After a lengthy period of no movement, Image Comics co-founder and Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld told a fan on Twitter that he is currently working on Image United.
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After mixing it up a little bit on the social media platform with WWE and UFC’s CM Punk, Liefeld responded to a fan’s joke about Image United never being finished by replying that he was “working on pages today.”
That likely came as a surprise to everybody except Liefeld, considering that over the years, almost every Image founder seemed to have given up hope of ever seeing Image United completed. One person who has said over the years that he hoped it would one day come together — though he doubted it — was Savage Dragon creator Erik Larsen, who laid out the series.
“I laid out issues #4 and #5 years ago and pages have been with the guys, scattered about,” Larsen told ComicBook.com today. “I’d like to think that guys are knocking out occasional panels here and that it’ll eventually all come together.”
If Image United — which launched in 2009 — does come together again, it will have transformed from an event that was designed to play into then-current events in some of Image’s titles to a period piece. In the time since Image United was launched, major events have fundamentally altered the look, tone, and character of Spawn and Savage Dragon. Since Dragon takes place in real time, Malcolm Dragon — who was a pubscent teenager in 2009 — is now a fully-grown adult and his father, who used to be the series lead, has been dead for over a year.
The series brought the original seven Image Comics founders togehter, with DC honcho Jim Lee providing covers and interior art provided by Whilce Portacio, Jim Valentino, Marc Silvestri, Rob Liefeld, Erik Larsen and Todd McFarlane, with each artist drawing the characters he created for Image. Robert Kirkman, who was not a founding member of Image but who is a partner in the company now, wrote the script. Presumably, Kirkman’s script is completed, and Larsen has repeatedly suggested that he has outlined most of the event. Only three issues saw publication, with Larsen saying in a 2011 interview that the fourth issue was “about 60% done.”
Of course, given the momentum that Liefeld has right now, with a pair of hot Deadpool movies and several of his other properties set up in Hollywood, it would be difficult for the other partners to completely ignore it if he suddenly started churning pages out again. We will have to see what happens.
