Did somebody demand this?

This post is written largely from a perspective of ignorance and angst.

Marc Silvestri was one of my favorite artists as a kid. His pencils with Dan Green’s inks back in the Australia days of Uncanny X-Men captured my imagination more than anything else when rummaging through my cousins’ comics. The roughness and fluidity had this fast-moving expressiveness to it that carried over well when the duo moved to Wolverine.

Jim Lee has always seemed like a stiffer, less imaginative Marc Silvestri to me. So how’s this for a segue…who’s looking forward to the big Cyberforce / X-Men crossover?

Like any good member of the flock, I too purchased copies of every new Image title once the brand was launched. I stuck with most of the titles exactly two issues before I realized how everything was crap (I maybe stuck with Spawn about 8 issues). Let me stop this now before this just turns into one of any countless number of early-Image criticisms when I acknowledge that I stopped reading Cyberforce very early in the game when it became quite apparent to my 13-year-old brain that this was a crappy, generic version of the X-Men. And as much as I hated the work of Brandon Peterson and whatever other Image-wannabe hacks were drawing the X-books at that time, if I wanted to read about the X-Men, I’d read X-Men.

So it is from that emotionally-charged vantage point of anger and ignorance that I ask, Who is keeping Cyberforce afloat? Who wanted to keep reading about fake Wolverine, fake Psylocke and fake whoever else was in the cool X-book when Jim Lee left?

And let’s assume for a second that there are Cyberforce fans, because obviously Marc Silvestri can’t be buying all the copies out there. Wouldn’t you feel a little timid about seeing them up next to the folks they obviously rip off? I was a casual Oasis fan, but I cringed when they released a cover of “I am the Walrus.” I felt embarrassed for the aforementioned Peterson when he followed Jim Lee. Anytime you place a ripoff next to the original, it only underscores the pathetic copy. You want to copy someone and not seem like a copy, you stay away from the original.

Not to mention that since inter-company crossovers never have any sort of meaningful repercussions (with one obvious exception), you really only read them for the chance at a good story. Has anyone ever read a Top Cow book for the quality story?

So maybe I’m just out of touch, but the only real explanation I can come up with this one-shot existing is that we have entered a speculative renaissance. There are many other signs, and I make no claim that I’m the first to bring this up, but we’ve got Michael Turner apparently working full-time doing variant covers and all these “incentive” versions of big books sprinkled throughout each month’s Previews…has it gotten to a point where people will buy Cyberforce?

And for crying out loud, getting back to the ranting, the cover has the originals right next to the ripoffs!!!! I’m just not sure…are we supposed to be too stupid to notice this? Is Silvestri too stupid to notice this? Or is this just a blatant flaunting of the derivative nature of Cyberforce with a cocky little “You’re going to buy this anyway!” thrown on top?