Monday, June 21, 2004

Inside Image: Comic World News concludes its two-part interview with B. Clay Moore, Image Comics' PR and marketing coordinator, who addresses the move of Powers to Marvel's Icon imprint, among other topics:

"It is a concern that Powers moved away. It’s not like a physical concern of Image’s but you worry about people’s perception when stuff like that happens. But literally nobody knows what the motivation was for Brian [Bendis] to do that. And that’s his business. Obviously he’s got a good relationship with Marvel and they treat him well, I’m sure that we’d rather have Powers and Kabuki still doing new stuff for Image. We are still doing the trades. And they’re on the back list. And we still have relationships with both of those guys. But I have not seen any indication that Icon is going to be an open door for creators. It’s two or three creators that are going to be doing stuff through Marvel instead of through Image. That’s about what it amounts to. ...

"... I actually came on board right after that had been done. I wasn’t aware of what was going on. But, because the way comics are and especially with the internet, there was about 5 or 6 days where it was the big buzz on the internet, and people then started speculating on what Icon was and what it wasn’t and this and that. And the next week it was pretty much old news, there’s something else for people to worry about. Rich Johnston moves into some other controversy. Then Micah Wright was the new story now. That’s what everybody was concerned about. You do worry about how people perceive things because people operate so much on innuendo and rumor and don’t really understand the nature of Image or what goes on. But with Powers, I hope it does extremely well at Marvel. The reason it’s at Marvel, the reason it exists, is because, because of Image. I mean in that respect, it’s an example of a success story. More power to 'em."