One of my favorite books growing up was my father's richly illustrated old copy of Robin Hood.
That Dad had owned such a book was not a surprise; he was an only child and grew up in a comfortably middle class household that could afford to indulge him a bit, and though it took a bit of finagling before he finally got the Lionel Train set of his dreams, my grandparents lavished him with as many good things as they could afford. Summers were spent at Conneaut Lake, he was a given a good camera and the leisure to learn to use it, and as I've written about elsewhere, he and his family took a trip all the way to New York to see the wonders of the 1939 World's Fair. Riding lessons, piano and trumpet lessons, dancing lessons, even his own dinner jacket when he barely out of short pants…all of these were part of my father's childhood, and when he finally became a father himself, he made sure that I, too, was given music lessons, a trip abroad, and all the books I could read.
The copy of Robin Hood was among these. It was a version of the legendary Howard Pyle retelling of the classic stories of Robin, Little John, Friar Tuck, Maid Marian, Alan-A-Dale and his wife, and Will Scarlet as they battled Guy of Gisborne, King John, and the Sheriff of Nottingham, and I was enthralled from the moment I first opened it and began to read. At least once I was so caught up in the action that I crawled out of bed, cracked open the book to a favorite chapter, and attempted to read it by the dim glow of a nightlight plugged into an outlet near the floor.
You can imagine how pleased Mum and Dad were when they glanced in my room and saw that.
One of the things I liked the best about Robin Hood was the illustrations. The book had been written and published in the 1920's, which meant a full color painting glued to the cover and Pyle's delicate, beautifully detailed illustrations. The costumes were more medievaloid than medieval, and Dad's copy was all black and white rather than in color, but Pyle had had a good eye and a fine hand, and the result was a treat for the eye that left me longing for sweeping gowns, dagged sleeves, tunics with tights, and of course a sword of my very own that I could use to fight evil.
This book also left me with a permanent love for good illustration. N.C. Wyeth's magnificent art for the magazines…Rockwell Kent's stunning illustrations for Moby Dick…Agnes Miller Parker's wondrous evocations of Britomart and the Red Cross Knight…Barry Moser's magisterial work on the Bible…all of the above have left me gasping at their beauty, technical prowess, and (most important of all) their ability to bring out something essential in the narrative. The best illustrators can and do collaborate with the writer on some level, to make the words come alive and serve as a sort of co-creator. Just think of Sir John Tenniel's Alice, who is still the girl in Wonderland despite the best efforts of Tim Burton, or of how Sherlock Holmes struggled to find an audience until Sidney Paget decided that his brother-in-law would be the perfect model for Arthur Conan Doyle's prickly detective.
Most novels today are straight text, with no illustrations of the characters except possibly on the cover. Readers are left to develop their own impressions of what the hero and her boyfriend look like, or whether that scar on the villain's jaw is a thin red line, a ridge of keloid tissue, or a jagged white line. Small presses and limited editions are the only remnants of what was once a thriving part of the publishing industry.
The one exception to this is, of course, comics and graphic novels. There the illustration not only enhances the narrative, many times it is the narrative, as the arrangement of the panels, the inclusion of a single background image, or the choice of color can make the difference between the ordinary and the timeless; Art Spiegelman's choice of mice to represent the persecuted Jews and cats as Nazis in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus drove home not only the idea of Jews as prey but also the sadism behind the Nazi movement, for who among us hasn't seen a cat toy with its victim before the final blow? And the choice of a red dress for Death in the funeral sequence in Neil Gaiman's Sandman instead of her usual punked-out black made it clear that this was not simply one of the Endless doing her job, but a sister's pain at having to say good-bye to a beloved brother.
There are many fine comic artists currently working, in styles that range from Alex Ross's breathtaking gouaches to David Aja's spare, almost flat drawings. Many of these artists don't work in a particularly realistic style, nor should they; we aren't talking portrait art or religious frescoes, after all. We're talking stories, and if that means Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir Fun Home emphasizes some aspects of her childhood home and excludes others, well, that's what memoirs are supposed to do. Ditto Jack Kirby's swooping heroes exploding out of their panels during a fight sequence, or John Byrne's emphatic jaws and luxuriantly curling hair, or Wendy Pini's sinuous, Art Nouveau trees and backgrounds.
Alas, not all comic artists are so talented. Sturgeon's Law applies to everything and everyone, much as we'd wish otherwise, and for every panel or character design that enhances the story, there are a dozen that are hastily drawn, poorly laid out, or simply average. Even the best artists have bad days, or have trouble with one aspect of their work - the aforesaid emphatic jaws in John Byrne's early work, which were distressingly similar for many years (and just plain distressing when used on characters as different as Kitty Pryde and Clark Kent), are a fine example - and of course most artists aren't even that good. Most are adequate to the task and no more, and if they likely won't get a retrospective at the Norman Rockwell Museum, well, most writers aren't going to be up for an Eisner any time soon.
And then there are the handful of artists whose work is beyond the merely mediocre, beyond the average, beyond the dull. These are artists who consistently produce art that at best is meh and at worst so resplendently horrid that the reader seriously has to wonder if they own a locked file of blackmail material that they trot out whenever an editor balks at extending their contracts. There aren't many of them, thank God and the angels, but there are some, and in at least two cases I've stopped buying comic books I enjoyed quite a bit because the art was so bad it was impossible to figure out what was going on.
One of these pinnacles of awfulness is the subject of tonight's diary. Those among you who regularly follow comic books have probably already guessed this fine individual's identity and know what's coming, especially the final image that I'll link to. For the rest of you, my faithful readers, I must offer the following warning:
DO NOT READ THE REST OF THIS DIARY WHILE EATING OR DRINKING.
DO NOT READ IN THE PRESENCE OF YOUNG, IMPRESSIONABLE CHILDREN.
DO NOT HAVE YOUR PETS IN RANGE OF A THROWN OBJECT.
WARN YOUR SPOUSE AND NEIGHBORS SO THEY DO NOT CALL 911 IN THE BELIEF THAT YOU ARE EITHER HAVING AN EPILEPTIC FIT OR BEING MURDERED.
SIT ON A TOWEL.
AND WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T BLINK.
You have been warned.
Little in our subject's early life would indicate that he would eventually become a byword for early success, creators' rights, and Art So Bad It May Cause Myocardial Infarcation. Born in Anaheim, California, in the late 1960s, he fell in love with superhero comics as a child, started drawing in imitation of what he saw, and soon determined that this would be his path in life. He accordingly took art classes in high school, took a life drawing class at a community college after graduation, and attended comic conventions to meet and seek the advice of idols such as George Perez, Marv Wolfman, and John Byrne.
All this time he continued to draw his own comics featuring his own characters. He worked the traditional series of odd jobs while learning his craft, such as building houses for California's booming housing market and delivering the occasional pizza, and he drew. And drew. And drew. Some of these early efforts were sent to small comics companies in hopes of getting a break, but he was too intimidated, and too uncertain of his own talent, to send so much as a single character study to DC or Marvel. These giants, which bestrode the comics industry like the statue of Superman in Metropolis, Illinois, were beyond his grasp.
Or so our young hero thought, at least until a buddy told him that a major comics convention, one with actual, genuine editors in attendance, would take place in San Francisco, only eight hours away. Even better, his aunt and uncle lived nearby, which meant that he and his comic-loving buddy would have a place to crash that wasn't the hotel ballroom during an all-night marathon of old Ralph Bakski Spider-Man episodes.
And so, like Luke Skywalker taking up his lightsaber and sallying forth to Alderaan, this brave, determined youngster packed up his portfolio, got in the car, and headed toward the City by the Bay. His courage almost deserted him when he got to the convention - all his samples were of his own characters, not icons like Wonder Woman or Mr. Fantastic, because he was sure he couldn't draw them well enough to impress the pros - but egged on by his friend, he still
A DC editor saw his work and liked it well enough to request more samples. This was good enough to raise anyone's hopes, especially in an artist who was only nineteen and still learning his craft. But then, in a twist worthy of a comic book -
- a Marvel editor saw his work and liked it well enough to offer him a job on the spot.
That his initial assessment of his work as not quite ready for primetime was correct -what he turned in never saw print - this was the break our hero had been waiting for. Soon Marvel had him doing character design work, and by 1988, when he was only twenty-one, DC had him drawing a five issue miniseries featuring two minor characters, Hawk and Dove. Never mind that the original artwork had an odd layout that would have forced the reader to turn the book sideways to read it - the story was set in a "chaos dimension," so why not? - and forced the editors to cut up the drawings, paste them into a more conventional format, then have the poor inker tape them to a lightbox before they were useable. He was on his way!
Despite its rough beginnings, Hawk and Dove did well enough that the wunderkind of Anaheim was soon working as the penciller for one of Marvel's X-Men books, The New Mutants. Readers, intrigued by his unique style, began to buy what had been the X-line's lowest selling title in sufficient quantities that the book suddenly was making money rather than losing it. A little over a year later our hero was so popular, and so powerful, that he'd somehow managed to become the chief plotter/creative force behind the comic as a whole and talked Marvel into retitling it X-Force.
The first issue of X-Force came out in 1991 and sold an astonishing four million copies. The artist/writer behind it was twenty-four years old.
And thus it was that Rob Liefeld, who was only five years removed from being too nervous to approach the Marvel booth at a comics convention, rapidly became a dominant figure in superhero comics during the 1990s.
You think I exaggerate? Consider these facts, gentle readers:
- Liefeld appeared in a series of Spike Lee advertisements for Levi's 501 jeans that featured people with "unique jobs." In 1991, when he'd been working professionally for only three years.
- Stan Lee, the grand old man of Marvel, interviewed Liefeld in the second episode of an early 1990's documentary series modestly entitled The Comic Book Greats.
- When he decided to strike out on his own in 1992 after a dispute with Marvel, a host of other popular young artists such as Jim Lee, Erik Larsen, and Spawn creator Todd McFarlane followed him. Their company, Image Comics, allowed creators to keep the creative rights to their characters, unlike the Big Two, which regarded their artists and writers as mere hirelings. That some of Liefeld's early work for Image was less than mediocre (Liefeld blamed a friend who was doing his scripts) was less significant than the blow this struck for creators' rights; remember, this was a field where seminal figures such as Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, and Joe Simon had to sue to receive credit for developing Superman and Captain America, let alone a share of the enormous revenues generated by the comic books, toys, clothing, furnishings, movies, and television shows featuring the Man of Tomorrow and the Sentinel of Liberty.
- Despite all this, Liefeld was still so popular that Marvel hired him and fellow Image stalwart Jim Lee in 1996 to rework several of their flagship titles in what became known as the Heroes Reborn arc, with Liefeld himself set to write twelve issues of The Avengers and draw twelve issues of Captain America..
It was a heady time for someone who wasn't even thirty, and if Liefeld subsequently was fired from Marvel after only six issues of Heroes Reborn because of lower than projected sales and a series of missed deadlines, well, he was a busy man. He still had his commitments to Image, after all, so what did they expect?
It was one thing to stick it to the Man; Marvel, after all, was a huge company with plenty of other books, and after Liefeld was fired from the Heroes Reborn effort, there were more than enough writers and artists the House of Ideas could tap to pick up the slack.
Image was another matter entirely. There had been rumors of problems with the other creators at Image for quite some time, and about the time that matters fell apart with Marvel, they followed suit at Image. Liefeld, his partners charged, was writing checks on the company accounts to cover personal debts, even as he was making big bucks for Marvel. Not only that, he was sleeping during board meetings, spending inordinate amounts of times in meetings at movie studios trying to interest Tom Cruise in his books, and using Image's staff to do promotional and production work for a third company, Maximum Press, where he planned to move some of his established Image characters.
And if that weren't bad enough, his supposed business partners alleged in subsequent legal proceedings, he was copying their work for his own books.
Is it any wonder that Liefeld resigned from Image only a few minutes before the partners' meeting that would have fired him?
The comics press had a field day with this, of course. Liefeld had gone from eager wannabe to wildly popular newcomer to arrogant jerk in less than a decade, which was fast enough to make the Flash raid Tony Stark's liquor cabinet for a nice, long drunk. That he next tried to found yet another company, Awesome Comics, using the unpublished scripts and artwork for the six issues of the Heroes Reborn run of Captain America in a series about a strangely similar individual called Agent America, and that Marvel basically forced him to stop by threatening yet another lawsuit, only added to the fun.
That was when Liefeld, who seemed completely unaware that the word "no" had any application to his life, tried to buy a nearly forgotten patriotic superhero named the Fighting American so he could be the inspiration for Agent America. Needless to say Marvel found out, and this time they did sue. Even though Liefeld finalized the licensing agreement for Fighting American before the lawsuit went to trial, Marvel still forced him to accept a settlement agreement so that Fighting American wouldn't dress like the flag or use his shield like a Frisbee.
If you're confused by all this, my friends, believe me: you aren't the only one.
After all this fuss, legal action, accusations, and enough patriotic superheroes to make an American eagle dive straight onto the point of the Washington Monument in sheer frustration, is it any wonder that Awesome, too, went under after its major investor got fed up and pulled his support in 2000? Or that Liefeld, who somehow managed to mend fences with Marvel, returned to drawing mutants?
That Image actually took him back in 2007 might well qualify as that year's evidence that the Apocalypse was imminent, but fortunately for the world the news didn't extend to the seven cities which are in Asia, let alone the Archangel Gabriel.
Liefeld's subsequent career has been marked by a series of successes (Youngblood; another series of Hawk and Dove as part of DC's "New 52" relaunch of their entire line; three more New 52 titles; work on Marvel's popular Deadpool line) and controversies. He has tendency to miss deadlines, allegedly failed to return the original art to at least one creator after Awesome went under, and has attempted to explain the appropriation of other artists' work as "homages" similar to Brian de Palma scenes and techniques from Sergei Eisenstein and Alfred Hitchcock.
That fellow X-Men artists John Byrne and George Perez (one of the artists Liefeld professes to admire most), were severely displeased to find that their layouts, figure poses, and costume designs had been swiped pretty much wholesale did not seem to register.
The most recent dustup involving Rob Liefeld was only a year ago when he abruptly quit DC. Despite assurances that he would stay on his New 52 titles through the end of 2013, he bolted back to Image in August of 2012 after complaining bitterly, and publicly, that DC wanted too many rewrites, that his editor was incompetent, that the corporate culture had changed for the worse since DC had become part of Warner, and that Scott Clark's art for Grifter was substandard. That the rewrites were part of an attempt by DC to ensure consistency among the New 52 titles was immaterial, and the subsequent flame war sucked in not only Liefeld, but DC editor Tom Brevoort, Batgirl writer Gail Simone, and Batman writer Scott Snyder.
That all this was vastly entertaining to watch goes without saying; for all his influence on comic creators and his popularity among a large segment of the fandom, Liefeld has become something of a trouble magnet. There are dozens of stories about him being a self-important monster who thinks he's above everyone else, and just as many about his generosity toward eager fans and new pros. No one seems to have a neutral opinion of him, and his last days (at least for now) at DC all but guarantee that he'll be the comics industry's equivalent of a gigantic hissing Tesla coil in the middle of Stan Lee's living room for years to come.
But what about his art? Surely, I can all but hear you cry across the DSL, someone good enough to turn pro and sell millions of books every month must be a veritable giant among artists. His work must be more dynamic than Kirby, more fluid than Ross, more beautiful than Pini, else why would he be so popular? Right, Ellid? Right?
Well. That would certainly be logical, wouldn't it now? The sheer number of books that Liefeld has written, drawn, and published would seem to argue that he is a colossus among comic creators. And indeed, comics from the 1990s and early 2000s show many signs of Liefeld's influence, to the point that some artists who worked in a different style had trouble getting work. He's still popular enough that he has no trouble finding work, and there's little doubt that, at only 46 years old, he'll be with us for years and years to come.
That hasn't prevented other comics professionals from critiquing his work, such as this 1996 statement by Barry Windsor-Smith:
Rob Liefeld has nothing to offer. It’s as plain as bacon on your plate. He has nothing to offer. He cannot draw. He can’t write. He is a young boy almost, I would expect, whose culture is bubble gum wrappers, Saturday morning cartoons, Marvel Comics; that’s his culture. Somebody was at his house and came back with a report: There is not a single book in his house — only comic books. I see nothing in his work that allows me to even guess that there’s any depth involved in that person that might come to the fore given time.
Can we say, "Ouch," boys and girls?
Windsor-Smith wasn't the only artist annoyed by Liefeld's popularity, influence, and distinctive style. Alex Ross and writer Mark Waid deliberately lampooned Liefeld's tendency to load his characters down with extraneous pouches, firearms and other weapons, prominent scars, and the graphic equivalent of lens flares with the character of Magog in their Kingdom Come book.
Which, as silly as it is, is still by Alex Ross, a comics artist noted for his fine draftsmanship, excellent attention to detail, and careful anatomy. Liefeld, who after all turned pro after but a single life drawing course, has a tendency to exaggeratedly long legs (especially on his female characters), wasp waists (ditto), exaggerated muscles better suited to Belgian Blue meat kine than human beings, and a persistent inability to draw feet, lower legs, and hands. He himself agreed, at least in part, by saying that
In the mid-90's we Mortal Kombat'd everything. I'm as guilty as anyone…
Although he surely wouldn't have agreed with critic Peter David's review of the Heroes Reborn take on Captain America that dubbed Liefield "the Ed Wood of comics."
And then there was Ryan Coons.
Coons, who blogs under the name "Yellow Hat Guy," attended the WizardWorld convention in the summer of 2009 with several friends. They were all on the main floor enjoying themselves when one of his companions pointed out that Rob Liefeld, who was not listed as a guest in the program, was attending anyway and had a small booth.
Coons, who had hated Liefeld's work for years, walked up while Liefeld was attempting to draw a sketch for another fan and demanded an apology for (you guessed it) Liefeld's attempt at Captain America during Heroes Reborn. Liefeld, showing remarkable restraint at this show of rudeness, merely nodded, said "Nice to meet you," and continued to draw -
Which was when Coons, showing enough gall to be divided into three parts, wandered off, found a copy of the old How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way manual, wrote a nastygram on the inside cover telling Liefeld that he should study it carefully before attempting to reboot another established cover, and requested another apology for Heroes Reborn.
He then signed it, included his e-mail address and business card, walked over to Liefeld's booth, and dropped the book in front of Liefeld while Liefeld was talking to someone else.
Needless to say, all hell broke loose.
Several dozen comic artists and writers, some of whom had made no secret of their dislike for Liefeld's work, immediately slammed Coons for being an obnoxious ass. Liefeld, again showing remarkable restraint by not belting Coons in the jaw, gave the book away. Coons whined that all he wanted was an apology for Heroes Reborn. It was a nine days' wonder, and despite the passage of four years, still has to count as one of the least classy things ever done at a genre convention, which is truly saying something. It certainly wasn't Ryan Coons' finest hour.
Not that this would have been anyone's finest hour except possibly in the sort of crass animated sitcom that has made Seth MacFarlane a very, very rich man. Rob Liefeld is a human being, after all, and as much as he's undoubtedly learned to shrug off criticism, having a fanboy suggest that a working professional with over twenty years' experience under his belt needs remedial drawing lessons is pretty much the dictionary definition of "insulting"….
And then one looks at Rob Liefeld's art, and as awful as Ryan Coons' now legendary insult is, suddenly one understand exactly what he means.
Behold the glory that the is the cover for Warchild, one of Liefeld's own books for Awesome Comics:
Is it War? Or a child? No! It's Warchild!
Or Shaft, a character who is either Liefeld's attempt at an archer a la Green Arrow or Hawkeye (male) or his response to every single critic who has sneered at his attempts to draw feet:
Nice boots, dude!
Now, these examples were original characters, so it can be said that regardless of their flaws, Warchild and Shaft look the way they do because that's how they're supposed to look. This doesn't example what Liefeld did to beloved characters created by other people, such as Northampton's own Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
Cowabunga!
Or the villainous Crossbones, who may be a neo-Nazi, a fanatic disciple of the Red Skull, and the man who (briefly) assassinated Captain America, but who is assuredly not twelve feet tall and possessed of dainty white gloves:
Can we say "bad perspective, boys and girls"? Can we?
As for what he did to these woman, let's just say that the first one, who not only seems to have a broken back and no internal organs, but balloons instead of breasts, turns up repeatedly in the Hawkeye Initiative, which redraws appallingly poor female characters using Hawkeye of the Avengers:
SEX-AY!
Even when their mammary units flop over their bondage harnesses:
Playtex? We don't need no stinkin' Playtex!
As for Asgardian villain Amora the Enchantress, her legs appear to be approximately six feet long and have feet that would make Christian Louboutin throw himself bodily from the Whitestone Bridge in despair:
High heels? Who needs high heels to tower over everyone?
We won't even dignity his allegedly humorous panel "Shrink!" with a joke. It speaks for itself:
Shrink!
As does the questionable lens flare that makes it look like Cable is doing something incredibly nasty to Wolverine, who may be a rough, tough, cigar-smoking, beer-swilling, claw-wielding Canadian with a very bad attitude and enough body hair to double as a broadloom carpet, but surely didn’t deserve that:
Cable, uh, doing what we might call "the money shot" on Wolverine
Then again, Wolverine does have unusual taste in women, unless Jean Grey has just come back from a steampunk convention that required her to be corseted until her waist was smaller than Wolvie's wrist:
Wolverine and Jean Grey
And then there's Captain America. Poor, poor Captain America.
Remember what I said about Rob Liefeld's characters looking like Belgian Blue cattle?
Remember the Heroes Reborn story arc from 1996? The one that Marvel basically guillotined halfway through because Liefeld couldn't make his deadlines? The one that Ryan Coons demanded Liefeld apologize for?
Remember what I said about not eating, drinking, having pets in the room, and so forth?
Don't say I didn't warn you….
Captain America, hell yeah!
This ludicrous image, which was originally intended as, I kid you not, the publicity poster/pinup advertising Heroes Reborn, has become almost as much of a legend as Captain America himself. Even for a superhero who's supposed to be big, strong, and muscular, this simply doesn't work; Cap's head is too small, his chest is too big you don't say, Ellid?, his left arm seems to have been wrenched out of the socket and twisted behind his back, he has a case of scoliosis that would put Richard III to shame, and (poor bubbe) genitals roughly the size of a seven year old's. Even his shield is out of proportion, and just where is the light coming from to produce so many lens flares? And why are there lens flares anyway on a pinup?
Unsurprisingly, "Captain America, the Well-Marbled Meat Bull," has become a byword for terrible comic art, including parodies pointing out both the anatomical difficulties and the practical advantages to having a chest that large.
Best of all, someone with far too much time on her hands decided to see just how this would look on a real, live human being, whom I sincerely hope never, ever sees this diary.
Rob Liefeld is currently working for Image (again). Whether he'll agree to return to DC, or if they'll even want him after he basically flounced off insulting everyone in the room, is still up in the air. He's not even fifty, and presumably has several decades of drawing Belgian Blue/human hybrids festooned with unnecessary pouches, large quantities of weapons, breasts the size of a watermelon that still stay perky and firm despite weighing more than a newborn child, and feet the size of a postage stamp.
The same cannot be said of Scott Clark. This unfortunate man, whose work on DC's New 52 title Grifter was characterized as "crap" by Liefeld just before he picked up his pencils and exited pursued by Ryan Coons, died a few months ago. Evidently he'd been ill last year when he attempted to work with Liefeld, which makes Liefeld's action even less mature than it appeared at first glance.
As for whether his work was indeed as bad as Rob Liefeld said, you must decide for yourself.
I know what I think, but that is neither here nor there.
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So...do any of you have a copy of Heroes Reborn wrapped in plastic? Ryan Coons bookmarked on your blogroll? An issue or two or Image or Awesome Comics' finest? Maybe a Liefeld autograph? A Belgian Blue bull? Captain America cosplaying as a Belgian Blue? This is the change to cleanse your soul....
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