Youngblood #100 is out now - 34 years of history, one landmark issue. In stock at Epic Panels Comics.
On April 17, 1992, Rob Liefeld walked into comic book history. Youngblood #1 hit shelves at Golden Apple Comics in Los Angeles. Police helicopters circled overhead. The LA Times ran a front-page story. Thousands of fans queued around the block. The comic sold over one million copies - launching Image Comics and igniting the creator-owned revolution that permanently reshaped the industry.
Golden Apple Comics, Los Angeles - April 17, 1992. Photos via Rob Liefeld / Instagram.
Rob Liefeld - born October 3, 1967, in Anaheim, California - began his career at DC Comics (Hawk & Dove) before becoming a star at Marvel Comics on New Mutants with writer Louise Simonson. His redesign into X-Force with Fabian Nicieza produced a multi-million selling debut in 1991. Liefeld is co-creator of Deadpool, Cable, Domino, and Shatterstar. When he, Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee, Marc Silvestri, Erik Larsen, Jim Valentino, and Whilce Portacio left Marvel to found Image Comics in 1992, the very first comic they published was Youngblood #1. All those founders contribute variant covers to Youngblood #100, in stock now at Epic Panels Comics.
Why #100 Is Special
Youngblood #100 reunites all of Image's founding generation. McFarlane, Silvestri, Larsen, Valentino, and Portacio all contributed variant covers. Get your copy at Epic Panels Comics.
02 Complete Character Roster
Youngblood's central premise: superheroes as government-sanctioned celebrities - press tours, merchandise deals, talk show appearances. The Home Team handles domestic threats; the Away Team runs covert classified missions. This concept predates The Boys, the MCU's Civil War, and Invincible by over a decade.
Shaft
Jeff Terrel - First App: Youngblood #1 (1992)
Team leader. Former FBI agent. Magnetic-propulsion bow. Created by Rob Liefeld.
Badrock
Thomas McCall - First App: Youngblood #1 (1992)
Teenager transformed into living granite. Created by Rob Liefeld. Gets his own solo series July 2026.
Chapel
Bruce Stinson - First App: Youngblood #1 (1992)
Government assassin. The man who killed Al Simmons - who became Spawn. Created by Rob Liefeld.
Vogue
Teo - First App: Youngblood #1 (1992)
Russian fashion model, chalk-white and purple skin. Created by Rob Liefeld.
Die Hard
First App: Youngblood #1 (1992)
Veteran cyborg soldier. Created by Rob Liefeld.
Sentinel
First App: Youngblood #1 (1992)
Away Team leader. Energy powers. His murder of Riptide triggers Alan Moore's Judgment Day. Created by Rob Liefeld.
Riptide
First App: Youngblood #1 (1992)
Away Team member. Water manipulation. Her murder triggers Alan Moore's Judgment Day. Created by Rob Liefeld.
Troll
Rochelle - First App: Youngblood #4 (1993)
Fierce compact powerhouse. Ancient kobold. Cult fan-favorite. Created by Rob Liefeld.
Battlestone
First App: Youngblood #0 (1992)
Original commander before Shaft. Removed after murdering a subordinate. Led Brigade. Created by Rob Liefeld.
Brahma
First App: Youngblood #1 (1992)
Massive Away Team heavy. Created by Rob Liefeld.
Cougar
First App: Youngblood #1 (1992)
Away Team field agent. Half-human, half-Jakkaran cat-man. Created by Rob Liefeld.
JP
Johnny Panic
Alan Moore Era
Added by Alan Moore. Planned as son of villain Darius Dax - never published before Awesome collapsed.
34 years later - the blood is still flowingYoungblood #100 written & drawn by Rob Liefeld. In stock now at Epic Panels Comics. Only 3 McFarlane variants remaining.
Youngblood #1 (Apr 1992) Art: Rob Liefeld The first Image Comics publication.
#1 (Legacy #1)
Flip-Book Debut
The Home Team - Shaft, Badrock, Vogue, Chapel, and Die Hard - storms the Washington Monument to take down a terrorist cell led by the villain Darkthornn. Meanwhile the Away Team - Sentinel, Riptide, Brahma, Cougar, Photon, and Psi-Fire - executes a covert mission in the Middle East to neutralize dictator Hussain Kussein. Two stories, one flip-book, over one million copies sold.
Apr 1992
#2 (Legacy #2)
Prophet and Shadowhawk
Shaft leads the Home Team against a rogue super-soldier called Strongarm while the government pressures Youngblood to operate within tighter public-relations constraints. A backup strip introduces Prophet - a WWII super-soldier reawakened in the modern day - and a separate Shadowhawk preview runs in the flip side, both spinning off into solo series almost immediately.
Jul 1992
#3 (Legacy #3)
Enter Supreme
The team clashes with a shape-shifting Daemonite plot after a fake Dan Quayle kidnapping is used to lure them into a confrontation with the WildC.A.T.s. A backup strip introduces Supreme - Liefeld's Superman analog - who will later become the subject of Alan Moore's most celebrated Liefeld-universe work.
Aug 1992
#0 (Legacy #4)
Battlestone's Command
A flashback to 1988 reveals Youngblood's first mission under original commander Battlestone. His brutal leadership culminates in him murdering a subordinate in a rage, forcing the government to disband that roster. The present-day story then shows Shaft assembling the new team - Badrock, Vogue, and Link joining veterans Chapel and Die Hard - establishing the continuity for everything that follows.
Dec 1992
#4 (Legacy #5)
Troll and Pitt Debut
Youngblood's ranks expand with the debut of Troll - Rochelle, an ancient kobold with ferocious strength concealed in a compact frame - who quickly becomes a cult fan favorite. A backup introduces Pitt, Dale Keown's monstrous anti-hero, expanding the sprawling Image universe.
Mar 1993
#5-9 (Legacy #6-9)
Team-Building and Chapel's Secret
Issues 5-9 form a slow-burn run of missions that deepen the team's internal tensions. Chapel's past as the government assassin who shot Al Simmons is revisited across crossover material with the Spawn universe, seeding one of the most consequential character connections between the two franchises. Shaft consolidates his leadership while Vogue's enigmatic Russian background is developed further.
1993-1994
#10 (Legacy #10)
The Death of Chapel
Chapel's story reaches its breaking point. Implicated in the murder of Al Simmons and now infected with a virus that is slowly killing him, Chapel fakes his own death and disappears from Youngblood. His full fate - resurrection, transformation, and villainy - plays out in the Spawn crossover titles. It is the definitive end of the original roster's most morally compromised member.
1994
Companion Series - Strikefile and Team Youngblood (1993-1996) - Legacy #11-47
Youngblood: Strikefile #1 (Apr 1993) Anthology companion; 10 issues. Die Hard and Chapel flip-book covers.
Strikefile #1-10
Dossiers and Deep Cuts
An anthology companion running ten issues, Strikefile publishes character deep-dives, solo missions, and pinup art for members who rarely get spotlight time in the main series. Die Hard's WWII origins are explored. Chapel's black-ops history gets a cold-blooded showcase. Each issue reads as an in-world government dossier on the team, giving the celebrity-superhero concept an espionage texture the main book doesn't always have room for.
1993-1995
Team YB #1-22
The Away Team Takes Centre Stage
The Away Team - the covert, classified half of Youngblood that operates outside the media spotlight - gets its own 22-issue ongoing. Sentinel commands missions that the Home Team can't be seen doing: hostage rescues in hostile states, assassinations dressed up as accidents, and containment of superhuman threats too politically sensitive to acknowledge. New members Masada, Psilence, Task, Dutch, Doc Rocket, and Scion rotate through the roster.
Youngblood Vol. 2 #1 (1995) Extreme Studios / Maximum Press Wrap-around cover by Rob Liefeld.
#1-10 (Legacy #48-57)
Leadership War and the Extreme Crossovers
A power struggle erupts between Sentinel and Battlestone - who has returned demanding command of the team back. Diehard is ultimately appointed field leader as a compromise, creating a three-way tension that drives the book. Villains Greenscape and Diabolique push the team to its limits. The run ties heavily into the wider Extreme Studios universe through the Extreme Destroyer and Rage of Angels crossover events, pulling in Prophet, Supreme, Brigade, and Glory.
1995-1996
#11-14 (Legacy ~58)
Maximum Press Finale
As Liefeld's Extreme Studios transitions to the Maximum Press label, four concluding issues wrap up the leadership arc without full resolution. The series ends abruptly as Liefeld's strained relationship with Image Comics escalates toward his departure. These four issues are the hardest to find in the entire Youngblood catalogue.
1996
Youngblood: Judgment Day - Awesome Entertainment (1997-1998) - Alan Moore Event
Youngblood: Judgment Day (1997) Written by Alan Moore. Most critically praised Youngblood story ever.
Alpha - #1
A Superhero Is Murdered
Riptide is found brutally murdered. Her teammate Knightsabre is the prime suspect. Shaft refuses to cover it up and calls in Savage Dragon - a cop as well as a superhero - to investigate. Moore uses the setup to skewer the 1990s Dark Age of Comics, putting on trial the violent, consequence-free ethos that made books like Youngblood sell millions of copies.
Jun 1997
Omega - #2
The Trial of Knightsabre
Supreme lends his Citadel as a neutral venue for the trial. A jury of superheroes drawn from across the Awesome universe hears testimony. Moore uses the courtroom as a stage for metafictional commentary, with characters debating whether the violent dark tone of 1990s superhero comics was a mistake. Knightsabre maintains his innocence while evidence mounts that another teammate is the real killer.
Jul 1997
Final Judgment - #3
The Truth and the Reckoning
Sentinel is revealed as Riptide's killer - motivated by a mysterious reality-warping book, consumed by the same violent darkness Moore had been critiquing throughout. The verdict lands. The U.S. government shuts down the Youngblood program entirely. Moore sets the stage for a full relaunch under a new mandate: a leaner, more character-driven team freed from the old continuity's baggage.
Oct 1997
Aftermath - #1
A New Team Forms
With Youngblood officially disbanded, retired golden-age hero Waxy Doyle quietly recruits a new squad: Shaft, Suprema, Twilight, Big Brother, Doc Rocket, and Johnny Panic. Moore plants seeds for every title he intends to launch under the Awesome banner - most of which the company's collapse will prevent from ever being published.
Mar 1998
Vol. 3 - Awesome Entertainment / Alan Moore (1998-1999) - Legacy #59-61
Youngblood Vol. 3 #1 (1998) Written by Alan Moore. Best reviewed issue of the series.
#1 (Legacy #59)
The New Youngblood
Moore's ongoing begins. Shaft leads his restructured team - Big Brother, Johnny Panic, Suprema, Knightsabre, and Twilight - on their first mission under Waxy Doyle's watch. The tone is lighter, wittier, and more emotionally grounded than anything the franchise had previously published. A cosmic threat called The Goat is established in the background, and Johnny Panic's mysterious parentage - hinted to involve villain Darius Dax - begins its setup.
Feb 1998
#2 (Legacy #60)
Big Brother and Suprema
The romantic tension between Big Brother and Suprema becomes the emotional core of this issue as the team contends with a reality-warping situation connected to The Goat. Moore weaves genuine character warmth into what had previously been a purely action-driven franchise. Widely considered the best single-issue Youngblood story ever written.
1998
Awesome Adventures #1 (Legacy #61)
Moore's Final Chapter
Published under a renamed anthology title as Awesome Entertainment teetered toward bankruptcy, this is Alan Moore's last published work for the line. The Goat threat escalates. Johnny Panic's origins are teased further. Moore's planned 12-issue arc was never completed - Awesome collapsed before issue four could ship.
1999
Wilderness Era Specials (2004-2008) - Legacy #90-94
Wilderness Era (2004-2008) Kirkman, Millar, Casey each took a turn. Rare single issues.
Imperial #1 (2004)
Kirkman Relaunches the Team
Robert Kirkman - then mid-rise on The Walking Dead and Invincible - takes Youngblood back to basics with a government-sanctioned team responding to a large-scale superhuman uprising. Kirkman's pitch leans into the celebrity-hero satire the original book fumbled, with media pressure and public image as genuine plot drivers. Issues #2 and #3 were solicited but never published after Kirkman departed over creative disagreements.
2004
Bloodsport #1 (2008)
Millar's One-Shot
Mark Millar delivers a brutal story in which a reality-TV producer embeds a camera crew with Youngblood during a live mission that goes catastrophically wrong. A sharp satire of post-9/11 military entertainment and the media's appetite for superhero spectacle. Issue #2 was printed in tiny quantities as a Wizard World LA convention exclusive and is one of the rarest items in the entire Youngblood catalogue.
Youngblood Vol. 4 #1 (Jan 2008) Written by Joe Casey. Art: Derec Donovan.
#1-9 (Legacy #62-70)
Post-Heroic America
Casey reimagines Youngblood as a team in crisis - their government contract cancelled, their celebrity currency spent, their public image destroyed. A new roster is assembled by an ambitious manager who wants to rebuild the brand from scratch. The nine-issue run examines what happens when superhero spectacle collides with institutional failure: media rehabilitation, corporate ownership of heroism, and whether Youngblood can mean anything in a world that has moved on.
Youngblood #71 (2012) Written by John McLaughlin. Art: Jon Malin. First formal legacy numbering.
#71-78
Legacy Numbering and Original Continuity
McLaughlin picks up the original continuity twenty years on - the first run to formally adopt legacy numbering toward #100. Shaft has aged out of field duty and now operates as a behind-the-scenes strategist. A younger generation carries missions while callbacks to the original roster give longtime readers moments of recognition. The eight-issue run ends without a collected trade, making these among the most genuinely difficult Youngblood issues to track down today.
2012-2013
Vol. 6 - Image Comics / Chad Bowers and Jim Towe (2017-2018) - Legacy #79-89
Youngblood Vol. 6 #1 (2017) Written by Chad Bowers. Art: Jim Towe. 11 issues. Social media era.
#1-11 (Legacy #79-89)
Superheroes in the Age of Social Media
Bowers updates the franchise's celebrity-hero premise for 2017: Youngblood now lives and dies by Twitter metrics, streaming deals, and influencer partnerships. A new hero called Shaft - the nephew of the original - anchors a diverse new roster alongside classic members Badrock and Die Hard. The threat driving the arc involves a corporate entity attempting to weaponize the team's brand against them. The run ends after eleven issues when a rights dispute freezes the IP entirely.
Shaft, Badrock, Vogue, and Die Hard reassemble in response to a crisis in the Pacific - a mysterious vessel has appeared off the coast carrying a threat the government has no framework to contain. A new nemesis is revealed on the final pages. Ships polybagged with a collectible card and sells out its first two print runs before the cover date, going to a third printing.
Nov 2025
#2-4 (Legacy #96-98)
Escalation
The Pacific crisis deepens as the new nemesis is revealed to have ties to Youngblood's founding history - a threat born from the same government program that created the team. Badrock carries the emotional weight of the arc, torn between his teenage instincts and the responsibility of being the team's most powerful member. Each issue ends on a hard cliffhanger driving toward the century milestone.
2026
#5 (Legacy #99)
Road to 100: Maximage Arrives
Maximage - a character seeded across Liefeld's Awesome Entertainment era but never fully deployed - enters the story as an ally whose loyalties are immediately in question. The issue forces every team member to face what Youngblood means to them individually, setting up the anniversary issue as a genuine emotional culmination rather than just a milestone number.
The full original roster reunites to face the threat that has been building since issue #95. Liefeld writes and draws all 100 legacy issues worth of character history into a single confrontation. Thirteen variant covers from Image's founding generation - McFarlane, Silvestri, Larsen, Valentino, Portacio - plus Kirkman, Perez, and Cates mark the occasion. Accompanied by Badrock #1 solo (Jul 15) and a Giant-Size Youngblood one-shot.
Jun 10, 2026
Youngblood #100 in stock now - Cover A and McFarlane variant at Epic Panels Comics
Choose Your Cover - Available Now at Epic Panels Comics
Two covers in stock. Both $4.99. Only 3 McFarlane variants left.
Cover G homages New Mutants #87 - the Liefeld and McFarlane cover from 1990 that introduced Cable. Here Chapel takes Cable's role, with Spawn, Savage Dragon, Witchblade, and Shadowhawk in his sights. A triple-layered piece of comics history. Only 3 copies left. Grab it before it's gone.
04 The Alan Moore Era
Supreme #41 (1996) - the first Alan Moore issue. Art by Chris Sprouse. Moore's run won the Eisner Award for Best Writer in 1997.
When Rob Liefeld left Image Comics in 1996 after a bitter public split, he took his entire stable of characters with him and founded Awesome Entertainment. His first call was to Alan Moore - the writer of Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell, widely considered the greatest comics writer alive. Moore, who was already writing Liefeld's Supreme series to wide critical acclaim, agreed to become Awesome's creative architect. What followed was the most ambitious and critically celebrated chapter in Youngblood's history - and one of the great unfinished projects in comics.
Supreme: Moore's Blueprint
Supreme was Liefeld's Superman analog - a godlike figure introduced in Youngblood #3 as a blunt instrument of overwhelming power. Under early writers he was arrogant, violent, and barely characterised. Alan Moore inherited the series at issue #41 and immediately transformed it into something extraordinary. His approach was to treat every previous Supreme story as canon - including the contradictory, poorly-written ones - by inventing a place called The Supremacy, a limbo realm where every retired version of Supreme lived alongside his old supporting cast, his pets, his rogues, and even old issues of his comic. Whenever continuity was rebooted, the old Supreme was simply sent to the Supremacy and a new one took his place.
This device let Moore write a love letter to the entire history of superhero comics - specifically the Silver Age - while building a genuinely moving story about identity, legacy, and what it means to be a hero across time. The run won Moore the Eisner Award for Best Writer in 1997. Readers and critics who had written off the Liefeld universe entirely found themselves recommending Supreme without reservation. It proved that Moore could take any raw material, no matter how crude its origin, and turn it into literature.
The Awesome Universe
Alongside Supreme and Youngblood, Moore's Awesome Entertainment tenure touched the entire publisher's line. Each title was either written by Moore or directly shaped by his plans for the shared universe:
Supreme
Moore's masterwork. A 56-issue run reinventing the Superman analog as a meditation on comics history itself. Art by Chris Sprouse. Won the Eisner for Best Writer. The single most praised work to come out of the Liefeld universe.
Youngblood
Moore's planned 12-issue run following Judgment Day. A leaner, character-driven team under Waxy Doyle. Three issues published before Awesome collapsed. Widely considered the best Youngblood stories ever written.
Glory
Liefeld's Wonder Woman analog. Moore developed scripts that were eventually published years later by Avatar Press with art by Marat Mychaels, though only two issues appeared before that too stalled. A fierce, mythologically-grounded warrior goddess.
Fighting American
A Joe Simon and Jack Kirby creation that Liefeld licensed. Moore planned a miniseries reviving the WWII-era Captain America parody as a fish-out-of-water satire in the modern day. Scripts were completed but never published under Moore.
Coven
Written by Jeph Loeb with art by Ian Churchill. A supernatural team book featuring witches and occult warriors operating on the fringes of the Awesome universe. One of Awesome's stronger-selling non-Moore titles, running 5 issues.
Kaboom
A high-energy teen action book written by Loeb with art by Jeff Matsuda. Lighter in tone than most of the Awesome line, aimed at younger readers. Part of Liefeld's effort to broaden the publisher's demographic range beyond the existing Extreme Studios fanbase.
Why It Collapsed
Awesome Entertainment folded in 1999, a victim of the same direct-market contraction that was killing independent publishers across the industry. Retailers had over-ordered 1990s comics and been burned; the speculation bubble had burst; and Liefeld's publishing operation, never the most financially disciplined, ran out of runway. Moore departed for Jim Lee's Wildstorm imprint, where he was given his own line - America's Best Comics - and produced The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Promethea, Tom Strong, and Top 10. The Youngblood characters remained frozen, the Supreme run was never completed, and the ambitious shared universe Moore had designed was left permanently unfinished. A collected edition of Judgment Day was published by Checker Book Publishing in 2003, keeping that story in print. The Supreme run has been reprinted multiple times and remains essential reading for anyone interested in what the Liefeld universe could have been.
Youngblood is one of the most important independent comics ever published. It started the Image revolution and paved the way for everything that followed.- Robert Kirkman, on Youngblood #100
05 Controversies
Chronic Lateness
Intended as monthly, Vol. 1 produced 10 issues across nearly three years. Every subsequent volume shipped inconsistently. DC editor Paul Levitz cited Youngblood's scheduling chaos as damaging to the direct market.
Firing Hank Kanalz
After Youngblood #1 was savaged by critics, Rob Liefeld publicly blamed co-writer Hank Kanalz and fired him. Peter David and others called this deflection.
Departure from Image (1996)
Liefeld's exit was bitter and public. Allegations of financial improprieties alongside acknowledged mismanagement of Extreme Studios made the split one of the most dramatic events in 1990s comics publishing.
The Anatomy Debate
Impossible musculature, characters without visible feet, weapons larger than people - Liefeld's style generated decades of parody. His defenders argue visual dynamism and design instinct outweigh technical flaws.
The Lost Rights Saga (2019-2024)
In 2019, Liefeld revealed he had not owned Youngblood's IP for years. Rights had passed to Terrific Productions LLC under Andrew Rev. Characters frozen until Liefeld returned to Image in 2025.
Alan Moore's Unrealized Vision
Awesome Entertainment's collapse cut short the most creatively significant Youngblood era. Moore's full 12-issue plan was never published.
06 Legacy and Why Youngblood #100 Matters
Youngblood is the opening shot of the creator-owned revolution. Without that million-copy debut on April 17, 1992, there may have been no Image Comics, no Spawn, no WildC.A.T.s. Its concept of celebrity superheroes as a government-managed media franchise predated The Boys, the MCU's political storylines, and Invincible by years. Rob Liefeld is the co-creator of Deadpool and Cable. And there is something genuinely remarkable about a comic that survived seven volume relaunches, a founder exodus, a corporate collapse, an unrealized Alan Moore reinvention, a lost rights saga, and 34 years of criticism - and still reached issue #100 with its original creator writing and drawing it.
It's so great that I can run into the comfort of characters that I created, that launched a movement. They carry such history. I love Youngblood so much.- Rob Liefeld, 2024
Get Youngblood #100 - In Stock Now at Epic Panels ComicsWritten and drawn by Rob Liefeld. Cover A and the McFarlane variant both available. Only 3 McFarlane variants remaining.
