The name alone should tell you that Top Cow Productions is unique in the comic book publishing world. What sets Top Cow apart from the rest of the herd is its fierce commitment to quality entertainment, and an unmatched drive to deliver this entertainment to fans on a consistent basis. This may just sound like “common sense” to some, but those who know the business of comic publishing understand what this truly means.
Comic books are unlike any other form of entertainment, and it takes a company that truly understands the art form to allow the medium to flourish in today’s market. Top Cow understands this medium better than anybody, which is why you find most Top Cow books on the best sellers list. It’s also why Top Cow characters strike such a chord with fans all around the world, and why Top Cow has set a new standard in today’s comic book market. In doing so, Top Cow has helped to keep this “classic” medium a vital form of entertainment in today’s “modern” culture.
From his humble beginnings as penciler on Marvel’s popular Uncanny X-Men and Wolverine titles, Marc Silvestri understood what it meant to produce a quality comic book. Driven by his commitment to excellence, Silvestri gained a huge following in the late 1980s, and his popularity continued to grow throughout the ’90s on titles such as Cyberforce and The Darkness.
Silvestri’s long stint in the industry has taught him not only the importance of producing a quality book, but the need to promote it properly. He was able to put this plan into action when he became a major part of an upstart publishing company called Image Comics.
In the fiercely competitive world of comic books where major, long lived companies such as Marvel and DC dominated close to 70% of the market share, Image Comics became a major player overnight. A large part of this success was due to Silvestri and Top Cow Productions, Inc., one of the four studios that comprised Image.
Top Cow Productions, Inc. was founded by Marc Silvestri in 1992. The launch of Cyberforce posted sales in excess of 850,000 copies. And that was just the beginning, as later titles went on to become even more popular than their predecessors. Last year, Witchblade rose to one of the top five hottest selling titles in the country, and the character was considered one of the most popular in comics by Wizard magazine.
