decided to take over the title himself for unknown reasons. He got issues #8 and #9 out before it was once more canceled.

Around this period the old Liefeld characters also started showing up in other Image titles again such as in Invincible, exisiting as a background element almost like in the old days.

Then in 2012 something major happened.

Extreme 2012 was a move to get four of the old Extreme properties back on shelves, this time helmed by top talent.

This saw the return of Glory (by Joe Keatinge and Sophie Campbell), Bloodstrike (by Tim Seeley and Franchesco Gaston), Supreme (by Erik Larsen, first expending the last of Moore's leftover scripts) and Prophet (by Brandon Graham).

Each of these titles continued the original numbering of their series and each miraculously managed to either finish their respective narratives or at least round things off gracefully.

But what about Youngblood? Well, Liefeld managed to relaunch that too, written by John McLaughlin and with art by Jon Malin and himself. This title also carried a "legacy" numbering (it was the style at the time) and tried to do a holistic followup to all previous runs...

...except for the Arcade issues.

The title lasted for 8 issues, ending in the middle of an arc about Lord Chapel (the other villain from Extreme Sacrifice) returning and featuring the return of a few other Extreme characters like Maximage.

With the end of the last of the Extreme 2012 books, nothing new manifested until 2017, when another new Youngblood series launched from writer Chad Bowers and artist Jim Towe. More spiritually aligned with Moore and Casey's takes, this series once more acknowledged most...

...of the team's history (though it made no effort to resolve past plots) while setting up a new young Youngblood team. The series lasted for 11 issues before rights issues forced it to close down.

See, the rights to Youngblood and some of the other old properties are now in a deep state of utter confusion, with lots of statements going either way. Combine this with Liefeld still not having fulfilled a Kickstarter to produce (yet another) new Brigade series...

...and you have a situation where it's looking very iffy if we'll see any of these characters again anytime soon.

And with that we conclude our journey from 1992 to 2021. An uncertain, strange not to end on, but perhaps one should expect no less from a publisher this erratic. What does the future hold? I have no idea. But there is at least a whole generation of new creatives who grew up...

...with many of these comics, no matter how ephemeral they were. And thus, we have some excellent comics today due to that inspiration. And perhaps that is a legacy in and of itself?

Thank you for reading. I spent more time on these two posts than I expected, so I must save the denouncement one for another day.

Again, feel free to comment and ask questions, and give me corrections.

Until next time.