Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News, Image | Tagged: erik larsen, jim valentino

What Erik Larsen Said That Riled Up Jim Valentino So Much

LAst week, Jim Valentino answered claims made on Cartoonist KayFayBe by Erik Larsen that he "righted the ship" over at Image Comics,

Last week, Bleeding Cool ran an article in which Jim Valentino answered claims made on the Cartoonist KayFayBe, YouTube channel Ed Piskor and Jim Rugg, when interviewing Image Comics co-founder and former Image Comics publisher Erik Larsen that he "righted the ship" over at Image Comics, when taking over from Jim Valentino as publisher. Bleeding  Cool reproduced Jim Valentino's statement in full, but we didn't expect that it would be the end of it. But what was the original statement? Here's the Erik Larsen interview with Cartoonist KayFayBe, and we reproduce the offending part below.

Cartoonist KayFayBe: Erik, I remember when you took over publisher, and it seemed like comics as a whole, the industry, was in this very low down cycle. Was there a necessity… were you guys looking like Image was in trouble and needed to try something new? What's the process of changing a publisher at Image and, you know, were there…?

Erik Larsen: In this particular case, what had gone on is Jim Valentino is running the show and Jim really had some strong connections in the indie crowd and so he had brought a lot of indie guys and and he wasn't getting a lot of the more mainstream Marvel or DC Comics guys to come over. Because mostly he didn't have a real strong connection with a lot of those people. And at the same time I kept hearing rumblings from people going, I'd like to pitch a book at Image but getting rejected by Jim Valentino, would be too much of a blow to my ego . It's probably not something I should be saying on a podcast…

Well, that's where we are…

Erik Larsen: I could see that that that was something where our comics were kind of becoming more weird and fringe. And also the audience wasn't necessarily receptive to all of it and so there were a lot of comics that were starting out and then just dying really quick. And then you'd have these stories which would never get finished and they were just left hanging forever. And me being that the anal guy that I am, I was just like, I must have these things resolved. I can't let everything be hanging here, it's driving me crazy, so I just kind of muscled my way in there. And it was it was a dick move on my part, but I just felt like this this ship needs to be righted. We're going towards the rocks and if we don't get going on a course which is putting out stronger books and having more hands-on art direction, we could be in real trouble.

Jim Valentino's retort to that is right here. And here is the full video.

32 years ago, Image Comics was founded by Rob Liefeld, Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, Erik Larsen, Jim Valentino and Marc Silvestri, a loose collection of creator studios, and they hired Tony Lobito as full-time publisher for Image Comics. In 1993, Larry Marder, creator of Beanworld, as well as a former marketer for Chicago comics retail chain Moondog, to act as "executive director" for the publisher, reporting directly to the partners. After Larry Marder left Image Comics in 1999 to help run McFarlane Toys, Jim Valentino was named the company's publisher. Another founder, Erik Larsen took over as publisher in 2004 stating that he would shift to more superhero books from Valentino's emphasis on "cutting edge, alternative comics…. my roots are in the more mainstream camp" and promising to improve the timeliness of Image's books. Eric Stephenson was brought in as publisher in 2008, a position he has kept ever since.

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