in retrospect, how did Rob Liefeld ever manage to hold down a artist job in the comics industry?

I can't find it but there was a Comics Journal article about the foundation of Image and it talked about the Image founders big breakup meeting with Marvel, that Liefeld left the meeting early and McFarlane said something like "he couldn't even stick around for the most important day of his life."

That was a multi-part series by Michael Dean that ran on the website (and not in the magazine iirc) fifteen years ago, & was lost several site redesigns ago.

Would like to read that

I was born in 1979, so I guess was in the exact age group Liefeld was supposed to appeal to in the early 90s, but even back then I found his comics pretty daft. Having grown up on Euro comics like Tintin, I'd always preferred a cleaner line, so the overt cross-hatching and the million uncessary lines looked kinda ugly to me. Back then, I remember thinking Art Adams did it well enough, and Jim Lee was okay too, but McFarlane was already starting to take it too far, and then Liefeld came around, and to me at least he looked like McFarlane clone, except that he was clearly worse, even at 13 I could see that.

I pretty much quit reading superhero comics at that age, around the time Liefeld's X-Force was running, though that was more because of the plots than the art: they were starting to get more stupid and gory and edgy, and I'd always like the more idealistic type of superhero stories, the Avengers' cosmic adventures and Claremontian moral allegories. For most of the 90s I was reading Vertigo and manga and European comics and American indie stuff, I didn't come back to superheroes until the early 00s. It's impossible for to me understand the appeal of all that "extreme" 90s stuff, since I missed reading it when I was an actual teen, and I don't think it makes much sense to an adult.

Worth noting that American culture was pretty militarized at the time -- while Liefeld was doing his giant guns and pouches thing, the US was getting involved in Kuwait and Iraq.

Not that it's not always militarized, but....

CUT MY LIFE INTO PIECES, THIS IS MY LAST RESORT

I mean, angst/violence/gore/boobs will always find a market for teen boys (self-included)

I remember thinking Art Adams did it well enough

Yeah, Art Adams clearly the best from this milieu.

Art Adams' stuff was more joyful and also more steeped in comics history than Liefeld's has ever seemed to me.

Plus he can draw and is good at composition.

I only like Adams when he's really indulging, like in Jonni Future and all his monster sketchbooks. But most of his superhero stuff does nothing for me. Not enough facial variety either.

I was a huge fan of McFarlane as a kid. In retrospect, some of his anatomy was terrible (there's a Spiderman image that has some of the most atrocious anatomy I've ever seen that I can't find on the internet, it makes his pelvis look twice as wide as it should) but I still think his stylization of Spiderman with all the crazy contorted poses and detailed webbing that was more arched ( most artists drew the webs more square) was really good, his faces were quite distinct and I quite like the grotesque underworlds he could do. His Batman was not bad either.
His art got lazier and he seems to have lost interest in drawing (he rarely pencils since the mid 90s) but I think he could have been a good artist if he had more passion for it and could improve his anatomy.

Used to be a big Erik Larsen fan and I still have respect for him. While his anatomy and storytelling skills have got better I think his drawing has lost its personality and gusto. His mannerisms inherited from Kirby, Bill Watterson and CC Beck have taken over just too much.

I like Kelley Jones and Sam Kieth. But I was looking at a lot of Jones comics this week and most of them were too stylistically uneven and far too decorative to tell the stories properly. I don't think he's that well suited to comics, he's constantly incorporating illustrative designs and not getting enough flow going.

Still have a soft spot for Steven Hughes and Tim Vigil.

Leinil Francis Yu is quite talented too.
http://leinilyu.deviantart.com/art/life-is-like-a-box-of-49807363

Couldn't love most of these artists though.

As much as I don't care for most of the mainstream artists who get ridiculed for bad anatomy and bad technical skills, I get quite tired of it because it seems unfair how people just pick on modern "hot" artists.

Kirby and Gene Colan, both brilliant artists have done quite a bunch of wonky drawings that doesn't even work within their stylization that does accommodate lots of wonkiness pleasantly.
Fuseli and William Blake are two of my favourite fine artists but some of their drawings also take bad anatomy past the point their style allows for.

I think this is also true for a lot of alternative comics, there's a lot of bad drawing, even from good artists that never gets called out. Maybe people feel less easy about mocking this stuff because the alternative comics online community is quite a small world or they feel too insecure to make fun of "arty" stuff.

Perhaps since most mainstream artists pick a straightforward style, violating anatomy rules sticks out more. But even then, I think in a lot of instances of people criticizing their female anatomy, I think these critics sometimes get it wrong because they don't know anatomy as well as they think they do.
Sometimes these artists use a level of exaggeration and distortion that I think works well enough but other people think is unintentional and bad drawing.

http://comicbook.com/2015/11/10/deadpool-bad-blood-rob-liefeld/

https://www.newsarama.com/44784-rob-liefeld-frames-major-x-as-his-greatest-marvel-hits-all-in-one-place.html

Major X's right arm, in the Major X #2 cover - ack. And plotting-wise, he comes from the X-istence? Hokay...

Picturing Major and Adam slumped over beers in a bar, ten years from now, complaining about their poor reception.

One of the many reasons I'm hopeful for an MCU X-Men is we won't be seeing the filmmakers intentionally cram in as many Xs as they can into the film. Can't remember if that was Singer's X-Men 2 or Ratner's Last Stand - thinking Ratner?

X-actly, x-actly. X-cellent point-x.

"We’ve done a really good job at hiding our antagonist. You don’t even meet him until #2," said Liefeld.

Hint: he's hiding somewhere behind all the crosshatching.

Major X's right arm, in the Major X #2 cover - ack

lol at the implication that any of his other anatomy is fine

also lol at the cover apparently being designed in Word

he plans his sentences as well as his drawings

"One of my buddies I let him read all six scripts, and he’s like I like all the callbacks." Liefeld said.

"The first characters from Marvel that I had a chance to do was with Louise Simonson, who my first New Mutants was drawing an annual with her.” Liefeld continued. "My editor did not know this, he read them and he couldn’t wait to see the designs with them. I said you can they’re in the New Mutants Annual in 1989. You should go get that. You should go look at it. They are all over it."

“But it’s just a thrill for everyone to see Whilce Portacio in #3. It’s like career, best work. Brent Peeples stepped up to not only do two but three issues of the series. [...] I called Will asked if he could rough up the place again with me like we did back in the 90’s. They approved."

Conversations that humans have:

“It worked out well for me when two weeks ago a bunch of my family members called me, and said, “have you clicked on the Walt Disney home page?” There he is center page. There’s Deadpool right next to Mickey Mouse. Then you go, 'Oh crap this is real.' I am very proud that Deadpool and his family cleared the high hurtle."

SAID THE WRITER

"Oh I have plans, but that is in the fans hands. I’m content that we got to tell this story," said the writer/artist. "There are at least two more big arcs. I think you’ll see them at the end everywhere this can go. I’m just really excited to get it out there."

Dude still draws guns like they were stuck in characters' hands as an afterthought (barrel/stock disjointed at weird angles).

of course the guy should have kept working at his craft!

any minute now, he's going to break out those life drawings that he told Hart Fisher would blow Fisher's mind. that was only, what, eleven years ago?

― more funny and original than, 'ow you say, a penis (sic), Wednesday, August 12, 2009 1:30 PM (nine years ago)

xp To match the dislocated elbow joints, you see.

No one will ever be able to convince me that Rob Liefeld isn't a surgically-altered golden retriever. No other explanation makes sense.

The enthusiasm? The drawing ability? The sentence structure? It's all so obvious. He might be a lab, but that's as far as I'm willing to bend.

“cleared the high hurtle”

bitter irony to thread title now

because he's holding down a writing job, for which he's even less capable?

i read through the first two issues of major x, they are lol terrible and not even fun in a neal adams way. truly disposable.

I know it's already been done but "I am very proud that Deadpool and his family cleared the high hurtle."

Also I just looked at the cover for Major X #2 and I can't stop giggling

okay:
http://i.imgur.com/eevS3mw.png
http://i.imgur.com/T8pY1NK.png
http://i.imgur.com/BP93i10.png
http://i.imgur.com/z2IKaKe.png

i mean
"CONTACT'S BEEN MADE, SUNSHINE, PREPARE YOURSELF FOR A PAINFUL SEVERANCE!"
"I'M GONNA VOMIT, IT WON'T BE PRETTY."
"THE SCENT IS OFF. AND YOU'RE BIGGER, THICKER"
GHUN!

REMEMBER THE CRIES OF OUR WORLD DYING, FRIEND. USE IT AS A FUEL TO POWER OUR MISSION.

first issue is "written and penciled and inked" by liefeld with two additional inkers, presumably for the feet

what no love for

"I'M ABOUT TO LIGHTEN THE LOAD, MAJOR"

http://i.imgur.com/YnI1e98.png

every panel is DOA, motionless and awkward at the level of mastery of a high school sketchbook smeared with pencil tracings and blackheads

liefeld gives up drawing by issue two so that book is less egregiously sophomoric and more flat out boring. not really much to share there but this is indicative of layout and script:
http://i.imgur.com/RP6g1yl.png

it's kinda weird to see liefeld characters/plots drawn in that more cartoony, allred/mignola/immonen/whoever style. when that stuff came around, IIRC it was basically a breath-of-fresh-air corrective to the dominant 90s strain of high school testosterone sketchbook stuff to which liefeld contributed so much.

ha, I read Mignola and Allred before the Image style became bemusingly prevalent*; Immonen not until Image’s first year.


* in fact the Mignola / Giffen cover and pseudonymous Giffen interiors on Doom Force were my first exposure to the Liefeld style and signature Image Boys brand of visual incoherence

sure sure. but in terms of house style at the big two superhero firms, i mean.

yeah, I get what you mean, just a different experience if you weren't into those house styles

(DC never managed to succumb successfully; even when they did try to make a star out of someone with a completely overblown style like Bart Sears, he was far too competent a cartoonist to really carry the feverish dream non-logic of the Image stars)

I hate so much the way the guy draws faces.

I gotta ask have any of you seen the 1990 film <i>The Ambulance</i>?

Ugh, I gotta remember one of these days that this site uses BBcode.

I made the jump from just picking up newsstand comics to regularly visiting an actual comic shop (actually a used bookseller with a rpg/comics sideline until the 90s comics boom hit) during Liefeld’s Marvel peak and it was just such a weird time. It took a year or two to realize things weren’t meant to be inherently incoherent, there were just too many badly plotted comics widely available

The post-peak newsstand years were just horrible. I should have stuck with Wendy the Good Little Witch until I had access to a full range of comics if I didn’t want to wreck my brain.

nhex, a quick jump around this suggests further (and shared!) investigation might be illuminating!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HsFBV9-umc

I've seen The Ambulance, complete with Stan Lee and Gene Colan cameos. It's not one of Larry Cohen's finest, but perfectly watchable.

i just saw a Larry Cohen memorial screening of this (i think officially it's the first time this movie actually was screened in the NYC area, lol) a few nights ago. if you love over-the-top schlock it's a really good time. Red Buttons!?

the big surprise to me was that was that the main character (Eric Roberts) plays a Marvel Comics artist who seems to blatantly be a version of Liefeld - but who knows, maybe all the young hotshot artists in 1990 dressed and acted that way, giant mullets and pants that are painful to look at

Stan Lee's first film role, I think, and he actually gets several lines playing himself. a more savvy fan could probably mention all the cameos, didn't realize one of them was Gene Colan. think I saw Larry Hama in there?

xps mh: feel like the industry is still not learning. all these companies put out WAY too many books right now. sure some of them are good, but most are mediocre, and who can afford to buy 50-75 books a month from Marvel or DC alone, let alone muster up the interest to pursue them?

I was going to say something about how having a diverse line of comics means many people could buy one or two titles (and get sucked into some crossover titles) that interest them. But, yeah, it's probably more likely the few people buying a shitload of titles that makes up the majority of monthly comic buyers

i try to read everything the big two put out on a semi-regular basis and it's almost completely impossible even when price is no issue. no shade on the people who make it but who the hell needs a west coast avengers book right now? Or Deathstroke fer crissakes.