EXCLUSIVE: Rob Liefeld To Revive Extreme Comics Franchises At Image

A day after announcing that his Extreme Studios characters had been optioned for the big screen by Fundamental Films, Image Comics co-founder Rob Liefeld exclusively confirmed for ComicBook.com that the characters of the Extreme Universe will be coming back to comics, with an upcoming anthology book due for release later this year.

Besides the return of Youngblood, Liefeld plans to release a number of projects to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Image Comics, which launched in 1992.

“Most importantly there will be an Extreme Anthology book,” Liefeld told ComicBook.com. “I’ve already got awesome creators contributing to that book.”

You see what he did there?

“There is an Extreme Anthology book because, A, I love anthologies and I love these characters,” Liefeld continued. “We’ve got great stories for them and we figure that that’s a great place for people to familiarize themselves. I remember when we launched Darker Image, Bloodwulf appeared for the fist time in a million comics. People love Darker Image and then we never followed it up. That was a kick ass book with three medium sized stories. So I’ve wanted to revisit that. Certainly Bloodwulf will be in this Extreme Anthology.”

Bloodwulf, who appeared in about two dozen comics, mostly in the ’90s, has often been compared to DC’s badass interstellar bounty hunter Lobo, who will be taking up residence this spring in Justice League America. Depending on the nature and scope of the planned cinematic universe Fundamental is developing with the Extreme characters, it may be one of the more difficult properties to “fit in” to the movies.

Extreme Studios was one of the original studios that came together (along with Erik Larsen’s Highbrow, Todd McFarlane Productions, Jim Lee’s WildStorm, and more) to form Image. Later, Liefeld would leave Image for a time after a falling out with the other partners. He would periodically work with them, but would publish his creator-owned characters through a number of publishers over the years. He didn’t return full time to Extreme Studios and Image Comics until 2011, after which Brandon Graham’s Prophet launched, marking the most acclaimed launch on Liefeld’s watch since the days when Watchmen scribe Alan Moore was working with him.

All along, he’s continued to publish certain, fan-favorite characters from the Extreme era, most notably Youngblood, on which Liefeld once took a chance on a young up-and-comer named Robert Kirkman (now an Image partner).

No word on when the Extreme Anthology might come out; expect to hear more in the near future as the publisher has already started rolling out twenty-fifth anniversary variants, 25-cent comics, and the like.