It's ok, we are all friends here. You saw the cover to X-Force #1 when you were a teenager and thought it was the coolest thing ever. You bought all the multiple covers -- and bought extra to take the trading cards out.
You tried to draw like Rob Liefeld. You did. You drew little prototype comic books starring superheroes with lots of lines on their face. It's quite alright.
Those impossibly-sized and -shaped guns Cable used to carry -- you thought that was the coolest thing ever. Ditto for Steven Seagal's ponytail. I know.
I was there. I know. And it's ok, really. We were oh so much more younger then.
That said, what do you think of this Rob Liefeld "Armageddon Now" book? Think about it: Christian "end times" prophecy plus impossibly big guns plus fully-painted Liefeld artwork.
So in this book the Russians are the enemy again, and they wish to destroy Israel in order to "leverage themselves in the Islamic world." Now, the Russians are actually worshiping some ancient godlike being, involved in some demonic cult. And it's all related to the Bible's Book of Revelations. With quotes.
The funny thing is -- there have been a lot of aborted or unsuccessful attempts to create a truly successful, crossover appeal Christian comic book, and having Liefeld spearhead "Armageddon Now" might actually do the trick.
Still can't draw feet, though.
I remember thinking XForce was the coolest thing going when it came out, but I stopped reading comics for a long time around that same period. Maybe it was like a one night stand, it looked pretty but then left me empty inside.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I just can't resist pouches.
liefeld was one of the reasons i almost left comics way back when. he and the coming image art style made me want to wrap my hands around people's necks and do some serious chocking.
ReplyDeletehe and his "art" ilk help pushed me from being a marvel zombie to a dc fanboy. and for the most part i have never looked back.
as for that preview lets just say i could only make it through the 1st 3 double page spreads before it induced vomiting. while the art is not horrible (i'll still not be writing home about it), the jingoism of the script made my eyes bleed.
pandering is not attractive in any shape or form and this did not feel heartfelt enough to be authentic.
eff him and his levis commercial, his lack of feet, muscles with muscles, etc, etc....
I get to plead innocent to this and I have proof to back me up. Somewhere in my basement is a letter back from Image (hand written and signed by Valentino I think) thanking me for my letter where I bashed Liefeld's art. (Bitchin' letterhead from Image btw.) However, I do have to admit that as a kid, his appearance in those Spike Lee Levi commercials was kind of inspiring in an it-could-happen-to-me kind of way.
ReplyDelete(It didn't happen to me.)
100% guilty of riding the McFarlane bandwagon though. In retrospect, at least McFarlane was kind of a gateway drug to the Eisner style in his supporting characters. No one at Marvel was using that cartoony style the way McFarlane did with his supporting cast. For that at least, I can respect the guy.
I think the main reason I was not a sucker for Leifeld, Portacio or Silvestri is that I was already a Walt Simonson fan and to me those guys were just Simonson rip-offs minus the storytelling chops.
to be honest, I was making proto-comics based off of Richard Case's art on Doom Patrol.
ReplyDeleteBut I did think Liefeld's art was cool at the time.
Never did. Sorry.
ReplyDeleteI tried to imitate Jim Starlin when I was a kid though...i'm pushing 40.
I do have to admit I spent a lot of time copying Simonson so, maybe I shouldn't fault Leifeld, Portacio and Silvestri. Of course, they signed their names to their stuff and got paid. I was a kid drawing on floor.
ReplyDeleteWhile I did buy the first issue--it was the early days of comic speculating, after all--Liefeld never appealed to me. His story-telling on X-Force was hard to follow, and we won't even talk about just how dreadful WILDCats was. I never was a fan of Image, either. Course I was already an old fart, in my early 30s.
ReplyDeleteI did initially like Rob Liefeld's work when he was with Marvel. Once he left Marvel, I lost interest, though. He was very much about flash and no substance, and as a writer, I wanted substance.
ReplyDeleteCompared to the horrid line of artists "New Mutants" went through before Liefeld came along, it made it easy to accept him with open arms. After Chris Claremont stopped writing for "New Mutants," that entire series just went down the tubes. One could probably argue that it never recovered.
Anyway, I digress.
Yes, I'm guilty as charged here. I also thought Todd McFarlane's work just looked weird, though.
My first exposure to Liefeld's art was his two-parter in Teen Titans. When I first saw it, it was odd and different, but I didn't think too much of it. But then I just saw more and more of his stuff and I began to wonder what the hell I was looking at.
ReplyDeleteYep, that was me. check it out:
ReplyDeleteShaterstar
Cable
When I was 16 or 17 I was copying anything liefeld drew. I'd like to think I've come a long way since then.
I was always completely disturbed by Liefield's art. It was actually part of why I stopped reading some X-books for awhile because he kept popping up in them and giving all the men quadruple muscles and mullets and women impossibly arched backs, legs up to their necks and breasts that doubled as flotation devices.
ReplyDeleteI won't even get into the absolutely hideous costume designs.
I really don't feel Liefeld is completely without talent...I think he captured, along with McFarlane and the rest, the zeitgeist of the time. But it is certainly something that was felt more strongly, and collectively, at the time, than it is now.
ReplyDeleteAnd I really believe, scattered across the world, there are still diehard Liefeld fans. Haven't found too many on this blog. But I reckon they are there.
i so blame art addams for starting this horrible art trend that liefeld and other copped to.
ReplyDeletehow could a time when crisp clean artists like bob layton and neil addams were big lead to the trauma inducing image stable???
hurts my head to this day to think about.
is it any wonder the market imploded a few years after they hit the scene???
I was definitely more of a McFarlane fan. I bought six copies of Spawn #1. Liefield was just ... weird, even for the time.
ReplyDeleteI bought Youngblood #1 so that I could legitimately write a (poor) review of it. And it was almost worse than I anticipated. As I recall, it had about a 2.7 panel-to-page ratio.
ReplyDeleteI did think that that under-two-inch-tall figure by him in some issue of Marvel Age for his designs/redesigns of characters to show in New Mutants (and then in X-Force) were okay. For the size.
But that's all the "cool" I'll cop to with Liefeld.
Actually, I was into Liefeld when I was 9. By the time I was a teenager, I'd moved on to the contempt stage.
ReplyDeleteAnd I never tried to draw like him. Tried to write like him, though, which turned out about as well as you'd expect.
Also, I find the whole premilleniallist nonsense to be a rotting cancer on the face of American Christianity, to say nothing of an utterly bollocks misinterpretation of The Revelation (among other parts of the Bible, so cherry-picked they have a Dole sticker on them), so you can imagine how thrilled I am at this particular Super-Villain Team-Up.
ReplyDeleteRob Liefeld was my favorite artist from New Mutants #98 until Jim Lee got started on X-Men. I only bought one copy of X-Force #1, and it was the beginning of the end of my enjoyment of his work (the end being sometime around Youngblood #2 or 3.) I not only tried to draw like Liefeld, but totally nailed it. In a parallel universe, I became a hack at Extreme Studios with a super-late second issue. Regardless, Dan Panosian and Mark Pacella licked my sack.
ReplyDeleteThose ridiculous Cable guns? Easy to draw. Loved that. I kept the ponytails at a minimum though (sorry Nightwing.)
I think Liefeld's Kirk Cameron turn is some of the best work he's done, about a decade too late for me to care. For a moronic Jesus-Freak book though, it's pretty boss. Might do okay.
Ok, I am PROUD to admit I hated Liefeld from the beginning, and the emergence of that style of art became popular, I actually stopped buying comic books. For ten years. I started buying again about a year into the 3rd series of Fantastic Four, after I was sure Heroes Reborn and all that jazz was done with. Hehe.
ReplyDeleteYou saw the cover to X-Force #1 when you were a teenager and thought it was the coolest thing ever.
ReplyDeleteI hated Liefeld's art from the first time I saw it. Then again, when I was a teenager, Claremont and Cockrum wre doing the one X-book that Marvel published so that may have had something to do with that...
I actually liked Silvestri. I liked his work on King Conan, and he was a very nice guy (at least to me and my friends) in person.
ReplyDeleteSure, he imitated Simonson somewhat, but I love Simonson (still do) so I don't see that was a bad thing. :)
No way. I bought all the first issues of the Image launch but stopped after that. While I wish Liefeld well, I couldn't stand the Image look and once it infected the other companies, I pretty much stopped buying comics. (Being broke didn't help either.) Ironically, most of the books I buy now are published by Image. I did think Jim Lee's stuff was pretty sweet back then, though. I guess there's an exception to everything.
ReplyDeleteCount me in the camp who never liked his style. I thought it looked completely ridiculous. And his rise to prominence was about the time I quit collecting comics (for a number of reasons.) I'll tell who I did like, though:
ReplyDeleteRon Frenz
George Perez
Rick Leonardi
Walt Simonson
John Romita Jr.
That's my all star lineup.
No, sorry. Some of the first comics I ever bought with my own money were Davis/Davis back-issues of Excalibur. Scratchy, ugly art of scary people really couldn't compete with Nightcrawler in a bath towel.
ReplyDeleteI hated Rob Liefeled. I thought he ruined the New Mutants. I loved Grant Morrison's Doom Force that was a pretty accurate skewering of Liefeld style comics. He was exemplary of the kind of writing that made Marvel generally shit from the late 80s to the late 90s.
ReplyDeleteI never followed Liefeld. I think I've only got two or three comics with his art in them. I agree that his art is pretty disproportionate.
ReplyDeleteGuilty as charged. I bought the Liefeld, Lee, McFarlane & Silvestri Image stuff. I thought the real test was if I bought the second issue considering how bad the writing was. Even as a teenager I thought so. Now, considering like most Uncanny X-Men was my first comic. #226 to be exact, and the art chores were done by Silvestri/Green. and who followed when they got another regular artist, but Lee/Williams. I've met Mr. Silvestri, Mr. Lee & Mr Williams. Incredibly nice guys (maybe because I was buying art from them, maybe not :) especially Scott Williams who I also consider one of the Image founders and one of the best inkers ever. His inks changed the way the industry did it he had so many imitators.
ReplyDeleteOnce I noticed that all of Liefeld's characters would tip over with the itty bitty, teeny tiny feet...couldn't take his stuff seriously anymore.
Never really liked Liefeld's stuff, except for it's dynamic quality which Kirby did and did better anyway.
ReplyDeleteI always found my work (and still do) is more of an attempted fusion of Art Adams, Jim Lee, Paul Smith, John Byrne, Barry Windsor-Smith, and Gene Colan, than anything Liefeld would do. I like plausible anatomy too much to take much of anything from Rob's work.
Boy..we all look back and denounce that we once like Liefeld or bought a comic that he had done but we ALL have examples of his work in our collection and we ALL felt that uncomfortable stomach churning when we bought his Heroes Reborn Captain America and Avengers. So accept your sins my brothers and release that negative karma back to the universe. No artist is more rightfully reviled (no feet and all slash pages is an insult to Kirby and Eisner and Liefeld has to live with that) but someone made him a superstar in the day..."I have seen the enemy and he is us"... to paraphase Kelly so we are all to blame. But that doesn't mean we can't bash him now...its a jungle out there man and we fanboys may not know art but we know what we like and while I appreciate his painted efforts now I can hardly get behind this bible baloon juice he is shoveling now. How about a new idea for once Rob so that one day we may forgive you. We paid for your pool and your fast car so you owe us better.
ReplyDeleteAs long as there are sweet shoulder pads, small ankles and no backgrounds... I'm in!
ReplyDeleteYeah, I don't have anything against the guy personally but I didn't like his art the first time I saw it and I still don't. But the way it sold back then I'm thinking there are a few hundred thousand people out there, maybe as many as a million who can't make that same claim.
ReplyDeleteThe only person out of the initial Image crew whose art I liked was and still is Jim Lee's.
Wilce Portacio and Mark Silvestri I could tolerate, though. Erik Larson is someone who I've grown to deeply respect as a publisher since then.
But I was an Al Toth, Al Williamson and Neal Adams type person. Gene Day, John Byrne, Paul Smith, Michael Golden and their ilk. I was actually way more into Gene Colan's return to Tomb of Dracula about the time Lee and the rest were getting ready to make their big move.
I'd look at Liefeld's work and just think, "Bleaaahhhh. Uh... cool that he's getting rich, though. Wish I could do that!"
I was 11 in 1991 so yes, I thought Liefeld was pretty darn cool.
ReplyDeleteActually I had no clue who he was; do most 12 year-olds pay attention to who is writing and drawing their comics?
I was a die-hard X-Force fan, starting with New Mutants #87. I ate up all of the melodrama, the guns, the highly implausibly posed battle sequences, the x-themed everything, the crazy super futuristic battle armor, women with lips and breasts and thighs that practically came off of the page.
I stopped collecting comics in 1995 and didn't start buying more than trades again in earnest for 5-7 years. It was only upon my re-entry that I realized how polarizing a figure Liefeld has been and that most people considered one of the comics that hooked me in as a youth utter garbage. It's sort of depressing.
I can denotatively recognize all of the absurdity of his drawings and those characters and everything else that drives people to homicidal thoughts, but connotatively, those books have the ability to remind me of a very nice time in my life and I can imagine what it must have been like to experience all of these things for the first time.
Yep...any moment now, the huge contingent of die-hard Liefeld fans are going to storm this blog...any minute now...
ReplyDeleteGood lord, is that supposed to be Rahne???
ReplyDeleteI wonder what people will think of Bendis or Geoff Johns 10 years from now...
ReplyDeleteNo its Feral yet another derivative cat based knock off.
ReplyDeleteDarn straight I liked Liefeld. I got excited about him around New Mutants 100, and was sick of him by the time Youngblood #1 came out.
ReplyDeleteI jumped onto the McFarlane bandwagon too (during Hulk), but never enjoyed Silvestri.
Interesting comment about Art Adams, though. It never occured to me that those Image fellows might be derivative of him. Intriguing.
blech, I didn't like his style way back when and I'm not sure about the one he's using now. Liefield's old work reminds me of Donald Simpson's Megaton Man. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaton_Man
ReplyDeleteI was in my late twenties and no, I really didn't. I left comics almost entirely around then (at least the big two; I think I still followed stuff like Hate and Eightball). This was also the prime of my Real Social Life, years before my retirement from dating and relationships. My decision to give up and the coming of NuMarvel coincided quite (un?)fortuitously.
ReplyDeleteSad? At least I never liked Liefeld.
I started reading comics five years ago. I didn't know who Liefeld was until 2 years ago when I was trying to read every appearance of Deadpool. I could not get through his first appearance (X-Force #98, I think?) because of the art. But then, I have been spoiled.
ReplyDeleteLiefeld's art was semi-decent, if not OVERLY detailed at the dawn of X-Force. It was towards the late 90s it started getting really...awful. But his painting...damn. All the pages I got to check out, anatomy seemed semi-decent and I even saw some feet! Think his style is better suited for the paint medium rather than the pencil one.
ReplyDeleteSo Leifeld's attempting career resurrection by going after the Christian market. He's like comics' very own Kirk Cameron!
ReplyDeleteHaha, oh wow. That narration is pretty horrible. Even for exposition and describing a scene, it's telling too much, and it's trying so damn hard to be relevant (THIS IS JUST LIKE 9/11).
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty okay with the art though.
Not so much younger then. (I started in 1984.) I was never a big Liefeld fan. Most of the Image guys, it was like, okay, it's nice, but nothing to cream my jeans.
ReplyDeleteAs for X-Men #1? I bought #1E, got all the covers in one issue, read it, and forgot about it. Aside from the gorgeous work of Davis in Excalibur, I stopped reading about mutants with the Siege Perilous story arc, where Marvel, rather stupidly, decided that it would be great to get rid of all the superstars from X-Men and start over with lesser-knowns like Polaris and Forge.
I don't think I have any Liefeld in my collection, but I could be wrong. Never actively sought him out, stayed away from Heroes Reborn (God did Marvel make a mess of Onslaught).
As for placing the blame on Art Adams, I think most of the Imageers cite Michael Golden as an inspiration. (And Art Adams can draw. Anything.)
(P.S. It's the "Book of Revelation". And Rob Liefeld drawing an anatomically correct figure may signal the endtimes.)