In response to Gardner’s love letter to Rob Liefeld.
I remember reading the Byrne/Claremont X-men, Watchmen, Killing Joke, Dark Knight Returns. I was a comic veteran of 7 years by this point. I remember when New Mutants became X-Force and how I was amazed that you could not understand anatomy and still get work in comics. I was 13! Understand that I don’t believe that I’m the greatest artist on the planet or that I’m better than any artist. But after staring at art books of Frank Frazetta and John Byrne for hours on end, and other artists who really understood the craft, it blew me away that this turd was getting paid exorbitant amounts of money to not draw feet on people. You could probably go through all his X-Force, New Mutants and Youngblood and there would probably be about 57 ½ feet that he drew.
Look at this cover! There is not a foot to be had amongst the lot of them. They are standing on a playground ball. There is one ankle on the whole cover.
- For Shame
Now I’m not disputing that the introduction of image wasn’t an important event in comics. The people at Marvel realized that creators were a hot commodity and not just random faces to be put to work in the factory duplicating artwork of other great creators in years gone by. They were going to tell their stories as sloppy and as poorly drawn as they wanted to, but they were doing it on their own terms. And that is something to be admired. But Liefeld’s work was not exciting. It was dumb.
Every character unless “black” or “alien” had the exact same hair. The two black guys on the team had the exact same haircut. All of the characters were rip-offs of existing characters. All names were taken from something that at one point had been cool, but now bastardized by Liefeld’s own feeling of self importance. Bedrock, Die Hard & Shaft for christ’s sake! Die Hard? That’s like that whole “Extreme” fad in the 90’s. Oddly enough I’m not referring to Rob’s crappy comic imprint. How does one Die Hard? I didn’t want this book or these characters to Die Hard, I just wanted them to die.
In closing I would just like to say that I’m sorry Gardner, head master of the I Love Rob Liefeld fan club. Sorry that you couldn’t afford better comics or realize when something was crap as a child.
I bet you ate paste too.
- Dave
