Comics Bulletin logo
Search
  • Columns
    Random
    • Civil War Crimes: Civil War #3

      Jason Sacks
      April 7, 2016
      Big Two, Big Two Reviews, Columns, Marvel Comics, The Full Run
    Recent
    • Revisiting the Witchblade/Fathom/Tomb Raider Crossover

      Daniel Gehen
      February 8, 2021
    • The Full Run: Usagi Yojimbo – The Wanderer’s Road Part 2

      Daniel Gehen
      December 4, 2020
    • The Full Run: Usagi Yojimbo – The Wanderer’s Road Part 1

      Daniel Gehen
      October 30, 2020
    • What Looks Good
    • Comics Bulletin Soapbox
    • The Full Run
    • Leading Question
    • Top 10
    • The Long-Form
    • Jumping On
    • Comics in Color
    • Slouches Towards Comics
  • Big Two
    Random
    • Suicide Squad #10 Cover. February 1988. DC Comics. John Ostrander (Writer). Luke McDonnell (Penciller). Bob Lewis (Inker). Todd Klein (Letterer). Julianna Ferriter (Colourist).

      Batman Is Up Against The Wall in Suicide Squad #10

      Jason Sacks
      August 19, 2016
      Big Two, Columns, DC Comics, Suicide Squad
    Recent
    • 3.0

      Review: X-MEN LEGENDS #1 Delivers A Dose of Nostalgia

      Daniel Gehen
      February 22, 2021
    • 4.5

      DCeased: Dead Planet #7 Presents a Hopeful Future (Review)

      Daniel Gehen
      January 22, 2021
    • Retro Review: Detective Comics #826 Remains a Holiday Classic

      Daniel Gehen
      December 3, 2020
    • DC Comics
    • Big Two Reviews
    • Marvel Comics
  • Indie
    Random
    • 4.5

      Comictober 2019: Hillbilly Volume 1 TPB

      Jason Sacks
      October 14, 2019
      Indie, Reviews
    Recent
    • 4.0

      Review: Beast Wars #2 another chance to change the past

      Stephen Cook
      March 3, 2021
    • 4.5

      Review: THE LAST RONIN #2 Hurts So Good

      Daniel Gehen
      February 19, 2021
    • TIME BEFORE TIME—A HIGH STAKES TIME TRAVEL SCIENCE FICTION SERIES SET TO LAUNCH THIS MAY

      Daniel Gehen
      February 19, 2021
    • Reviews
    • Archie Comics
    • Boom! Studios
    • Dark Horse
    • IDW
    • Image
    • Oni Press
    • Valiant
  • Reviews
    Random
    • 4.5

      Farscape: The Complete Series Blu-ray Review

      Jason Sacks
      November 23, 2011
      Reviews
    Recent
    • 3.0

      Review: X-MEN LEGENDS #1 Delivers A Dose of Nostalgia

      Daniel Gehen
      February 22, 2021
    • 4.5

      Review: THE LAST RONIN #2 Hurts So Good

      Daniel Gehen
      February 19, 2021
    • 2.3

      Review: SAVAGE #1 Needs Taming

      Daniel Gehen
      February 16, 2021
    • Singles Going Steady
    • Slugfest
    • Manga
      • Reviews
    • Small Press
      • Reviews
      • ICYMI
      • Tiny Pages Made of Ashes
  • Interviews
    Random
    • Adam West Talks Batman! Blu-Ray To Be Released Tomorrow On November 11th!

      Jason Sacks
      November 10, 2014
      Interviews, Video Interview
    Recent
    • Interview: Jon Davis-Hunt Talks SHADOWMAN

      Daniel Gehen
      June 8, 2020
    • Interview: Becky Cloonan talks DARK AGNES and Her Personal Influences

      Mike Nickells
      March 4, 2020
    • Simon Roy

      Interview: Simon Roy on His Inspirations and Collaborations on PROTECTOR

      Mike Nickells
      January 29, 2020
    • Audio Interview
    • Video Interview
  • Classic Comics
    Random
    • Fall Guy for Murder and Other Stories by Johnny Craig

      Jason Sacks
      August 29, 2013
      Classic Comics Cavalcade, Columns
    Recent
    • Countdown to the King: Marvel’s Godzilla

      Daniel Gehen
      May 29, 2019
    • Honoring A Legend: Fantagraphics To Resurrect Tomi Ungerer Classics

      Daniel Gehen
      February 15, 2019
    • Reliving the Craziest Decade in Comics History: An interview with Jason Sacks

      Mark Stack
      January 2, 2019
    • Classic Comics Cavalcade
    • Classic Interviews
  • News
    Random
    • COPRA Comes to IMAGE COMICS

      Jason Sacks
      February 22, 2019
      Image, News, Press Release
    Recent
    • TIME BEFORE TIME—A HIGH STAKES TIME TRAVEL SCIENCE FICTION SERIES SET TO LAUNCH THIS MAY

      Daniel Gehen
      February 19, 2021
    • Image Comics and TMP Announces SPAWN’S UNIVERSE

      Daniel Gehen
      February 18, 2021
    • SAVAGE DRAGON IS A FORCE TO BE RECKONED WITH THIS MAY

      Daniel Gehen
      February 17, 2021
    • Press Release
    • Kickstarter Spotlight
  • Books
    Random
    • Review: 'Mangasia' is a Fascinating Journey Through Asian Comic Art

      Jason Sacks
      November 27, 2017
      Books, Reviews
    Recent
    • Collecting Profile: Disney Frozen

      CB Staff
      November 22, 2019
    • Collecting Profile: NFL Superpro

      CB Staff
      August 31, 2019
    • “THE BEST OF WITZEND” is a Wonderful Celebration of Artistic Freedom

      Daniel Gehen
      September 15, 2018
    • Review: ‘Machete Squad’ is a Disappointing Afghan Memoir

      Jason Sacks
      July 31, 2018
    • Review: ‘Out of Nothing’ is the Antidote to Our Sick Times

      Jason Sacks
      July 23, 2018
    • Review: ‘Bizarre Romance’ Shows Rough Edges in the Early Days of a New Marriage

      Jason Sacks
      July 10, 2018
What's New
  • Review: Beast Wars #2 another chance to change the past
  • Collecting Profile: Blue Beetle
  • Review: X-MEN LEGENDS #1 Delivers A Dose of Nostalgia
  • Collecting Profile: Kraven the Hunter
  • Review: THE LAST RONIN #2 Hurts So Good
  • TIME BEFORE TIME—A HIGH STAKES TIME TRAVEL SCIENCE FICTION SERIES SET TO LAUNCH THIS MAY
  • RSS Feed
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • Contact Us
  • Write for us!
  • Visit Video Game Break!
Home
Interviews

Erik Larsen: It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

Jason Sacks
April 20, 2012
Interviews

Image Spotlight week continues today with my interview with Erik Larsen. As you'll see, it's a pretty freewheeling interview, but Erik and his pal Al Gordon had some good stories to tell about the founding days of Image and the fun they had then.


Jason Sacks for Comics Bulletin: So I'm here at Image Comics Expo with Erik Larsen, who's celebrating the fact that he's almost an old man.

Al Gordon: Almost an old man?

Erik Larsen: I'm working towards it. It’s a long term goal.

CB: So he's got some distant memory of the early days of Image Comics back in the day.

Gordon: Wasn't that like a weekend ago or something?

Larsen: It just seems like yesterday. We were so young and innocent. We didn't know any better. It seemed like a good idea at the time. We had job security; I was drawing Spider-Man and Todd was also drawing Spider-Man… Actually he wasn't doing Spider-Man anymore. He left that gig for fatherhood.

He was not doing comics for months, right after Cyan was born. He stopped doing comics for a few months.

And then Image started, all of us were doing miniseries and Todd was like, "Oh, I guess somebody's gotta do a monthly book." So he bit the bullet and was the first guy who actually committed to doing an [ongoing].

Gordon: That was really weird,when Todd came by a couple of times today and started talking, and I was like, "You do like a great Erik Larsen impersonation, doing Todd McFarlane…"

Larsen: What's funny is when he was working on doing the logo for Spawn, Todd had Tom do one, and at that point we're looking at it the first time going, "No, no, I don't know if that's…” And so Chris Eliopoulos did a couple of them and just sent them over like, "What about this?" He did a different version of it and sent it to Todd. Todd called him and he had heard my impersonating so much that he thought it was me, just fucking with him.

Erik Larsen Interview - Image FoundersCB: From the stories, it sounds like Todd did a lot of persuading to get you to join him at Image in the first place.

Larsen: No, I was here first. I was here before he was.

CB: Tell that part of the story.

Larsen: I don't remember that part of the story; fortunately that's one of those…

CB: But you can't tell me you don't remember what happened when you founded Image.   

Larsen: Well, it's weird, because I'll talk about it and then somebody else will talk about it and I'm like, "Wait a minute, I don't remember that." And I always figure it must be me. There's a lot of stuff that kind of just goes away. And I've always had a kind of a crappy memory, as it turns out.

CB: Those were supposed to be the best days of your lives, too; you were rebels.

Larsen: I know, I know. But it's weird cause there were different meetings that I was part of, and then there were ones that I was not part of. Like, they were talking on the [Image Comics 20thAnniversary] panel about being in New York, going into the Marvel offices and then going over to the DC offices. I wasn't there; I wasn't part of that. So I missed out on that particular event.

CB: What made you decide to leave Marvel? Did you not want to draw Spider-Man anymore?

Larsen: Well, at that point, I didn't have a gig. I'd left Spider-Man because I was going to do Nova and then that didn't materialize, and so I was kind of between gigs.

The thing is, I left Amazing Spider-Man because I wanted to write. So I put in a pitch for doing Nova, and they just were taking their sweet ass time about it, and meanwhile Todd left the new Spider-Man book. They needed somebody on there, so they hired me to do that.

I wrote a Spider-Man story for that comic and was drawing it. I guess I could still be doing Nova if they had said, "Yeah, it's approved now." it was weird. A lot of it was reacting to the way we were being treated. Had the Image thing not worked out, there were a couple of [other options] that I had talked to people about. But I didn't have a regular gig at that point.

CB: So you weren't totally throwing everything up in the air and saying, "I'm getting up, I'm getting out."

Larsen: It wasn't really. I don't think anybody really was sitting there going, "We got to burn these bridges and burn them good." I think you kind of go, "Well, I hope to hell this works and if it doesn't work, it would be nice to be able to have some fallback."

Erik Larsen Interview - Image FoundationCB: But it worked out. The early comics sold like crazy.

Larsen: Yeah, they sold really well, to the extent where I decided there was no point in me doing any of this other stuff that I talked about doing. You know what it was? They came back and said, "Well, Nova, not as an ongoing book, [but] we'll approve it as a miniseries." So I was like, "Miniseries? Well I can do that any time." And so I was like, "I'll do this Dragon thing first." And then that was like, "Ok, I'll keep doing it because it just worked out really well."

CB: So you feel like you were kind of hanging out with the cool kids in a way when the books launched — Jim and Todd?

Larsen: Really, once it became a bigger group, then it was like, "Okay, there's a good chance that this is going to work." Yes. But prior to that, it was like, "Are we kidding? Is this really gonna happen?" But when it was just a couple of us, you kind of were a little more trepidatious about the whole thing. Once it got to be seven guys, it was like, "Yeah! Let's all go." You know, you psych yourself up."Let's all jump off the cliff together holding each other's hand."

CB: It was fun, right?

Larsen: It was fun. I was a fun time.

CB: It is different now?

Larsen: Yeah, it's different somehow, but it was good doing that; it was a fun time doing comics.

Gordon: Way back in the day.

Larsen: Way back in the day.

CB: Yeah, way back when you were younger.

Gordon: So wait, what was the order of the guys that came in? Because you had asked me to come in early on, and it was you and Rob [Liefeld] wasn't it?

Larsen: Me and Rob and… [Jim] Valentino, I'm told.

Gordon: Oh, I don't remember Valentino being in early on.

Larsen: Apparently there was some dinner that Dave Olbrich, Rob and Valentino were at, and Rob off the top of his head was like, "Hey, if I were to do a book, would you publish it?" And Dave
Olbrich was like, "Yeah, of course I would; I'd publish any of you guys."

Gordon: And that was Rob and Jim?

Larsen: I don't remember it at all. I don't remember any of that.

Gordon: So what year was that? Like '90?

Larsen: '91. And then Rob, printed out an ad for a book called…

CB: Exterminators.

Larsen: Exterminators. And it was a full-page ad, and Marvel just hit the roof when that thing came out. And so it was like, "Wow, we're scaring the crap out of these guys, let's do it."

Gordon: I remember you had approached me, I think, before Jim. I didn't think it was before Todd. Did Todd come in right after that?

Larsen: Yeah, Todd was in at that point.

Gordon: I remember there was a period before [Jim] Lee came in, or whatever and you were saying, to me, "Are you gonna get on board here?" But I was dealing with my dad, he was sick and he lasted maybe another month, and then he passed away.

I just remembered that later on, after my dad had been dead for about six or eight months, you called me and said, "So are you okay now?"

Larsen: I'm such a dick. I have no social graces at all.

Gordon: You said, "Are you okay now?" I said, "Yeah, what do you mean?" "You just shouldn't pass this up. We're gonna be doing this." And then I came in and I got Jerry and we did WildStar. But it was before everybody had signed up.

Larsen: I don't know if in our initial announcement it was all seven guys. I think Jim Lee came a little later in the proceedings. I don't remember.

CB: Do you remember the order of the books?

Larsen: Maybe. I’m not sure. Ask Valentino. He's got actually better memory for that sort of stuff. For whatever reason, it's like there are certain things that really stick with me and then other things that my brain is like, "Oh, this isn't important; you've got to remember that Artie Simek lettered Incredible Hulk #186, this other stuff." Why do I remember that?

Erik Larsen Interview - Image Founders

CB: You wanted to draw Dragon for a long time, right?

Larsen: Yeah, well, I drew him when I was a little kid, but my fear with Dragon was [that] I'd told myself as a young man that if I ever started drawing Savage Dragon, I'd do that for the rest of my career. I didn't really, necessarily, want to start the rest of my career just yet. I was kind of toying with starting with Super Patriot and doing a Super Patriot thing, and then I was like, "Yeah, I don't really want to draw him that much. I’ll just doDragon, whatever."

CB: And that began the rest of your life.

Larsen: That began the rest of my life.

CB: It’s all been downhill since then?

Larsen: Yeah, oh well.

CB: It's Sisyphus, pushing a rock up every day, “Got to do another issue.”

So, talked to Todd, talked to Silvestri, and they both said, "This is the best thing ever, I'm so glad I did this, it's changed my life, I'm so much happier now than I ever would have been." You know, Mark has this thing about, "being a great pop culture icon and I'm glad to be proud of that." How do you feel about how it all turned out?

Larsen: How it's all turned out? It hasn't turned out yet. It's not over till it's over.

Erik Larsen Interview - Image FoundationCB: But twenty years later…

Larsen: But twenty years on, I'm glad that we're still standing. I'm glad that we're still able to make a go of it. Because there were people, starting off, who wouldn't have given us 20 minutes. Now it's like, "Here we are."

CB: When you look around this convention floor and you see all these different creators, how does it make you feel to have these people be part of the thing that's created?

Larsen: Oh, it's pretty good. Some of these guys wouldn't be here without us. You kind of wonder where Robert Kirkman would be had Image Comics not come along. Because he was doing Battle Pope and was self publishing. He had limited success with that, and you're kind of like, "What would have happened had this not happened? Would Marvel have ever gone, "Sure, we'll take you on." I don't know that they would have. Then we would never have gotten all this other stuff. You never know what would have happened. Hickman is one of their star guys now; he's writing all their FF stuff. He sent us his stuff as just a blind submission.

CB: You'll do Dragon forever?

Larsen: You know what, I think I'll do it for a little while longer, yeah. At least until I'm ready to stop doing this stuff entirely. And I think even if it gets to a point where the numbers are not spectacular, it'll still be like, "You know what, I'll still do a few issues a year." But we'll see how things go. Right now it's been going great, so no complaints there.

CB: I love how it's just totally your thing.

Larsen: It's really nice to be able to just do whatever the hell you want to and not have there be somebody saying, "Oh, don't do that"

Gordon: Or, "We know what the best thing is and you don't."

Larsen: Or, "I don't think the Dragon would do that."


Don't miss the rest of our series of interviews with the Image founders!

  • Todd McFarlane
  • Whilce Portacio
  • Marc Silvestri
  • Jim Valentino
  • The Image Comics 20th Anniversary Panel
  • Plus Image Publisher Eric Stephenson

Erik LarsenJason Sacks

Share On:
Tweet
Eric Stephenson: A Book for Every Reader
“With Great Power” Premiere – Stan Lee’s Marvelous Night

About The Author

<a href="http://comicsbulletin.com/byline/jason-sacks/" rel="tag">Jason Sacks</a>
Jason Sacks
Publisher Emeritus
Google+

Jason Sacks has been obsessed with pop culture for longer than he'd like to remember. Jason has been writing for Comics Bulletin for nearly a decade, producing over a million words of content about comics, films and other media. He has also been published in a number of publications, including the late, lamented Amazing Heroes, The Flash Companion and The American Comic Book Chronicles: the 1970s,1980s and 1990s. Find him on Facebook and Twitter. Jason is the Publisher Emeritus of Comics Bulletin.

Related Posts

  • SAVAGE DRAGON IS A FORCE TO BE RECKONED WITH THIS MAY

    Daniel Gehen
    February 17, 2021
  • What Looks Good for the Week of 9/23/2020

    Daniel Gehen
    September 21, 2020

Latest Interviews

  • Interview: Jon Davis-Hunt Talks SHADOWMAN

    Daniel Gehen
    June 8, 2020
  • Interview: Becky Cloonan talks DARK AGNES and Her Personal Influences

    Mike Nickells
    March 4, 2020
  • Simon Roy

    Interview: Simon Roy on His Inspirations and Collaborations on PROTECTOR

    Mike Nickells
    January 29, 2020
  • Interview: V.E. Schwab on revisiting Red London in The Steel Prince

    Stephen Cook
    March 13, 2019
  • Interview: David Foster Wallace and Hellblazer, words on Wyrd with writer Curt Pires

    Stephen Cook
    February 27, 2019
  • “The Night Has Teeth” An Interview with Sarah deLaine, Artist of Image Comics’ “Little Girls”

    Jason Sacks
    February 26, 2019
  • Interview: Caitlin Kittredge talks the future of Witchblade

    Daniel Gehen
    February 12, 2019
  • Interview: Andy Nakatani and the Future of Weekly Shonen Jump

    Daniel Gehen
    December 19, 2018
  • INTERVIEW: Todd Matthy talks robots, princesses, and bridging the divide with storytelling

    Stephen Cook
    September 13, 2018
  • INTERVIEW: Gallaher & Ellis discuss THE ONLY LIVING GIRL

    Daniel Gehen, Thea Srinivasan
    September 7, 2018
RSSTwitterFacebookgoogleplusinstagramtumblr

Comics Bulletin is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for website owners to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com, audible.com, and any other website that may be affiliated with Amazon Service LLC Associates Program. As an Amazon Associate, Comics Bulletin earns from qualifying purchases.

All content on this site (c) 2018 The Respective Copyright Holders