It’s become almost cliche to say, but it’s the 90s all over again.

Valiant and Image, making the best comics, just like in 1992

Except, it’s not.

Last weekend I went in to my Local Comic Shop (LCS), and opened up a pull box. For a long time, I’ve been buying my comics through DCBS, ever since my last LCS, the one right between where I live and where I work, closed down. I’m a good Valiant minion fan, so opening a pull box and signing up for the pull box variants seemed like the right thing to do.

It doesn’t hurt that the comic shop I now call home is one of the coolest comic shops in the country.

I opened my pull box, and added X-O Manowar, Harbinger, and Bloodshot to it, and I’ll add Archer & Armstrong when it is solicited. Those four aren’t really enough though, so I figured I should add a couple more titles to the list as well. I can’t open a pull box with just four comics!

The first thing that came to mind was, of course, Saga. When I read the first issue, I loved it. It was so weird and compelling. I knew this was something I wanted to read. That goes on the list.

I picked up the first issue of Danger Club a couple of weeks ago, and it was fantastic. It was exciting, full of action, and didn’t waste any time setting up a story that is far more interesting than I expected. This was a surprise.

What else? I’ve heard some good things about Mind The Gap, so I put that on the list. The preview seemed intriguing, and the cover is beautiful. I’ll check it out! Also, Epic Kill looks pretty interesting. What’s not to like about Samurai School-girl Assassins?

Last of all, I can’t pass on The Massive. The previews in Dark Horse Presents, and available digitally, were compelling hooks. Combine that with something about a boat trapped up in the arctic, and I’m sold. (I have a weird fascination with the arctic and antarctic)

I’ve got 4 Valiant Books, 4 Image books, and a Dark Horse book on my pull list. I’m telling you, it’s just like 1992.

In 1992, I was buying Solar, Man of the Atom, Archer & Armstrong, Eternal Warrior, Harbinger, and X-O Manowar, and I bought Spawn and W.I.L.D.Cats when they came out. Sometimes I bought an Aliens or Predator book too, and I stopped buying Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine, G.I. Joe, etc.

In 1992, I was buying Valiant, Image, and the occasional Dark Horse book. Now, in 2012, I’m buying Valiant, Image, and the occasional Dark Horse Book. 20 years later, the same buying habits.

Except, as I said before, it’s not the same.

Over the last couple years, I’ve noticed my interests change. I thought I wasn’t as excited about comics as I used to be, it turns out that I just wasn’t as excited about the same comics that I used to be.

Superheroes just don’t do it for me any more. I’ve read tons of Marvel and DC over the years, but these days, watching Captain America punch Cyclops doesn’t interest me like it once did.

I may go into it a bit more in a future Compost Pile, but for now, suffice to say that “big 2″ superheroes don’t do it for me any more.

While I may not be into superheroes like I used to be, I am still interested in extraordinary characters with extraordinary abilities or circumstances. I do love fantasy and sci-fi, after all.

That’s what I feel like I’m getting with the new Valiant and Image books hitting the stands, really good stories with really good characters. Some of the characters are extraordinary, X-O, after all, a Visigoth with a futuristic alien battle armor, is pretty out there. Same with Saga, or Mind the Gap, and from what I have seen, I expect with Harbinger, Bloodshot, and Archer & Armstrong.

Marvel and DC haven’t evolved much. They are still the same characters, in similar circumstances. Image, Valiant, and several others have evolved as I have evolved as a reader. The names of the companies are the same, but the style and quality of the books has increased drastically.

It’s the same companies, but the comics are completely different. they’ve evolved, just like I have. And realizing this, it makes me excited about comics again.

Turns out they had an Image Comics exhibit up!

Image Characters by the Image Founders

They had art from all 20 years of Images history, from everything from the earliest days to the most recent book. I took some pics, figured I’d share with you here. The pics are from my phone, so they aren’t the best, but I hope you enjoy.

Click to look at Super Size pics!

This set of covers from Image United looked amazing! It was six full size comic boards side by side to make this composite image. I pieced this together from three individual pics:

Combined Cover Art for Image United 1

There were a couple of cool Jam pieces, like this one, with art by Todd McFarlane, Jim Valentino, Marc Silvestri, and Erik Larsen.

Image Comics Jam with Todd McFarlane, Jim Valentino, Erik Larsen, and Marc Silvestri

The art to Savage Dragon number 1!

Savage Dragon #1 Cover by Erik Larsen

The exhibit covered the entire history of Image, so there was a bit of recent stuff in addition to the older stuff. Here’s the art for one of the hardcover collections of Invincible by Ryan Ottley.

Invincible Hardcover Art by Ryan Ottley

The cool thing about this Chew page by Rob Guillory is that the pencils are done in red pencil, instead of the standard blue pencil.

Chew Interior Art

And, of course, Walking Dead was there, with the cover to Walking Dead #33, with the Governor and Michonne.

Walking Dead 33 Cover Art

They also had this interior art double page spread from Walking Dead #93. This was cool because the city scape was printed on the page with light blue ink, and Charlie Adlard inked the cityscape over the printed blue picture.

Walking Dead 93 Interior Art

This museum was pretty sweet, it was well worth the five bucks to go check out this awesome original art. If you ever have half an afternoon to kill in San Francisco, check it out.

If this book were to be published, it would be quite a problem for Valiant Entertainment, showing that others are infringing on their protected trademarks, without them doing anything to counter that. Since some people have non-valiantly speculated that Valiant Entertainment is a dead company (because they have been very quiet), they thought that this might not be addressed by them.

It turns out that Image Comics has changed the title of the book to The Eternal Conflicts of the Cosmic Warrior. I wasn’t able to find any information about why this was changed, but it makes sense that it was changed because it was brought to their attention that this title is a trademark infringement.

I’m pretty sure that the use of this title was unintentional, and in fact, I ordered this book to check it out. Maybe the use of the title was good, because it drew some extra attention to the book!

Interesting stuff!

The solicitation of the book is as follows:

THE TIMELESS ADVENTURES OF THE ETERNAL WARRIOR (ONE-SHOT)
story PAUL GRIST
art & cover PAUL GRIST
OCTOBER 7
32 PAGES / FC
$3.50

The Eternal Warrior. He’s the Cosmic Champion, a wanderer through time, forever caught in the battle between order and chaos

There’s a woman called Bernadette who wants to be the Empress of the Universe, and she’s just found the one thing that could help her achieve that. The only man who can stop her is the Eternal Warrior. And he’s just arrived 10 minutes too late!

So what is the issue here?

It comes down to the difference between copyrights and trademarks.

Copyrights protect the content of a published work. For instance, the copyright for Eternal Warrior would refer to a character named Gilad that is ten thousand years old, wears a jacket with strange containers down one side, has a glove with spikes on it, and has long flowing hair like Fabio.

Trademarks protect titles of products. In this case, the title Eternal Warrior is registered by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to Valiant Entertainment. An online record of this registration is located here.

In particular, the use of the words Eternal Warrior as the title of a product is registered to Valiant Entertainment, Inc, and includes:

Printed matter, namely, comic books; graphic novels; books featuring stories in illustrated form; books relating to comic book characters; periodicals, namely, magazines featuring illustrated stories for children and adults; comic strips; posters; art prints; lithographic prints; seriographic prints; limited edition prints; collector’s cards featuring comic book characters; trading cards; trading card albums

As far as I understand Trademark laws, the contents of this comic solicited by Image are fine. Even the description of the character within the book as the Eternal Warrior is probably fine. The use of the words Eternal Warrior in the title of this book seems to be a violation of VEI’s registered trademark.

These trademark laws help to protect both consumer and producer. If VEI does eventually print a new Eternal Warrior comic book, it is in the companies interest and in our interest as consumers to only have one product in comic book stores called Eternal Warrior.

If I were to recommend to a friend that he go to the comic shop and buy the latest issue of Eternal Warrior, there should not be any confusion about which comic book I am referring to. With two different books, with entirely different content in the marketplace, the consumer could reasonably be confused.

It will be interesting to see what happens, and if this comic book does come out with the title that it is solicited with. I will be ordering a copy, at the very least for posterity, to see how this plays out.