10 Films That Track the History of Image Comics in Cinema

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We think we know the score: The Old Guard 2 is an action fantasy film that follows an admired first installment that premiered in the depths of the pandemic that Netflix is cannily (or foolishly) counterprogramming against a Jurassic World movie. But looking beneath the surface, The Old Guard 2 is not just another release to feed the summer glut: It’s also the latest film in a fascinating history of adaptations from Image Comics, one of the most significant independent comic labels in American history.

In the early ‘90s, the punishing conditions of Marvel Comics proved too much for a band of comic book illustrators, and they formed their own company. Image Comics was an independent label founded on a pro-artist principle – that comic book writers and illustrators would retain the copyright to their own work. The problem of creative ownership in the comics industry had become a major hot topic throughout the ‘80s, and the arrival of independent labels like Dark Horse (Image’s most significant competitor) and Pacific Comics established alternatives to Marvel and DC – if characters and stories were owned by the artist and not the publisher, then artists would theoretically create freer, more exciting work as part of their own imprints.

The label was founded by Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, and four other prominent artists in 1992 (including the eventual input of Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman), and its reputation as a major player in independent comics comes with a rocky history of constant creator tension and the burst of the speculative bubble – and even though Image artists have continued their track record of industry trailblazing by becoming the first unionized comics publisher in America, it hasn’t been all smooth sailing since.

The specificity and strangeness of Image properties doesn’t naturally translate to mass audience interest, so the history of Image film adaptations is spotty. Because all of Image’s properties are artist-owned and therefore not tied to any specific label, many characters – like The Crow or Tank Girl – were only published by Image after they were first adapted for film. The history of Image Comics in cinema is difficult to track – the freedom of creative’s owning their own copyright will often make Image just one publisher of many.

What’s more, thanks to Kirkman’s The Walking Dead and Invincible in particular, you can make the case that TV adaptations have outmatched Image Comics films. Nevertheless, the arrival of The Old Guard 2 in a month of mega-tentpole Big Two adaptations–Superman and Fantastic 4–reminds us why Image has always appealed in a way that Marvel and DC can’t replicate. Here are 10 films that chart the history of comic book movies and the artist-led Image Comics.

1. The Crow (1994)

Director: Alex Proyas

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Image didn’t cross paths with James O’Barr’s story of Eric Draven, a tortured avenger who was resurrected to punish his fiancee’s murderers, until 1999, five years after the financial success but tragic production of the first Crow movie in 1994. Alex Proyas’ film is rich with stylized Gothic spirit – even if it doesn’t replicate the striking, moody art of O’Barr’s series, then Proyas translates the appeal into highly expressionistic images and heightened performances. Seeing as Image Comics’ version of The Crow came after MacFarlane licensed the character and tried to expand the character’s story, maybe the more apt movie comparison is the maligned direct-to-video threequel The Crow: Salvation – but nobody likes The Crow sequels. Or the 2024 The Crow reboot, for that matter.

2. Spawn (1997)

Director: Mark A.Z. Dippé

Todd MacFarlane’s most iconic creation was Spawn, a mercenary who died and was resurrected by the trickster demon Malebolgia who then embraced his antihero “Hellspawn” identity and became a force against evil. Spawn’s 1997 release meant that Michael Jai White (who would eventually wear the mantle of Black Dynamite) became one of the first African-American actors to star as a prominent comic book superhero, as the film released a year before Wesley Snipe’s Blade and a matter of weeks before the Shaq-starring Steel. (Robert Townsend played an original superhero in the 1993 comedy The Meteor Man.) Spawn, meanwhile, is rich with junky artifice – the restrictive prosthetics, the chunky soundstage sets, the unconvincing, frequent use of CG – but sometimes successfully captures the ugly excess of MacFarlane’s in-your-face style. It flopped with critics and disappointed at the box office, and a long-anticipated reboot helmed by MacFarlane himself is still gestating.

3. Tank Girl (1995)

Director: Rachel Talalay

Tank Girl was created by Brits Alan Martin and James Hewlett in the late ‘80s – a female punk rocker antihero in post-apocalypse Australia who is declared an outlaw for nonconformist attitudes and behavior. This was an understandably appealing image in Thatcher-era counterculture, and Tank Girl became a hot commodity in British comics that led to a 1995 film adaptation directed by future recurring Doctor Who director Rachel Talalay. The film was a big flop but was carried by a cult following throughout the 2000s, where Image Comics became one of the many publishers of the British indie darling’s ongoing rebellion.

4. Witchblade (2000)

Director: Ralph Hemecker

This made-for-TV fantasy superhero film was successful enough on TNT to warrant a Witchblade series the following year, making it the only backdoor pilot on this list. Witchblade was published under Image Comics co-founder Marc Silvestri’s Top Cow Productions imprint, and had run for five years by the time that veteran TV director Ralph Hemecker helmed the TV movie. Hemecker would then become showrunner for the short-lived Witchblade series that ended after 23 episodes – some speculated that lead actress Yancy Butler’s personal issues were behind TNT cancelling its most successful original drama. The story of a female NYPD detective who obtains a supernatural gauntlet that gives her the necessary powers to fight dark magic in the city makes it the closest comparison point to The Old Guard, another female-led Image series about fantasy guardians that found success outside of movie theaters.

5. Bulletproof Monk (2003)

Director: Paul Hunter

Image Comics published the first volume of Bulletproof Monk in 1998 – the vision of a Tibetan martial arts hero who for decades has been the stuff of legend developed a cult reputation and attracted the interest of legendary Hong Kong filmmaker John Woo (depending on the second-hand copy of the comic you pick up, you can read an introduction penned by him). Bulletproof Monk’s eventual film adaptation has far less pulse and dynamism than you’d hope from a film produced by Woo and starring Chow Yun-Fat, and director Paul Hunter’s flat, saturated visuals don’t hold a candle to expressive and striking art style by Michael Avon Oeming and Jason Baumgartner. A disappointing case of wasted potential.

6. Wanted (2008)

Director: Timur Bekmambetov

The original Wanted comic was the miniseries that launched Mark Millar’s creator-owned “Millarworld,” and was published in 2003 by Top Cow. Wanted takes place in a world secretly infested with murder-happy supervillain assassins, where a loser abandons his office cubicle for a world of nasty, adrenaline-filled killing. Although the 2008 film adaptation changed a vast amount of the lore and story of Millar’s adaptation, it did capture the immature, provocative tone and cartoonish violence that many fans (and detractors) associate with Millar. It also remains Image’s biggest successes at the box office, earning an eye-watering $342 million and making Millarworld a valuable commodity as comic book fever took Hollywood by storm.

7. Kick-Ass (2010)

Director: Matthew Vaughn

The first three Kick-Ass books were all published under Marvel’s imprint Icon Comics, which was founded in 2004 and allowed very select and valuable artists to own their work – presumably to prevent them from jumping ship to an independent publisher. In 2018, Image became the new home of Kick-Ass, 10 years after the first book by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr. and eight years after the first film by Matthew Vaughn, which captured the scuzzy, meta vibe of Millar’s book to the tune of nearly $100 million at the box office. The failure of the non-Vaughn-directed sequel in 2013 stopped the burgeoning franchise in its tracks, meaning we didn’t get direct adaptations of the books published by Image – mainly a series of Hit-Girl sequel stories. Perhaps these will still see a revival at some point.

8. Firebreather (2010)

Director: Peter Chung

This animated superhero television film that aired on the Cartoon Network did not spawn a follow-up series, so these 69 minutes of overly smooth and unsophisticated CG animation is the only version of Phil Hester and Andy Kuhn’s series that made it out of comic book panels. Both film and comic tell the story of Duncan (Jesse Head), the son of a human mother and a giant dragon father, whose arrival back into his son’s life causes a predictably messy slew of personal and fantastical problems. The greatest loss from the adaptation process is Kuhn’s memorable, colorful art style, replaced by generic 3D animation; bad comic book adaptations look so much worse if they’re not live-action, as animation is too easy to compare with the superior, original drawings.

9. I Kill Giants (2017)

Director: Anders Walter

This fantasy film suffered from such a close release to A Monster Calls – both of them are magical realist movies where a young person escapes the death of their mother by pursuing the fantastical. Although neither of the films were outright financial successes, A Monster Calls had more mainstream talent and a more robust marketing budget, and this adaptation of writer Joe Kelly and artist J. M. Ken Niimura’s Image series almost immediately fell into obscurity. It’s a shame, as I Kill Giants offers a lot of dark, imaginative Dungeons & Dragons-inspired fantasy for young and restless minds trying to make sense of a chaotic world or working through personal tumults.

10. The Old Guard (2020)

Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood

Post-Fury Road, it is recognized as a very good idea to put Charlize Theron in an action movie. Directed by Gina Prince-Blithewood (whose hot action streak continued with 2022’s The Woman King), this fantasy action film casts Theron as “Andy,” the immortal and jaded Andromache of Scythia, who now leads a pack of similarly deathless mercenaries from across history. With a lot of neat, satisfying fight choreography and sincerely-felt relationships, The Old Guard is a human and compelling continuation of writer Greg Rucka and artist Leandro Fernández’s “fairy tales of blood and bullets” that began in 2017, making it a much younger series than many of the comics on this list. With Greg Rucka penning the screenplay of both installments (with co-writer Sarah L. Walker joining him on the new film), The Old Guard series is the rare comic book film with a fresh approach to its familiar stories, achieving its modest, well-defined ambitions with both heart and craft.

Rory Doherty is a screenwriter, playwright and culture writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. You can follow his thoughts about all things stories @roryhasopinions.