It's a source of eternal shame to me that my induction into the world of comics-the hardcore "geek" comics, that is, as opposed to Archie or Uncle Scrooge-came at the hands of early Image. I had a friend in high school who let me read his comics, and ranked high on the pull list was…Spawn.

Hey, I was just a kid. And the Marvel and DC comics of the era were incomprehensible jumbles of continuity and ridiculous occurances that were not, to say the least, welcoming to the newcomer. (It's only through sheer luck and patience that I became a comics geek at all, really; I'm not surprised that the industry is in so much trouble.) Spawn was brand-new, I could read it from more-or-less the beginning, and hey, the art was pretty. Of course, in retrospect this is downright embarrassing. Todd MacFarlane knew little or nothing about storytelling, and most of the "ideas" that went into his comic were stolen from Spider-man and other then-popular Marvel tropes. Like much of what Image produced at the time, it was shiny, flashy, superficially "KEWL" in the kind of way that appeals to disaffected 13-year-olds, and was totally cut off from the vast, proud history of comics.

I can say this much for the teenaged me: Jeff Smith's Bone and Neil Gaiman's Sandman came along pretty quickly to refine my tastes. And at least I never touched a Rob Liefeld comic.

Rob Liefeld was in some ways the major architect of Image comics. A 19-year-old wunderkind who'd been drawing several of Marvel's X-books and had achieved a fan following, Liefeld didn't like the traditionally disdainful treatment Marvel applied to its artists. Correctly believing they could do better for themselves, Liefeld, MacFarlane and several others split to set up Image comics, where their name recognition instantly gave them the clout and sales figures to be the first serious challengers to Marvel and DC in decades.

The problem was that aforementioned "KEWL" thing. And in Liefeld's case, he didn't even have the superficial flashiness of MacFarlane and his contemporaries. Essentially, he drew (and, apparently, acted) like a teenager who'd been given the keys to the kingdom without having to work for them…which was precisely what he was. Others have written more eloquently about Liefeld's many failings, but suffice it to say the guy had a big ego and a distinct lack of talent. He also had a tendency to snickeringly parodize (and/or outright steal) other, more famous superhero characters from the big two to fuel his own books. Pay attention to this-it gets important later.

For now, though, Liefeld and co.'s triumph was met with profoundly mixed feelings throughout the comics industry. Many were happy to see a company finally emerge which granted full rights to the creators, but the actual content Image was putting out was terrible-juvenile, amoral dreck that exploited and revelled in all the worst parts of human nature. And no one watched with more horror than Alan Moore.

You see, back in 1986, Moore wrote a graphic novel called "Watchmen". Widely considered the best superhero story ever written, and maybe the best comic period, Watchmen explodes and dissects the superhero mythos in fascinating ways. Questioning and criticizing the idea of the superhero, and often holding it up in a negative light, the story is frequently dark, violent, and cynical-it even flirts with outright nihilism (though more in some of the characters' viewpoints than in the story itself). Moore had intended the work to shake up the superhero genre. What he hadn't counted on was that every two-bit comics hack would swipe the superficial angst and darkness for their own work, while leaving out the more interesting core concepts, to transform the formerly fun genre of superheroes into a relentless onslaught of "grim 'n' gritty" poseurism.

So not only was Moore forced to watch comics trap themselves in a deteriorating spiral of unhealthiness (one that ultimately drove away readers and delivered a huge blow to the industry, both artistically and financially), he was plagued by the knowledge that it was, in a way, his own fault.

Moore had also quarreled with DC for various reasons, and since Marvel was similarly on his enemies list, it's not surprising that Moore had little to do with the superhero genre for a while afterwards. But the guy clearly retained a love for the genre, one that was about to bear strange fruit. If a superhero comic he'd written had gotten superheroes into such a mess, maybe he could write another superhero comic to get them out of it.

Despite the conflicting ideals of Moore and the Image crew, Moore had contributed to the company in the past (he wrote at least one issue of Spawn, for example) and it was through Image that 1963 was born.

1963 was meant to be a wakeup call to the medium, a friendly reminder that comics had once been fun, kid-friendly, and entertaining. The inherent dopiness of classic Marvel wasn't anything to be ashamed of-after all, it was still miles better than the inherent dopiness of the current breed of comics. 1963 would represent a return to the glory days of Stan and Jack: a six-issue series capped by an old-fashioned 80-page giant, done entirely in the style of classic Marvel. That is, not only would the characters be thinly-veiled riffs on the Silver Age heroes we all know and love, and not only would they be lovingly rendered in a rough approximation of Marvel's house style, but Moore and his artist collaborators would use the "Marvel method" to create them. That is to say, Moore would lay out the idea for the story, the artist would contribute suggestions, they'd create a rough outline, the artist would draw the story, and then Moore would fill in the dialogue balloons. Even the paper and printing process would replicate comics of the era.

The six issues of 1963 thus created were as follows. First came Mystery Incorporated, featuring a riff on the Fantastic Four ("Crystal Man", "The Neon Queen", "Kid Dynamo" and "The Planet") drawn by Rick Veitch and Dave Gibbons. Next was No One Escapes the Fury, starring a distinctly Spider-man like teen superhero battling a sentient dinosaur (and with a cameo from a female version of Nick Fury), drawn by Veitch and Stephen Bissette. Issue 3, Tales of the Uncanny, was a twofer: the Patriotic U. S. Agent foils the Kennedy assassination (by Veitch and Simpson) and the bizarre super-scientific Hypernaut battles an invader from the 4th dimension (by Bissette and Chester Brown). Issue 4, Tales From Beyond was also split in two, with the Hulk-like N-Man drawn by Bissette and John Totleben and the faux-hip Johnny Beyond drawn by Jim Valentino and Bissette. Horus, Lord of Light gave us the Egyptian deity as a superhero defending the Sun's Barge as it made its way across the night sky to morning (Veitch and Totleben). And finally, The Tomorrow Syndicate brought together most of the above-mentioned heroes as a crimefighting group a la The Avengers.

(For the purposes of full disclosure, I should note that I haven't been able to find a copy of the original first issue, and am writing this based on notes and annotations throughout the web.)

Of course, it's not simply a love letter to classic Marvel. Moore-who takes on the persona of "Affable Al" in his role as writer and editor-does a bang-on parody as well, singling out Stan Lee in particular for some pretty stinging barbs. ("Affable Al" is an egomaniac blowhard who regularly steals the credit from his hard-working, impoverished artists…sound familiar?) In fact, as an amusing footnote, Moore produced a series of gag interviews in the persona of the various creators of 1963, which you can read HERE. And of course the works themselves also lovingly lay most of Stan's work in its grave-awkward panel transitions, ridiculously overwrought and wordy dialogue, and ridiculous plot contrivances abound.

Woven throughout the six issues is a background mystery that starts to come together in the final issue, as the Syndicate investigates some mysterious weapons that were confiscated earlier in the series and appear to have come from an alternate reality. As they zap through the dimensions, they slowly start to come across things that simply don't belong in their world, and evidence that someone's been tampering with the nature of reality. By the end they find themselves in what is clearly an offshoot of our own world, the art has become far more modern in style, and suddenly the heroes of the past find themselves headed towards a confrontation with those very same gritty, violent Image characters I was mentioning earlier-

--A confrontation that never actually happened.

The story of what exactly happened to the climactic 1963 annual (which went by the name "1963 and a half") is somewhat confused and vague. It seems as though Jim Lee, who'd been on tap to draw it, decided to take a year off, and by the time he'd returned…well, Image was no longer the company it had been. In particular, Rob Liefeld-whose characters had apparently been planned as an integral part of the annual-split off to form his own comics company, which meant that it would be hard to publish it under the Image banner. However, I have read that Liefeld OK'd the use of his characters, and besides-why not just get someone else to draw it?

That question remains unanswered to this day, as 1963 ½ has yet to be published. Most of the parties involved seem willing to do it, but of course there's the interesting hurdle that the commentary on the comics world that Moore had been making is no longer as relevant; superheroes of the "grim n' gritty" school have mostly vanished, and (artistically at least) the comics medium is recovering its health. Rick Veitch has said that Moore has actually rewritten the 1963 ½ script to make a more up-to-date statement on the comics industry, so it may still happen someday, but until then, 1963 remains an unfinished story.

That question remains unanswered to this day, as 1963 ½ has yet to be published. Most of the parties involved seem willing to do it, but of course there's the interesting hurdle that the commentary on the comics world that Moore had been making is no longer as relevant; superheroes of the "grim n' gritty" school have mostly vanished, and (artistically at least) the comics medium is recovering its health. Rick Veitch has said that Moore has actually rewritten the 1963 ½ script to make a more up-to-date statement on the comics industry, so it may still happen someday, but until then, 1963 remains an unfinished story.

Surprisingly, however, this is not the last time that Rob Liefeld's name intersects with Moore's-quite the contrary. In fact, for the next five years, the two names would be increasingly intertwined, a fact that still causes astonishment among comics literati. For more on their bizarre collaborations, tune in to the next installment of this article, and see why Alan Moore really does reign Supreme among comics writers… On to Part 2!





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