I know what you're saying. "Wasn't Tim Holtorf the guy who runs the Official Hawkworld Web Ring, the The Unofficial Hawkworld Home Page, the Unofficial Spider-Girl Home Page and The Golden Age Hawkman and Hawkgirl?" Yes, I am.But, I also collect other comics such as ShadowHawk. And Captain America and Green Arrow. And now ShadowHawk has a page as well (do not expect me to do a page on Captain America and Green Arrow as well, there are already enough really good sites out there).
Well, I do have something to admit. I am not a fan of Image Comics. In fact, in my opinion (and I dare you to argue MY opinion), there is nothing original ever created out of that comic book company. Even ShadowHawk has the markings of Batman, the Punisher and even Hawkman. But what Jim Valentino did do with the character, was original. That was masking ShadowHawk's identity from even the reader, until a specified point in time. Now that's original.
So, why am I doing this page, you ask. Well, the first Image Comic I saw was the finite ShadowHawk series. It grabbed my attention. The story was an easy read, yet interesting enough. The artwork simple, but beautiful. In my opinion, ShadowHawk is the best character to come out of Image Comics.
My feeling is creators like Todd MacFarlane aren't that good. It's the continued amount of violence in Spawn and even in Rob Liefeld's Youngbloods (now a part of the Awesome Entertainment line) that forced me to put up my own personal boycott against Image (that and the characters looked vaguely familiar to DC Comics and Marvel Comics characters). Liefeld has since done a good job of trashing Captain America (Heroes Reborn, yuck!) and since moved on to Awesome Comics, and is doing a continued job to trash the characters there.
Meanwhile, I've still got the old ShadowHawk series and still enjoy it as much as the Captain America, Hawkman or Green Arrow issues (and now Spider-Girl) I own.