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So I've observed my quinquennial ritual of checking out the latest Youngblood reboot. For those tuning in late YB was the first Image comic, a creator owned book by Rob Liefeld and it was...



Not very good.

But at it's core was a good idea. It was supposed to be heroes for the MTV generation, celebrity heroes too busy shooting commercials to save the world.

So it was rebooted in the late 90s under the dream team of Alan Moore and Steven Skroce (Alan #$%^ing Moore!)



And the publisher went bust after 2 issues...

Rebooted in the 2000s as superheroes starring in a reality TV show with Joe Casey writing.



Cancelled in 9 issues.

Rebooted for it's 20th anniversary in 2012



Cancelled in under 10 issues.

Now it's back again for the 25th anniversary, this time YB has been disbanded after hacktivists revealed all their dirty secrets. Now they've been replaced by an app that allows users to summon superheroes then rate them.



It's actually fairly good. Very mobile era concept, decent writing, clean art, and actually keeping to a monthly schedule. 10 issues out so far.

Some weaknesses of course, it ain't great, but it is pretty good.

Anyone else out there remember/follow Youngblood?

I remember it. Ive never followed it. But I do think it's constant reboots and cancellations are hilarious.

If I remember correctly I think there was going to be a TV and or movie adaptation too.

Ugh... Liefield. Gross.
I had the original issues back in the day. Back when Badrock was Bedrock. The story was pretty lame. The characters were stupid (the Thing, Hawkeye, ect) they were all just rip offs like all other Liefield projects. The only good character was Diehard and only in the Super Patriot 4 part series.

I remember when they teamed up with Jim Lee's WILDcats to take on Vice President Dan Quayle.

I still have a couple of the Mcfarlane Action figures of them, like the big guy and Superpatriot.

Youngblood was an awful idea with awful art when it started and it's been hard pressed to outgrow that foundation.

It seemed like the most cynical cash grab of all of the original Image start ups, and as you note, it's had trouble staying afloat ever since.

Still, I suppose the latest version is...worth a look?

But it would have to be absolutely outstanding to be worth the time and effort.

I'd say I'm alone in seeing potential here, I mean the likes of Alan @#$%ing Moore, Joe Casey, Kurt Busiek and Mark Millar (who both did mini series which vanished after one issue) have all seen something in the team.

Say what you will about Liefeld, the man can recruit talent.

And seems just as good about pissing it away...

Thats just it. He can bring people together but not what to do with them.

Maybe there is a really good idea inside youngblood. But its burried under so much of RL's bs.

He basically gives talented people 'carte blanche' with the properties as well as probably really, really good financial terms and incentives.

So yeah, Rob's good at....self-marketing and regular marketing, but when left to his own devices, he isn't all that great at the whole writing and drawing thing.

But maybe he's gotten a lot better in the last 3 decades?

He's an ideas guy, not someone to be put in charge of running a company or making the big decisions. I almost want to say, the John Romero of the comic book industry.

Eh, maybe more like the Uwe Bole of the comic book industry?

Brigade was the only Extreme Studios book that I had any interest in. I quickly devolved into a shock factor inspired slaughterfest every so often. I lost count of how many times the team died, or ANY of the Liefeld books where damn near everyone dies. Also you had major league heelturns for characters that came out of nowhere. It was basically like watching a 12 year old trying to write a story about all his Marvel and DC toys together with lots of angst induced killing.


I tired of it quite quickly, as well as almost all of Image's stuff. I started to collect the Ultraverse from Malibu instead, and I've never regretted it.

Never read the series proper, but I really enjoyed the "epilogue" to youngblood throughout the series "Prophet". If you haven't read it, it takes place far, far into the future and it doesn't really have anything to do with youngblood directly, but a lot of the surviving characters show up at one point or another anyway over the course of the story. I liked it enough that it made me want to check out the original youngblood to read the background of everything going on in Prophet. Seems like as good a time as any to check it out...Actually I'd recommend "Prophet" to anyone who is a 40k fan. It was a good series and is not hard to imagine it set in the Imperium of Man.

 BrookM wrote:
He's an ideas guy, not someone to be put in charge of running a company or making the big decisions. I almost want to say, the John Romero of the comic book industry.

I'd go more with Ed Woods, full of ideas (many not all that good) and yet completely incompetent at both the artistic and business ends of the industry.

I mean, consider this...

A gun toting super soldier named Chapel after killing his best friend (who became Spawn), getting kicked off of Youngblood and getting AIDS kills himself, then goes to hell, fights his way up the ladder to become king of hell then invades Earth with an army of demons. That's pretty cool. And this plot was actually developed over the course of a few years. If Marvel did this with the Punisher or Cable I'd be all over it.

And yet it was totally unreadable crap.

Yeah a good portion of Liefeld's ideas were Cable/Wolverine/chick with large breasts but there were some good ideas in there. Captain America after 50+ years of bionics? @$$hole get-off-my-lawn Superman? Super strong, invulnerable 10-ton rock guy, who's also a 14 year old boy?

Maybe not Hamlet but they can work.

(In more competent hands)

Were they referenced a few times in Spawn? I read some of those back in the day and these guys seem familiar.

Yeah for a while Image really tried to build a Marvel style universe. One Youngblood even killed Al Simmons.

Then the creators had a falling out and it was retconned

Guy with the skull face paint was - originally -- the guy who killed Al Simmons IIRC.

... think that was retconned late after Image kinda split up ..?

I'm surprised one of the big two hasn't swooped in to buy the company up yet, or is it not worth owning?

 BrookM wrote:
I'm surprised one of the big two hasn't swooped in to buy the company up yet, or is it not worth owning?

Image is set up as a clearing house and doesn't actually own any of the books it publishes. The creators hold the copyrights. The 7 founders made a big point of that that when they created Image.

About 10 years back (more?) Jim Lee sold his characters to DC, WildCATS, Stormwatch etc. They've had as least as many reboots as Youngblood with results that were almost as good.

There was a rumor Liefeld was offered millions for his characters in the 90s and didn't take it.

Literally the only think I know about Youngblood is the cover with 'this bloods for you' on it. I saw that meaningless sentence fragment on a website making fun of Liefeld, and some reason its stuck in my head ever since.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Image is set up as a clearing house and doesn't actually own any of the books it publishes. The creators hold the copyrights. The 7 founders made a big point of that that when they created Image.

Ah, so Liefeld isn't John Romero, Uwe Bole, or even Ed Wood. He's Tony Wilson.

Tony Wilson was the guy behind Factory Records, the label for Joy Division/New Order and the Happy Mondays, in addition to a whole bunch of other stuff (clubs, tv shows etc). Factory Records also didn't control the copyright to anything, ownership remained with the artist.

BrookM wrote:I'm surprised one of the big two hasn't swooped in to buy the company up yet, or is it not worth owning?

I think there was also talk of Top Cow going to Marvel, but I can't remember if that fell through or whatever. Liefeld pretty much took his studio and ran back in the day, starting Awesome Entertainment. If that wasn't a clear view into Liefeld's mindset, nothing is.




Also, your avatar is mesmerizing. What is it from?

Thanks for the insights guys and pardon the ignorance, I'm not big on comic books, but I do pick up the odd oodle from time to time or come across online media discussing these runs and the people in charge. I miss Tales from the Longbox.

 Just Tony wrote:
Also, your avatar is mesmerizing. What is it from?

Lady Rebek Solaria of Dawn of War 3, about one of the few good things to come from that game.

Geeze there's another YB series out there called Youngblood Imperial, by Robert 'The Walking Dead' Kirkman.

They got out one issue before it disappeared.

By now it's funny.

I expect the next relaunch will have Grant Morrison and Alex Ross and after 10 pages will just be blank.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Geeze there's another YB series out there called Youngblood Imperial, by Robert 'The Walking Dead' Kirkman.

They got out one issue before it disappeared.

By now it's funny.

I expect the next relaunch will have Grant Morrison and Alex Ross and after 10 pages will just be blank.

To be frank, I'd rather read blank pages than most of what Morrison writes.

Ah I see someone else read Final Crisis...

Are you kidding? I've been in hate with Morrison since "Arkham Asylum"