Image United #3

The wait is over! The comic that I have openly mocked on our coming soon board, with "??" as it's date for a release, is here! Image United #3 has finally hit the stands. After about nine months, is this comic worth the wait? Do amazing things happen? Do you ever remember what happened in the first two issues? The answer to all of these questions is no! What do I continue to hurt myself by reading this series?

I'm astonished that this comic took approximately nine months to produce. It's overall production is no better than any other issue of this series, even worse in some parts. It's as sloppy, and weird looking as ever. You would think with nine months, that this book would like better than it does. Better than a drunken monkey photoshopping a bunch of sketches together anyways. Someone could have had a baby in the time it took to do this issue. A freakin' human life!

The fact that Rob Liefield claimed that they were waiting on Todd McFarlane to finish this issue seems odd to me. From what we can tell, and extensive squinting was done by the whole staff, McFarlane did two large drawings in this issue. Nine months to do two pages is a bit extreme, but they are easily the best looking pieces in the book. Given that Liefield came out and accused McFarlane for causing this book to be late, they do have a love letter written about McFarlane by publisher Eric Stephenson, seemingly in an effort to smooth things over with the reader. It's a nice effort, but I really don't care guys. You lost me on issue 1, I can only imagine you lost most of your core readers seven months ago. So why write a letter that doesn't say anything except "Sorry guys, my bad" from McFarlane himself.

Do you remember when your teacher would give you a group project at the beginning of the semester? They would tell you this was your final, and you had the whole semester to work on it. What did you do in this case? You waited until the last minute, and churned out a pile of crap that resulted in a pity grade of C. I felt like a disappointed teacher, shaking my head, and wondering why I bother after reading this issue.

I would like to provide you with a less than, greater than equation to describe the wait for this book.

Who Shot Mr. Burns is answered < Image United #3 is released < Chinese Democracy by Guns N' Roses is releases < The Titanic pulls into port (still waiting)

Given the shipping schedule of this book, it's entirely possible that this series will finish mid 2012. This is under the assumption that the remaining three issues will ship nine months apart from each other. That is assuming that Quezocotal doesn't end the world before that happens. If I were a betting man, I'd bet on the serpent god before I bet on Todd McFarlane and company.

Hopefully the Image faithful (is there such a thing?) haven't completely abandoned this series yet. Maybe they can still turn this around with the three remaining issues. For their sakes, I certainly hope so. This series continues to be a huge, late mess.

Also, the Erik Larsen back up story is a terrorist attack on my eyes.