Shattered Image #1
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeShattered Image #1 opens the first dedicated Image-wide crossover event to use the publisher's shared cosmology as its literal subject matter — the fragmentation of the Image Universe into six distinct sub-realities mapped directly onto the real-world creative split among the studio's founding partners. By fictionalizing that institutional fracture, Busiek and Kesel produced a meta-commentary on creator-owned publishing that is unique in 1990s mainstream comics. The series also served as a narrative bridge: it formally established the Wildstorm properties (Gen¹³, Wetworks, Cyberforce, and others) as a separable pocket-reality within Image continuity, anticipating by only a short time Jim Lee's actual sale of WildStorm to DC Comics and the permanent removal of those characters from the Image Universe. Issue #1 assembles one of the largest single-issue Image character rosters up to that point, drawing simultaneously from the Spawn, Wildstorm, Top Cow, Extreme, and ShadowHawk corners of the line.
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The series was written by Kurt Busiek and Barbara Kesel and launched in August 1996 under editor Michael Heisler, with Chris Ulm listed as editor-in-chief for the first issue. Pencils for issue #1 were handled by Tony S. Daniel — then an artist building his profile at Wildstorm — with inks by Kevin Conrad, lettering by Chris Eliopoulos, and coloring work credited to Steve Oliff and Christian Lichtner. The project was one of several Image crossover mini-series of the mid-1990s, a wave that also included Altered Image, Splitting Image, and Deathmate, but Shattered Image was unusual in that its premise was the dissolution rather than celebration of a unified Image continuity.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published August 1996 by Image Comics; cover-dated August 1996 with a GoCollect-listed publication date of September 1, 1996 (sources note a minor date discrepancy).
- Written by Kurt Busiek and Barbara Kesel; penciled by Tony S. Daniel; inked by Kevin Conrad; lettered by Chris Eliopoulos; edited by Michael Heisler.
- A four-issue mini-series (issues #1–#4, August–December 1996) — not an ongoing series.
- The story's central conceit is the Image Universe splitting into six distinct sub-earths along creator lines, with characters from every major Image imprint — Spawn, Gen¹³, Cyberforce, Wetworks, Dragon, ShadowHawk, and Badrock among them — assembling to confront the crisis; the villain driving the fragmentation is a character called Entropy.
- Issue #1 features appearances by Spawn (Al Simmons), Tony Twist, and the Violator from the Spawn corner; Gen¹³ (Fairchild, Freefall, Grunge, Rainmaker, Burnout, Savant); Wetworks (Dane, Flattop, Grail, Mother-One, Claymore, Persephone); Cyberforce (Cyblade, Heatwave, Impact, Ripclaw, Stryker, Velocity); the Dragon (Kurr); ShadowHawk; and Badrock.
- The series functioned as an in-universe allegory for the real fracturing of the Image co-founders, and its narrative outcome — the Wildstorm characters departing as a separate reality — preceded Jim Lee's actual sale of WildStorm to DC Comics by only a short time.
- Badrock's scene stopping a runaway bus in issue #1 includes a direct in-panel reference to the 1994 film Speed.
- No collected edition or trade paperback reprint of Shattered Image has been documented across the sources consulted.
Cast · 40 characters
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