Leaving Image, Launching Awesome Entertainment
After acrimonious disputes with the other founding partners (not least over allegations of irregularities surrounding Liefeld's separate imprint Maximum Press), Liefeld and Extreme Studios broke from Image Comics in 1996, and became Awesome Comics. Shortly thereafter, Liefeld found a new publisher — writer-producer Jeph Loeb — and additional financing from both John Hyde (Film Roman CEO) and Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, newly Chairman of Platinum Studios. Platinum Studios continues to play an integral part in Liefeld's comics work. (Liefeld had previously worked with Rosenberg, the founder of Malibu Comics, Image's original distributor, which (post-Image) had been sold to Marvel, in 1994.)
Awesome Comics continued many of the popular Extreme series', as well as launching new titles, including "the Coven" and "Lionheart" by Loeb and artist Ian Churchill. Perhaps Liefeld's best move, and the one for which Awesome's output is best known, was the decision to hire perhaps the most highly acclaimed comics writer going — Alan Moore — to breathe new life into several of Extreme/Awesome's comics and characters. Although Moore's first output for Liefeld came when Extreme was still publishing under the Image banner, the majority of his work came out under Awesome, with several issues (of Supreme) also being published by Maximum in-between the two imprints.
Read more about this topic: Maximum Press
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