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GV10 [Voting]: Publisher of the Decade
DJ Eebs
Moderator, Administrator admin
Moderator, Administrator admin
Vote for your favorite publisher! THIS IS THE BATTLEDOME.
DJ Eebs on
GV10 [Voting]: Publisher of the Decade 68 votes
Marvel
63%
43 votes
DC
0%
Image
33%
23 votes
Archie
0%
Boom! Studios
0%
Dark Horse
1%
1 vote
Dynamite
0%
IDW
1%
1 vote
Oni Press
0%
Other (Please leave a comment in the thread)
0%
0
Posts
Marvel spent 2005-2015 in a creative renaissance, bouncing back from bankruptcy and riding the success of their Ultimate Line to become the juggernaut that dominated the decade both creatively and sales wise. They brought in indie talent and let them play with the biggest toys, they weren't afraid to try risky, unexpected plots and series, they reinvented old obscure characters to great success and brought their stalwarts to higher heights than ever. And that doesn't even touch on the global phenomenon that is Marvel Studios and the MCU.
On the flipside, Image has probably changed the face of comics, as a business, going forward. They aren't just creators side projects while they work at Marvel/DC or a bunch of attempts at making their own trite superhero universe, they are the most innovative, progressive publisher in comics today and they are placing almost all of the power, and success, in the creator's hands. Image books are regular best-sellers and getting movie deals left and right and unlike at Marvel or DC the creators own their work and directly benefit from its success, which is a beautiful thing. Cap that off with Walking Dead being one of, if not the, biggest comics things ever and they've had a hell of a decade.
Obviously both of them have had missteps and bad stories as well but overall both publishers have had a truly incredible decade and personally I am fine with either one taking it.
Kind of a hard call between the two, though. Image is doing so many wonderful things! (And I still need to read Saga)
Though Best Publisher? That's Marvel and by a huge margin.
Something that I have forgotten till recently was how every of their events, disregarding their varrying quality, seemed to organically build off each other for a good number of years. Starting at Civil War you could go back and read the events and they would make narrative sense. That's huge.
What puts Image over the top of the other publishers for me is that Image has basically fed Marvel (and DC) the talent that has made their books so much better in recent years. You cut off that pipeline, we'd still be in that Civil War/Secret Invasion era of decent ideas badly executed.
DC used to have a lock on the talent pipeline through Vertigo. A lot of the positive directions at Marvel and Image have benefited from the nearly decade of bad decision-making at DC, with possibly the greatest being the corporate-mandated decision to lock down TV/Movie rights for creator-owned books at Vertigo.
That single decision meant that the constant stream of writers and artists who work at Vertigo while doing side work for DC's superhero books has dried up. Now, the big-name creators largely flip between creator-owned work at Image and work-for-hire with Marvel.
I'm sure Marvel is going to win. I'm just voting for Image to give them a bigger voice, and because TexiKen is right totally right about them being a greenhouse of talent.
Also, Image did something so ballsy that my hat is still off to them: DRM-free digital issues of all their series - and in CBZ/CBR formats, too! I would buy a lot more Marvel series digitally if they just gave me the files.
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Based on what I've read here and other places, Marvel's been knocking it out of the park, and I've enjoyed all of their recent live-action stuff. So I'm voting for them.
But honestly, most of the comics I'm actually reading are Image
I got into comics through Vertigo, and as much as I enjoy a lot of cape books, they're not the reason I'm into comics
I actually considered voting for DC, with the caveat that I'm voting for Vertigo, because my favorite books come from that imprint
But Image is doing the best work in that field right now, and I'm really enamored with their policy of ten dollar first trades, which has gotten me to buy some things I might not have otherwise (some of which I continued, and some of which I did not)
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
I'm basically too uninformed on the other publishers to make a judgment here.
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
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Every single publisher on that list has produced several great books in the last decade, even Archie and DC. DC's definitely going through an identity crisis, but even then I could list 10 worthwhile titles from them being published today (especially if you throw in Vertigo and DC Digital).
It's a great time to be in comics.
It's the same reason I can't in good nature vote for Image, because I've only read one volume of Rat Queens and sex Criminals and one issue of Saga and Bitch Planet so far. That's not to say I don't think their books look interesting. It's just I can't afford to buy every interesting comic made, and so I've made the choice to buy what I thought were the most appealing to my tastes, and that just so happened to be a bunch of Marvel books.
Steam / Origin & Wii U: Heatwave111 / FC: 4227-1965-3206 / Battle.net: Heatwave#11356
they published Locke & Key and Darwyn Cooke's Parker adaptations
plus some other books that I'm sure are good
Their licensed books are all worth reading, and Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, Teenage Mutant Ninja and G.I.Joe: Cobra are outright great. It's a solid pick.
IDW's Artist Editions are also the classiest books in print. I really want the Mignola one.
Honourable mention to Fantagraphics for giving me Prison Pit and Weathercraft
shout out to IDW for those sexy hard-cover Locke & Key trades that brought me back to comics (draining my bank account).
Image did so much stuff. Now I'm wondering what happened. They still put out good comics but they just don't quite seem to have that same magic, or they lost it to Marvel or something.
Saga, Sex Criminals, Rat Queens, the Wicked + the Divine, Manhattan Projects, etc.
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
But I'd argue that reabsorbing that Marvel talent into Image is what has put them over the top and drawn continued attention. Dudes like Kirkman and Vaughn never really broke through at Marvel, and have gained a profile off of their indie work instead, but I think it's been new work by Brubaker, Fraction, Hickman, and others that has put Image over the top, and that wouldn't have happened without Marvel. It's one thing for beloved indie creators to keep working at Image, but it's another thing for top-level big 2 creators to head back, because their success sort of lifts all boats and radiates down to new releases by more obscure creative teams. Doubly so given that Marvel has been shopping from those smaller teams.