This month, however, impatient fans have the fortune of checking out Image Comics #1, a special hardcover originally meant to commemorate the company's 10th anniversary but just barely making it out in time for its 14th birthday. Image was created as an outlet for the hottest artists of the time to break away from the oppressive Marvel and DC regimes to create their own characters that they would own outright. The hardcover pays homage to that, as each of the four remaining Image founders—Todd McFarlane, Marc Silvestri, Jim Valentino, and Larsen—returns to his first Image creations.

Good lord… “Things don't suck quite so bad anymore.” [Laughs] I don't have a lot to go with. The thing about the whole publishing process is that not everything is immediately ready. So a good, long while of that was winding down some of the old things that happened and ramping up the new things and getting things ready to go. So it took a while.

I would like there to not be a single person who goes into a comic book store and can honestly say, “I don't read a single Image comic.” My goal is to publish pretty much something for everybody.

I think it is. After a while, it's just getting over those hurdles, and then it's not a problem anymore, y'know? But initially Spawn, when I came on, was over a year late. We had had retailers who were like, “I opened up a store, I've been in business for a little over a year, and I just got the first Spawn I ordered.” Y'know?

I don't know. It wasn't a story that I particularly wanted to tell, or particularly wanted to get out there. I myself like him better as sort of a man-of-mystery kind of thing. And once you get rid of that, I think something's missing. I personally would prefer not to tell it, but I really had nothing else to do, y'know? It was a special Image comic book where all the original creators come back and did their own stuff. And I'd still been doing my own book. It wasn't like I could just go, “Here's another Dragon story, folks!” and have anybody really get that excited about it. There were a lot of…because I knew the timing issue of the thing, that there was a chance that these guys might not get their act together, I didn't want to do something that was in continuity because, as it turned out, it took nearly four years for the book to come out. So I would have been treading water for nearly four years. That's no damn good.

There's always books that I'm excited about. I'm looking forward to there being more issues of Godland out because I really like that. But pretty much everything we do at this point, I'm somewhat excited about. There are very few books that we put out that I don't like…although there are a couple.

That's all right. [Laughs] It's one of those things where not every book is for everybody; you've just got to kind of understand that that's the case. People shouldn't feel bad that there are comics that aren't for them being released. I think that it's a good thing that there are comics out there that I don't like because that means that there are comics out there that people do legitimately enjoy. I don't go and watch every movie that comes out, I don't watch every television program, but there's enough of a variety of different things out there that there's something for me if I choose to read that book, watch that movie, read that comic book, what have you.

Not while I'm publisher at Image Comics. I think it sends out a bad message that the publisher of a competing company is working someplace else. It's just sort of bad form, I think. Although I do love a lot of these other characters, and it would be a hoot and a half to work on 'em, it's just, I really kind of feel like I shouldn't be doing that.

At the rate I'm going? I don't know. [Laughs] I was hoping for August, but now that it's mid-August, I'm thinking not. This particular issue has given me more grief than a lot. But after that, after I'm over this one, then it's cake. It's easy from that point on.

Well, the thing is there are always threads that go way, way, way out there. You know, ”I'm gonna pay this off in 17 years, it's gonna be so cool!” There's always little things like that. Generally, it's five, six, seven months ahead where I know fairly clearly what I'm going to be doing. It can vary. I always like to make plans, but then what tends to happen is that I get so excited about something that's coming out six or seven months from now, that it's tough to focus on what I'm doing now to get to what's coming up six or months from now.

No, and neither was Dragon. And he kind of shared my frustrations. I'll get a good supervillain out of the deal, so I don't feel too bad about that.

That's a good question. The problem with the Dragon collections is that [colorist] Abel Mouton has to convert all these files from this other format into something that I can actually use. It was all colored on an IBM in an archaic coloring system called Pod Barrett. In order for anybody to make things that we can print from, they need to be converted to Macintosh Photoshop files. And there's always little coloring things that I want to fix—“Dragon's hand was totally colored brown, and I want to fix that for the trade,” sort of thing. So I don't want to just print from the existing stuff, but Abel's not getting his act together particularly quickly in terms of converting those files.

It's 50…I'm not sure what issue it starts in. It's the story where Dragon and William become one guy and then ultimately Dragon gets back in his own body again and where it gets back to being whole, I believe it's Savage Dragon: Resurrection.

That was a fun little thing to try. Kind of what happens along the way is that people will make suggestions or ask questions that kind of get you thinking. That came from an inker who was doing a book for us at the time named Mark Lipka, who was inking a Savage Dragon mini-series [Sex & Violence], and he asked if I had done anything that was an homage to the comics I drew as a kid, because I created Dragon in fourth or fifth grade. And it just got me thinking, “Well, no, I haven't really done that,” and, “How could I do that and have it be a cool story?” And eventually got him wearing this really retarded costume, with the sneakers and all that. [Chuckles] That was sweet. It was fun for me.

I think he's going to talk about how he just completed his Marvel Family collection and how cool it is. He just got all these cool Fawcett Comics finally. I don't know; I'll have a new project, hopefully, and other stuff. I think by that point, the Savage Dragon cartoon will be out on DVD, so people will be able to be appalled at that.

“It's better than WildCATs!” Put that quote on the box! [Both laugh] I would like to be next year doing much more Savage Dragon than I was doing the previous year and getting it out on a more regular clip.

A little bit. Frank Fosco and I are doing a one-shot, which is the Rock House Diner one-shot. Which is this 48-page issue. Basically, in the bio that I did of Rock years ago, there was some background that he used to be married and used to have a kid and all this stuff, so basically, Rock's daughter comes back to live with her dad after her mother has passed away unexpectedly. It's kind of a weird little story there, but it's cool, dammit.

This is cache, read story here