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A new policy for Image? Do you insist on not commenting the alledgedly internal "no gratuitous depiction of women" memo? I do not see anything to comment on. How are you fighting the problem of late books? Cancellations and/or release delays... or any other way? Yes, we are combating these problems on several fronts. First, we will not accept a new book until we have seen and read the completed first issue. We have "bumped" (that is, refused to solicit) books that are perpetual or habitually late. Should an Image central vendor/creator have consistant problems they will either be dropped or they will have to present a completed issue prior to solicitation. Since all Image Central books are creator owned, we cannot fire a creator or choose a "fill in" team, therefore the options listed above are our only options and we are excercising them. Beyond the (obvious) "gratuitous depiction of women" problem, I'm afraid that Image's worst problem is an overall lack of originality and a poor knowledge/use of the graphic narrative in a considerable part of the current books. As if not enough had been learnt from Eisner, Steranko, Kubert, etc... Is there anything an editor in chief can do to promote within the company's catalogue quality & critically acclaimed books such as Kabuki, Mage, Jinx, Age of Bronze, The Maxx etc or on the contrary in the end it all depends on the studio's final word? I believe that is a throughly subjective analysis on your part and rendered moot and meritless by the examples you site. Image carries a diverse line of creator owned comics by individuals with different and distinct voices. I think it would be unconscionable to impose upon these individuals a "house style" regardless of the model upon whom it was based. Your assessment is, in my opinion, based more on where we have been as opposed to where we are now and where we are going. May your credibility be questioned by the small studios since they have to follow the new quality policies which on the contrary cannot be imposed on partner, founding studios such as Top Cow and McFarlane Productions? It may be questioned, it hasn't been. Image is more generous than any company should ever be to the creators who come here. These policies were set in motion by the founders who chose NOT to profit from the creativity of their peers, but to allow other creators to rise or fall on their own merit. That the OWNERS--and one must remember, we OWN Image, it was our money that founded the company, set it up, created it are not obliged by the same rules as those we have let in is not really an issue for anyone other than those outside of our working parameters. Checking a few lists from Diamond it seems Image has around 12% or 13% of the best selling books on the market. Is this representative of its share of the whole US market? It fluctuates on any given month due in no small part to what we're publishing, which books, how many and what others are publishing in any given month, but that seems to be in the right ballpark, yes. Since Image's revenue stream is title, not sales based doesn't Spawn represent more financially for Image as a whole ¾ apart from big money for Mr McFarlane¾ than any other title? I ask this because Spawn is Image's best selling book, virtually the only Image title usually within the Top 10... No, you miss the whole point of the statement. We would get more money from Spawn if we were SALES based. If we were sales it would mean that we take a percentage of any given title's sales. This means that the better a book sells, the more money WE would get from it. We are TITLE based--what we do is extract the EXACT SAME AMOUNT of money from a title REGARDLESS of it's sales. It's a flat fee. We believe that it is the CREATOR and not the corporation that should profit from his creation.
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