Yay! A Liefeld fan responded! So
Yay! A Liefeld fan responded!
So remember a long time ago I had an open call asking for Liefeld fans because I noted that I get people getting angry at me on behalf of other artists but never Liefeld and yet he must have fans SOMEWHERE because he does sell comics? And I wondered why we never heard from them, are people ashamed to admit that they’re Liefeld fans? (kinda like Nickelback, which the comment below also notes!)
Somebody responded! :D And it was a good response, even if you don’t agree with the opinion. And it also touches on some of the things I’ve said before, which is that I think Liefeld’s become the scapegoat of bad art, and specifically, badly or weirdly drawn women in comics. When I first started this blog, I consciously avoided posting Liefeld at all, because I thought it would hurt my point about how common this stuff is, and I knew people would just say “it’s just Liefeld." What I found was some critics of my blog STILL assumed it was all Liefeld, despite there being NO LIEFELD. Some of them didn’t read the blog and just assumed they knew what was in it, and others attributed Ian Churchill, Mike Deodato and Jim Lee’s art to Liefeld, because the internet has essentially created this meme and myth that only Liefeld draws super thin women with plasticine bodies. He’s become the scapegoat, and because everybody "knows” he’s so bad, once you attribute art to him, you can then dismiss it because “oh it’s just Rob Liefeld”.
The other thing as Ragnell pointed out to me earlier is that Liefeld has issues drawing men too, and that might be a reason he attracts more ire and attention than just an artist that draws a lot of Escher Girls, because we’re used to the bendy, organless women. It doesn’t mean I’m a fan of Liefeld though, just because I think he gets a little too unfairly singled out, so it’s nice to hear from an actual fan (and to find one who will admit it!)
ANYWAY, without further ado, I give you the comment, and you can judge for yourself whether the person has a point or not. :)
Alpha Walrus wrote:
I hereby defend Rob Liefeld’s artwork, and so far as I can rightfully claim so, I am a fan.
First, some disclaimers: I do not defend his (or anyone’s) portrayal of women as impossibly buxom and super model-meets-bodybuilder, for multiple reasons. I also do not defend his penchant for plagiarizing other artist’s work or badmouthing colleagues, etc. He doesn’t sound like the classiest guy. That said, Rob Liefeld is a talented graphic artist, and I will not revoke that statement.
I grew up with 90s comics. I have never been an avid collector, but I have always been an avid drawer, and what I’ve drawn has always been superheroes. I had my fair share of comic books when I was a kid. I didn’t pay attention to the artists’ names. I just looked at whatever was cool and tried to get better at drawing from it. And one of the things I remember looking really, really cool was a comic book featuring a character with two awesome swords and cool kickboxing-style headgear. I didn’t even know the character’s name at the time. I certainly didn’t know who Liefeld was. But I knew that this comic book had drawings that were much cooler than a multitude of other comic books I had. It influenced me. I didn’t find out who that character was until roughly 15 years later, which was about a week ago. I discovered that the comic was drawn by Rob Liefeld, and that everybody hates Rob Liefeld’s art just because someone else told them they should hate Rob Liefeld’s art.
Is he the best? No, not by almost anyone’s estimation. But is he the worst? Is he even close to the worst? Not by a long shot. I think anyone who 1. has seen more than just a handful of the most popular comic art out there, 2. is honest with themself about their opinions, and 3. has seen Liefeld’s work prior to being bombarded by the ‘Liefeld Sucks’ bandwagon - cannot say with conviction that he is somehow the most inept yet inexplicably successful artist of all time like everyone seems to. I suspect that a huge - and I mean huge - percentage of the Liefeld haters had never really even heard of him before stumbling onto 'The 40 Worst Liefeld Drawings’ or a rant about his infamous Captain America drawing. I’d wager that in many cases, the people who rag on him had seen his artwork zillions of times without even realizing it before hearing about him and never had any strong opinions about it. But it’s fun to join the mob in unanimous hatred for something, because they can’t all just be following what the last guy said, right? He’s the Nickleback of comic books.
I went through that top 40 list. Here’s a link, in fact.
http://www.progressiveboink.com/2012/4/21/2960508/worst-rob-liefeld-drawings
I am supremely confidant that I could find 40 drawings by Todd McFarlane, and 40 more drawings by Jim Lee, two of the greatest comic artists alive (I think everyone agrees with that) and find as big or bigger oddities, minute mistakes, strange proportions, funny-looking faces, and soforth. I think that many of Jim Lee’s exaggerated drawings of Psylocke and other female characters are often almost indistinguishable from Liefeld’s to the average reader. I’ve come across dozens and dozens of McFarlane panels that I think are objectively worse-looking than many of the Liefeld drawings being critiqued in that list. I would even go so far as to say that McFarlane draws feet even weirder than Liefeld a LOT of the time. So is McFarlane a terrible, no-talent hack? Of course not. He’s an extremely gifted illustrator who has drawn more bodies, arms, legs, eyes, capes, and feet in a couple decades than artists in other mediums will ever draw in their lifetime. Of course he makes mistakes. Of course some things turn out weird. And, most of all, of course he exaggerates things like size and scale because his work is STYLIZED! And that goes for Liefeld, as well.
Case in point: Google “Whilce Portacio Spawn”. Pretty cool, right? Whilce is one of the best. And yet, I think that many of his Spawn drawings are amateurishly stiff, as if he doesn’t always know what to do with Spawn’s arms or hands. Compare the rigid arms and hands to McFarlane or Capullo’s Spawn drawings. Be honest. Stiff, right? Out of place, right? So much so that I would say that Rob Liefeld is better than Whilce at drawing dynamic bodies. But is anyone ranting about how much Whilce Portacio sucks at drawing? No, because he doesn’t. He’s great. Maybe he’s not as good as McFarlane or Lee, but he’s dang good. And so is Liefeld.
Rob Liefeld’s art was obviously good enough to be included with the other guys at Image Comics, a company comprised of the gods of 90s comic art. Jim Lee and Todd McFarlane thought he was really good. He was fired for things like missing deadlines, not because he sucked at drawing. And I think you’re a liar if you say that his stuff stuck out to you as terrible and the other five or six guys’ work was stellar. I’m sorry, but unless you beheld the artwork of all the guys at Image, way back when it was first released, and said “what is this Liefeld guy doing here?”, then you probably formed your opinion AFTER some website told you that you should hate his work.