The fact that when PL decided to continue the Mirage comics in 2001, he chose to name it "Volume 4" instead of "Volume 3" and picking up with Vol. 2 left off says a lot.
That was PL's way of acknowledging the Image series happened, without having to deal with any of the baggage left over from the series. Image will always be Vol. 3 of Mirage, simply because there isn't any volume 3 otherwise.
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