90s: Image, Valiant, or Dark Horse

[MutantKeys]

.

[Sid]

Valiant, no question

[kidcolt]

Valiant, however I did read some Image and DH.

[Hawkman]

i'm currently working on finishing my valiant collection. easily my favorite, tho dark horse has had some amazing works

[jordanscott]

I was all about Dark Horse.

 

Loved the Alien and Predator titles they kept pumping out.

[nickwire]

valiant, dh then image, i hated image, you could read a book in seconds cause all it was was splash page after splash page with every character looking exactly the same

[juggernaut]

Valiant is clearly the best!!

[Earl Davis]

I was tempted to vote Dark Horse but went with Valiant in the end. Some late 90's image stuff was ok.

 

Earl.

[AnthaiHERO]

I was all about Dark Horse.

 

Loved the Alien and Predator titles they kept pumping out.

 

i second that. i loved the first cross over.

[Karma23]

Dark Horse - Concrete, and Flaming Carrot were my favorites

[kimik]

Valiant hands down. Image and Dark Horse had one or two interesting titles but other than that the majority of their books are just glossy toilet paper.

[thomasdacat]

Valiant comics for me as well.

[Jayman]

Went with Valiant also but I really likes the Malibu Ultraverse titles!

 

Back in the day they were great reads and were published on schedule!

[piper]

How about none of the above?

 

[JayT]

Image started getting its act together in the late 90's although it becomes harder to distinguish exactly what Image really was at the time with the studios really becoming, studios within studios. There were some quality runs in the earlier/middle stuff - Moore's Supreme among them, Astro City etc.

 

Dark Horse sporadically has great projects - loved the Legends stuff, Mike Allered, Geoff Darrow, Frank Miller, Mignolia, Byrne - all had great stuff for the line.

 

That said, my choice is Valiant. If integrity of a universe mean anything to a reader there is no other choice. It may not, as unless exposed to Valiant one may never have been exposed to a coherent - yet still layered - universe in comics I'd still hold the first 6-12 issues of all the first and second wave of Valiant titles with the regard I do my favorite reads. While certainly a willing player - perhaps the MVP - of speculative shenanigans, chromium this, Issue#0 that etc - it's real niche was quality writing.

 

Companies come and go in this industry, we find them then lose them, and after a month o so, whatever passion has passed on for the next little thing or the safety of DC and Marvel but when Valiant lost its direction I actually felt like we lost something.

[Earl Davis]

Cool poll. Looks like Valiant was the clear winner here.

 

Earl.

[Mac Man]

Okay, I'm one of the losers who voted for Image.

 

I can't help it- I really liked McFarlane's work on Spawn. Sure the dialogue/ storyline needed some work, but the art was a blast.

 

And while I know many people here aren't fans of Rob Liefield (at least that's the impression I've gotten in my short time here), I really liked his artwork a lot. The major problem I had with him when he jumped over to Image was he exploded all over the place where it seemed like many of the others focused mainly on one title. Then again, I was also a boy in his early teens, so maybe that had some influence on my liking Rob's work

 

I think the real pull for me when it came to Image was less on the storylines and more with the art. Sam Keith's "The Maxx" was weird as it could get, but the artwork was awesome. I still flip through my old issues just to look at the pics (storyline hasn't really improved in the 10+ years though...)

[Earl Davis]

Yes we do tend to give Image a harder time than they deserve. This is probably due to the flood of Liefield cloned look titles they put out for a while and we tend to forget about the better titles they put out later in the 90's and onwards.

[Mac Man]

Early 90s Image is like this season's New York Yankees- all the best players money could buy but didn't stand up.

[proventheory-migration]

image - splash pages rocked