Meh, don't stress, could be worse. You could be a fan of Siege.

" @FadeToBlackBolt: LOL, nah, no stress to it.  Liefeld-hating's been going on for a long time, and I've never really seen the sense in it being as rampant as it is.  Just thought I'd rant about it. ;) "

My comment caused a rant! yeah!

" @cbishop said:

" @FadeToBlackBolt: LOL, nah, no stress to it.  Liefeld-hating's been going on for a long time, and I've never really seen the sense in it being as rampant as it is.  Just thought I'd rant about it. ;) "

Haha, fair enough. I don't like him as a person (his smug smile annoys me), but aside from his feet and the occasional anatomical ludicrousness, I don't think he's as bad as everyone says. I'd consider Romita Jr to be worse, at least Liefeld's characters' designs had a bit of personality to them. "

"JRJR's art is stylized..he doesn't leave things out or try to hide them in the picture with awkward poses and objects.I'm not a big fan of JRJR but he puts characters in the poses he wants to because he actually has the talent to draw them.He doesn't use shortcuts to compensate.I think the people who have been on Leifeld's back about his artwork are just amazed at the realization doesn't have down the basics has gotten so much work.I can deal with bad art.I don't like JRJR most of the time or people like Steve Dillion or Frank Quitely but at least they know enough about anatomy to create their own style.Leifeld just cuts corners. "

" @Vance Astro said:

"JRJR's art is stylized..he doesn't leave things out or try to hide them in the picture with awkward poses and objects.I'm not a big fan of JRJR but he puts characters in the poses he wants to because he actually has the talent to draw them.He doesn't use shortcuts to compensate.I think the people who have been on Leifeld's back about his artwork are just amazed at the realization doesn't have down the basics has gotten so much work.I can deal with bad art.I don't like JRJR most of the time or people like Steve Dillion or Frank Quitely but at least they know enough about anatomy to create their own style.Leifeld just cuts corners. "

I could see the "cutting corners" complaint.  I have read somewhere that Liefeld spends a lot of time on video games, and other stuff that distracts him from his work.  If that's true, I could totally see him getting down to deadline time, and cutting corners to complete the artwork.  As for not having the basics down, I don't know enough about drawing to catch that unless it's really obvious (although I suppose "obvious" is relative, in this case).  It doesn't really bother me though, because I tend to get Liefeld's stuff late, which means I can usually get it from quarter bins. "

"It was always my impression that he cuts corners because of his lack of skills.I have seen several pages he's done where feet and other body parts have been exaggerated past what his style will permit and poses that are anatomically impossible.I have also seen parts hidden behind objects.If you look at his "infamous Captain America" image...he's clearly hiding the rest of Captain America behind that ridiculous sized shield because he doesn't know how to draw him in profile like that.His anatomy is completely off.I've seen an image where someone mapped out where his actual body would be behind the shield and it's absolutely ridiculous.Leifeld has gotten better but even if you look at his more recent stuff on Cable and Deadpool,Lady Deadpool,Youngblood etc.You can still tell that even after all this time he still can't draw certain part of the body accurately. "

Wellllll, I was supposing best case scenario there.  Like I keep saying, art is not my strong suit, so I don't really study others' art that closely (and probably wouldn't catch half that stuff, if I did). <shrugs> I like the characters the guy comes up with. "

" @FadeToBlackBolt said:

" @cbishop said:

" @FadeToBlackBolt: LOL, nah, no stress to it.  Liefeld-hating's been going on for a long time, and I've never really seen the sense in it being as rampant as it is.  Just thought I'd rant about it. ;) "

Haha, fair enough. I don't like him as a person (his smug smile annoys me), but aside from his feet and the occasional anatomical ludicrousness, I don't think he's as bad as everyone says. I'd consider Romita Jr to be worse, at least Liefeld's characters' designs had a bit of personality to them. "

JRJR's art is stylized..he doesn't leave things out or try to hide them in the picture with awkward poses and objects.I'm not a big fan of JRJR but he puts characters in the poses he wants to because he actually has the talent to draw them.He doesn't use shortcuts to compensate.I think the people who have been on Leifeld's back about his artwork are just amazed at the realization doesn't have down the basics has gotten so much work.I can deal with bad art.I don't like JRJR most of the time or people like Steve Dillion or Frank Quitely but at least they know enough about anatomy to create their own style.Leifeld just cuts corners. "

" @cbishop said:

Wellllll, I was supposing best case scenario there.  Like I keep saying, art is not my strong suit, so I don't really study others' art that closely (and probably wouldn't catch half that stuff, if I did). <shrugs> I like the characters the guy comes up with. "

I didn't catch any of that stuff into it was pointed out to me but I always found something off about his artwork.Just couldn't put my finger on it.He's not bad at character creation.It's fine if you like him as an artist or whatever.I was just saying I can see why other people hate him so much.Art is an extremely important part of comics.In fact in my case it's 80% of the reason I read comics.I'm more likely to read a well penciled\colored comic than a well written one.I mean I read All-Star Batman and that was complete garbage.But  Jim Lee is amazing. "

siege was good read

I was kinda fan of Liefeld when he was drawing X-Force(90's), and his work hasn't much technique but it has a lot of personality. In that time, he was representative of what superhero comics where about. Later, in the 2000's he tried to do the same, whith volume 2, but time has pased and it seemed old. 
  Besides, Liefeld got to be watched by  different perspectives, as artist, creative, and executive. He's got great ideas whith characters, even if they qheren't original characters. Many of his ideas whith Youngblood and the Avenges where used by Millar at the Ultimates, but the latter knew how to aplicate them better. And teh original concept of Supreme, as an unholly version of Superman, being egolatric and mesquine was great, only he let it flown into bad directions.

   His whost mistake was being too ambitious, and create whole universe whith tons of characters and constantly making crossovers, that made most of them plane and created the need for reboots.

I liked his New Mutants work and was a big fan of Diehard as well.

@midnightmare said:

"His whost mistake was being too ambitious, and create whole universe whith tons of characters and constantly making crossovers, that made most of them plane and created the need for reboots."

 
Oh, that's no more ambitious than the rest of the Image guys at the time.  They were all autonomous of each other.  They tried to do unifying crossovers a few times, but so far, it has turned out that Erik Larsen was the only one really committed to it.  Even with Image United, I think the only reason that made it all the way through was because of Larsen and Kirkman.  They're all busy creating their own little universes.  Liefeld's universe was okay, but he appears to have lacked the focus to stay with it. 

@PowerHerc said:

"That's alright.  You can be a fan of and look up to anyone you choose.  Live how you want to live."

 
Hm, I don't know if "look up to" is the right way to put it.  I admire the number of characters the guy created, and some of the things he has managed to do, as far as who and what characters he has worked with.  Beyond that, I don't know the guy well enough to say I "look up to" him.  "Yes, I am a fan of Rob Liefeld" is said kind of tongue in cheek, as most people are too busy hating on the guy to find anything good about him. 

@turoksonofstone said:

"I liked his New Mutants work and was a big fan of Diehard as well. "

I had the whole New Mutants series as it came out, and a little of X-Force, but I don't have any of it any longer.  I am buying the New Mutants Classic trades though. 
 
Diehard intrigued me, until I noticed a scene that Rob stole from the THUNDER Agents.  Diehard's body was destroyed, and his essence (or whatever) returned to the lab with his spare bodies, and inhabited a new body.  A scientist tells him that the new body's ability's might be a little different from the old one's, and Diehard's response is something like, "Yes, we'll have to talk about that later," as he runs off, headed back to the action.  The exact same scene happened in a THUNDER Agents story of NoMan, and was repeated by DC with Wildfire of the Legion of Super-Heroes.  I was highly unimpressed with Rob using it for a third time.

robs koo

Not a fan myself, but I do respect you standing by one of your favorites

" Not a fan myself, but I do respect you standing by one of your favorites "

Writing............there's a pouch for that!

"Writing............there's a pouch for that! "

To each his own. I used to be a fan of Greg Land...still do like a good amount of his older stuff. 

"Writing............there's a pouch for that! "

"...Personally, I think there are greater offenders to the world of comic books than Mr Liefeld.  He's genuinely enthusiastic about comics, which is a lot more than you can see about some others. "

"To each his own. I used to be a fan of Greg Land...still do like a good amount of his older stuff.  "

" @cbishop: You might know him as Captain Pornface? ;) "

He went through this weird phase in the 90's (like many artists did) where people began to not conform to the set "referrence guides" for characters' proportions, costumes, etc.  Really the whole "costume/character proportions is/are how i decide to interpret it" situation we have now seemed to stem out of this time period. So you got these overly exaggerated physiques, and the "big breast" explosion that occurred and so on. Unfortunately, he became the poster boy for this style, this approach, or because others aped his style, etc. and he got the blame for it. Hell, the same thing occurred with Todd McFarlane and John Romita.
 
If you see his earlier work, it was pretty good, (his Hawk & Dove days especially) and he's definately gotten better than he was in the 90's.

" @The Dark Huntress said:

" @cbishop: You might know him as Captain Pornface? ;) "

Who?  ;D (never heard of CP.  Heard of Land, but not familiar with him.) "

Very interesting to see the take of a Liefeld fan. It does offer some insight.
 
I'm not a fan at all. I collected New Mutants before he took over and happily sold his books for a profit when they were sky high at the time. I'd like to offer some perspective on what it is that people don't like about his work.
 
Keep in mind, that his popularity stormed in the early 90s (by this, I mean he had done comics previous to this, but the New Mutants, early in the year 1990, was when he really become a star). This was just before Image was formed and right in the beginning of the speculation boom, multiple covers, and "million sale" issues that sat unsold in comic stores. Rob Liefeld was one of the creators that rode and took advantage of this wave. He was hardly the only one, but was one of the least talented and most polarizing.
 
The big driving force behind creating Image was "creator rights." If you go back and read the interviews at the time, all of the principal creators of Image talked about how the Big 2 owned the copyrights to all of the big superheros and screwed the original creators out of royalties (referring largely to Batman and Superman-era heroes). I recall McFarlane even complaining about the Big 2 making big profits on figurines and statues made in the likeness of specific artists. There's a lot of truth in that, but keep in mind that everything following is based on this. "Creator rights" and "royalties".
 
So Liefeld "created" more superheroes than anyone else? I hadn't followed much of the comic industry since the early 90s, so it was amusing to read some of Liefeld's history in your recap. Unsurprising that every time he worked on a book, he introduced a new character. He wasn't some amazing fountain of creative knowledge, he was creating a royalty minefield. Why actually put effort into telling stories with pre-existing characters, when you can regurgitate them and collect royalties thereafter.
 
This is also why I found the disgust with Gaiman surprising in a previous response. I was disgusted with McFarlane at the time and to be honest it was clear how shallow most of the noble claims of Image were. McFarlane goes on interview after interview talking about how important creator rights are, how important it is for creators to receive their due. Then, Gaiman creates a wonderful character for McFarlane's Spawnverse and what does McFarlane do? In his best Liefeld impression, he regurgitates the character to capture all royalties for himself. But Gaiman's the jerk for protecting his creation, just like the Image guys said he should?
 
Probably the most surprising thing in all of this was the love for Liefeld's art. Many of the other Image artists were actually decent artists (probably better stylists than storytellers/layouts), with McFarlane generating quite a huge following with his work and rightfully so. It was exciting and brought a fresh view of the characters. But Liefeld... ?
 
I can get that he has a certain energy to his lines, that the busyness of it can look exciting. But it was sooo bad. I can appreciate stretching the limits of anatomy for style (McFarlane did this a lot with success), but Liefeld regularly showed a complete inability to get anatomy right at all. This doesn't mean he occasionally skewed anatomy for style or to make an impact; he was utterly incapable of getting anatomy right. He was also completely unable to tell a story from panel to panel and was often accused of making all of his pages splash-pages for Original Art resell value. Many artists may not have the most exciting style, but are able to progress a story from panel to panel and convey a sense of what's happening. Unless the progression was characters jumping through air onto a villain, Liefeld was completely unable to do basic layouts. His characters and situation changes from panel to panel. Character haircuts change from panel to panel. He places characters floating randomly in space to fit them all into a scene with no perspective. The lack of feet is just a running joke of one aspect of how bad he was.

In short, he was at best a pin-up artist. a bad pin-up artist.
 
But I'm most intrigued by the fact that the original blog was crediting Liefeld as a writer. I find that particularly surprising. What was he officially credited as writer on? When I was reading, he "created" a lot, but always had a writer that did the actual writing. (Speaking of which, I was always amused by Peter David's  blog, wherein he recalls how Liefeld rejects Louise Simonson's impact when creating Cable, but blames the utter failure of Youngblood on the writer). And as mentioned before, his art itself was completely unable to convey a story.
 
Anyways, no offense meant to anyone who previous posted. Even when I vehemently disagree with someone, I find their insight valuable and wanted to provide my insight. I hope you find it valuable.
 
Yikes, by the way, sorry for making it so long.

Good post i just read it. Personally I like (dont love) Liefeld. X=force with him on it for a while was cool and the Youngblood characters were cool, I dont care what anyone says. Hes got nothing on my my Erik Larsen but i respect Liefeld as a creator and moderately on his art.

You're allowed to like Liefeld.His lack of talent is evident though.

@SavageDragon said:

Good post i just read it. Personally I like (dont love) Liefeld. X=force with him on it for a while was cool and the Youngblood characters were cool, I dont care what anyone says. Hes got nothing on my my Erik Larsen but i respect Liefeld as a creator and moderately on his art.

Erik Larsen is by far my favorite creator. Savage Dragon is my favorite book, and I've loved just about everything Larsen has worked on. ;)

@Vance Astro said:

You're allowed to like Liefeld.His lack of talent is evident though.

I like Liefeld for his creativity - as I said: for the sheer number of characters he put out there. I can see the errors in his art when they are pointed out to me, but I try not to malign an artist's work, because a) I don't think I draw well - certainly not better than most folks in comics, and b) even if he's bad, he's published, I'm not.

Rob Liefeld is a guy that I can hate only for his artwork but in writing he is a great guy.A lot of great characters he created.

@cbishop: So you like his stuff... because he put out a lot of it? So would you like the taste of coke zero just because theirs alot of cans out there and not because of its flavor?

@nonfiction91: Bad analogy. Every can of Coke Zero has the exact same thing in it. Every character that Rob Liefeld put out, while possibly derivative of something that came before, is different from the other characters he put out. He put out a lot of characters, and I can respect that kind of creativity. I don't think he's in the same league as these two, but that's one of the main reasons so many people love Jack Kirby & Stan Lee - "Look at how many characters they created for Marvel & DC."

I think I made a pretty clear statement of pros and cons concerning Liefeld. I admire the guy's creativity, and since I don't draw well, I don't complain about his art. However, I think his work practices leave much to be desired. That is, he's a bit self defeating. He gets on a roll, and then seems to lean back to coast on what he has done, only to crash and burn on deadlines and payments to his collaborators. I'm kind of waiting to see what's going to happen now that he's supposed to be back at Image, but has jumped aboard so many books for DC. Will he crash and burn yet again, or will he find his niche?

Over my years as a comic fan, I have really enjoyed exploring new characters as they came out. Loved Devil Dinosaur, Dial H For Hero, DC's Blue Beetle series, Blue Devil, Amethyst, and even stinkers like Crystar and Starriors. I explored Darkhawk for awhile, and was able to jump on at the start for New Teen Titans, New Mutants, and New Warriors. And plenty that I've forgotten. Not all of those were great, and neither were all of the new characters that Image introduced great. Not even all of the characters that Liefeld introduced. Still, I had fun exploring the new characters, putting the disappointments aside, and continuing with the ones that grabbed my imagination.

<shrugs> So yeah, I'm a fan because he put out a lot of characters. What of it? If that's not what grabs you, that's okay. That's what makes comics so fun - something different for everyone.

Btw, I hate Coke Zero. I much prefer the Classic or Vanilla. ;)

Inventing characters is absolutely useless if you do nothing interesting with them. Liefeld does create a lot of characters and some of them actually stuck, mostly because in the 90's, EXTREEEEEEEME badass stuff worked. But did he actually write one good story? Is he a good artist? Hell no!

Poor writer, poor artist. In the end, what's to like about him?

@DarthShap said:

Inventing characters is absolutely useless if you do nothing interesting with them. Liefeld does create a lot of characters and some of them actually stuck, mostly because in the 90's, EXTREEEEEEEME badass stuff worked. But did he actually write one good story? Is he a good artist? Hell no!

Poor writer, poor artist. In the end, what's to like about him?

this

I can churn out thousands of characters, just like an artist can sketch 30 characters in a minute, But if the same artist sketched those characters with the respect of giving each their own 30 minutes of undivided attention they would be great, and not just look like stupidly cross hatched, giant chested, pouch addicted fools.

Stan put out his characters one at a time, and had everything in mind before hand. he still has characters hemay never put out, simply because he may not be able to write them and because he thought out wether they would fit in his world. Liefield said it himself "About twenty years ago, it was like my mind exploded with ideas"

Exploding with ideas is what any creative person does when inspired. Choosing which or using them all is what separates the fool from the wise man.

You ask me, Liefield set the entire comic book industry back, making sure it was not taken seriously again until the x-men movie. And now, DC actually gave the moron my (at least when higgins was doing it) favorite book, Deathstroke, which I now dropped because he ruined Both deathstrokes dialogue and LOBOS'! seriously, how do you mess up Lobo? I could do his panels in the latest DS right now better than Liefield

I can respect his ingenuity to stay in the buisness with all the crap he's put out, he MUST have a silver tongue. For that he gets a minute amount of respect from me.

@sethysquare: no...he wrote the dialogue

@nonfiction91:

@DarthShap said:

Inventing characters is absolutely useless if you do nothing interesting with them. Liefeld does create a lot of characters and some of them actually stuck, mostly because in the 90's, EXTREEEEEEEME badass stuff worked. But did he actually write one good story? Is he a good artist? Hell no!

Poor writer, poor artist. In the end, what's to like about him?

<sigh> You again. ;^P Why does it have to be a deep reason? I like exploring new characters, and Liefeld put a lot of characters out there. I liked that, I find that inspiring, and so I call myself a fan. End of story.

If you must have a deeper reason, I sincerely appreciated the renaming of Bedrock to Badrock, to skirt Hannah-Barbera's ludicrous lawsuit threat, and I loved the fact that he was able to get Fighting American, when Marvel basically caused him to squash Agent America (but had no problem with DC's very similar Agent Liberty). I don't necessarily like what he did with Fighting American, but I love the nice symmetry that made to comic history. i.e.

Kirby/Simon create Captain America for Marvel > Marvel takes Captain America out of their hands > K/S create Fighting American to do what they wanted to do with Captain America.

later...

Liefeld creates Agent America > Marvel says "too close to Captain America" > Liefeld gets rights to Fighting American to do what he wanted to do with Agent America.

Very nice symmetry there. Separate reason from the characters he created, but a reason I like him, nonetheless.

@sethysquare said:

Im not a fan but Im excited about his stuff on dc. With regards to ripping people's stuff off, may i just suggest that wolverine, captain america, sentry, iron man, avengers and xmen are all rip offs from dc. Marvel is filled with rip offs as do the thread on comicvine on the main page states. Not saying that dc didnt rip off anything from marvel but its not that uncommon to rip iff stuff from dc when u work in marvel.

Meh, the "rip off" stuff doesn't concern me. There are so many derivative characters back and forth between companies, and sometimes even in the same company, it's silly. I just addressed it, because I knew someone would bring it up if I didn't.

@nonfiction91: I did state that I don't put Liefeld in the same class as Kirby & Lee. Just pointing out that most people don't take the time to point out much more about them than "they created so many characters."

@cbishop: