Rob Liefeld (born October 3, 1967, in Anaheim, California) is an American comic book writer, illustrator, and publisher. A prominent artist in the 1990s, he has since become a controversial figure in the medium.
In the early 1990s, self-taught artist Liefeld became prominent due to his work on Marvel Comics' The New Mutants and later X-Force. In 1992, he and several other popular Marvel illustrators left the company to found Image Comics, which started a wave of comic books owned by their creators rather than by publishers. The first book published by Image Comics was Rob Liefeld's Youngblood #1.
In 1986, Liefeld was a last-minute replacement penciller for the first issue of Stetch, published by Silverwolf Comics. In the same year, Liefeld also had a pin-up page included in Boris the Bear #6.
In 1988, at the age of 20, he completed his first significant published work for DC Comics' in Warlord #131 and Secret Origins #28. This was quickly followed by the Hawk and Dove limited series by Barbara and Karl Kesel, who also provided inks. Liefeld's layouts were oriented sideways in story pages taking place in a chaos dimension, so that a reader would have to turn the comic book at a right angle to read them. Because this was done without editorial input, editor Mike Carlin cut and pasted the panels into the proper order, and Kesel lightboxed them onto DC comics paper to ink them. The letters column of Hawk and Dove #5 mentions that Liefeld "showed something new to an editor who thought he’d seen everything." In his defense, Liefeld offered that that was how the dimension had been drawn the only other time it had been featured in the book, although Karl Kesel claims this is untrue.
In 1989, Liefeld moved to Marvel where he became the penciller for The New Mutants, starting with issue #86. He is generally credited for turning this lowest-selling title of the X-franchise into a financial success.
With The New Mutants (vol. 1) #98, Liefeld assumed full creative control over the series, penciling, inking, and plotting, with Fabian Nicieza writing dialog. The New Mutants series was retitled X-Force (vol. 1), whose 1991 debut issue sold four million copies, setting an industry-wide record later broken by Jim Lee's X-Men (vol. 2) #1. The sales numbers were propelled by 1990s direct market sales strategies; variant editions were issued to encourage sales of multiple copies to single collectors. Lee's X-Men was published with five variant covers, and X-Force relied on multiple variant trading cards polybagged with the comic itself.
Leaving Marvel Comics, co-founding Image Comics
Liefeld's relationship with Marvel began to break down in 1991 when he announced plans in a black-and-white advertisement in the Comics Buyers Guide to publish an original title with competitor Malibu Comics. The exact title is unknown, but according to journalist Michael Dean, it was something to the effect of The X-Cutioners, a title whose similarity to Marvel's X-Men family of titles evoked the ire of Marvel editor Bob Harras, who threatened to fire Liefeld if he used that title.
Liefeld and several other popular young artists including Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, Erik Larsen, Whilce Portacio, Jim Valentino and Marc Silvestri left Marvel in 1992 to form Image Comics. Each co-founder formed his own studio under the Image banner, such as Liefeld's Extreme Studios. Liefeld's superhero team series Youngblood, which is loosely based on a 1991 Teen Titans series Liefeld had proposed to DC Comics, was the first comic Image published. His other titles included Bloodstrike #1, which was released in April 1993. Extreme Studios comics contained elements that became Image stereotypes: huge muscles, breasts, and guns. However, Youngblood immediately began to suffer from delayed publication dates and major changes in direction. Critical approval of these characters was scarce, and while Liefeld's wholesale sales to comic books dealers were strong, sales to consumers, especially of secondary titles from Extreme and Maximum Press, were not as spectacular.
In an interview in Hero Illustrated #4 (October 1993), Liefeld conceded disappointment with the first four issues of Youngblood, calling the first issue a "disaster". Liefeld explained that production problems, as well as sub-par scripting by his friend and collaborator Hank Kanalz, whose employment Liefeld later terminated, resulted in work that was lower in quality than that which Liefeld produced when Fabian Nicieza scripted his plots on X-Force, and that reprints of those four issues would be re-scripted.
In 1996, Liefeld's and Lee's studios signed with Marvel to re-envision several of the company's core series, an event called "Heroes Reborn." Liefeld was contracted to write twelve issues of The Avengers, co-written with Jeph Loeb, and was to pencil twelve issues of Captain America. However, he failed to meet the publishing schedule and his overall output met with a less-than enthusiastic response, failing to reach the sales targets required in his agreement with Marvel, although Loeb noted in Wizard Magazine #72 that their run on Captain America had three times the sales of issues prior to their run. Marvel terminated the agreement after six issues, and Marvel re-assigned the two series to Lee's studio.
Departure from Image
In June 1996, Marc Silvestri temporarily left Image with his Top Cow imprint, allegedly because of disputes with the other partners over Liefeld's status in the company. Among the many accusations against Liefeld, which came to light in subsequently filed legal complaints, was the charge that Liefeld routinely used his check-writing powers to cover personal debts from Image funds. Other dissatisfaction with Liefeld ranged from his alleged habit of copying art from other partners' comics to his plans to move titles that had been established at Image to the non-Image Maximum Press. Image Comics Executive Director Larry Marder is quoted as saying "He [Rob] was making an increasing number of business decisions that were counterproductive to being a business partner".
In addition to allegedly siphoning funds, he was said to have used Image staff to do promotional and production work for Maximum. In early September, Liefeld issued a press release stating he was resigning his position at Image and leaving the group. Nearly simultaneously, the Image partners issued a press release stating that they had fired Liefeld. The other partners had already voted once to remove Liefeld from the group, a move he protested on the grounds that he was given too short a notice period. His resignation came only minutes before the second meeting that would have forced him out.
The comics press variously reported several underlying issues: the effect of Liefeld's erratically published and critically derided lines on the company's reputation, his supposed misuse of his position as Image CEO to unfairly benefit his own publishing efforts (including Maximum Press, which was not a part of Image) and attempts to recruit artists employed by his Image partners, a violation of their informal agreements. As further financial reversals followed, Liefeld moved all of his publishing ventures into a new company, Awesome Comics. This new enterprise, announced in April 1997 as a partnership between Liefeld and Malibu Comics founding partner Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, concentrated its efforts on newer properties.
Awesome Comics
At Awesome, Liefeld and Loeb attempted to resurrect their unused Captain America plots for a new character, Agent America. This character was nearly identical in appearance and background to Captain America. Under legal pressure from Marvel, Liefeld scrapped Agent America and acquired the rights to Jack Kirby and Joe Simon's Fighting American, updating the design. Liefeld was allowed to publish the book, but legally this new character could not throw his shield, one of Captain America's trademarks.
Meanwhile, Liefeld hired acclaimed comic book writer Alan Moore to revive many of his creations, which had declined in popularity. Moore wrote a few issues of Youngblood and Glory, but his most lauded work for Liefeld was on Supreme, which played on the character's more generic traits in a clear tribute to the Mort Weisinger-era Superman.
Awesome's initial releases, including entirely new properties like Kaboom! created by Jeff Matsuda, were generally received more favorably by critics than the Extreme and Maximum lines had been. However, Awesome soon collapsed under the burdens of disputes among its partners, and an abrupt departure of its primary investor.
In the 2000s, Liefeld returned to his former characters in the X-Men franchise, providing pencils for the occasional cover and/or interior of Cable and X-Force until the early 2000s, when both were cancelled.
In 2004, he reunited with Fabian Nicieza for an X-Force limited series and illustrated the early covers for Nicieza's Cable and Deadpool. In that same year, Liefeld formed Arcade Comics and once again announced plans to revive Youngblood. These involved reprinting older material and providing the art for two new series Youngblood: Bloodsport with Mark Millar and Youngblood: Genesis with Brandon Thomas. Although the former only published one issue, Liefeld expressed hopes to finish the series.
Liefeld returned to the Heroes Reborn Universe with writer Jeph Loeb with the Onslaught Reborn, a five-issue limited series that premiered in November 2006. This led to Liefeld having a pitch accepted for a plan to bring Killraven back, with writer Robert Kirkman.
Return to Image Comics
In July 2007, it was announced that Rob Liefeld and Youngblood would be returning to Image Comics after years of self-publication. This new partnership marks the first time in a decade that Liefeld and Image would collaborate on a project. The new Youngblood series is written by Joe Casey with art by Derec Donovan and Val Staples, with covers by Liefeld, and started in January 2008.
To commemorate the event, and the 15th anniversary of Image Comics, the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con was headlined by the Image Founders panel, where all seven of the original Image Comics founders appeared on stage simultaneously for the first time in history.
Since the heyday of Image Comics, Liefeld's name has become something of a lightning rod in the industry. In an interview, Brian Michael Bendis described the polarization of opinion on Liefeld: "There is a great dichotomy...There's either some great and generous story about [Liefeld] or you will hear some unbelievable thing like, 'How is he not in jail if he did that?' There is no middle ground."
In interviews, Liefeld has compared himself to other popular artists who experience meteoric success and acclaim early in their careers but near-pariah status afterwards, notably Britney Spears, who "became vapid pop music, and perhaps I was nothing more than a vapid comic book artist." He seems to credit his success tapping into the zeitgeist: "I'll be the first to tell you that we [the Image collective] were never the best artists. We were never the best at anything, but just like a song or a band or whatever, we caught on and we toured rigorously."
He is, however, not without supporters in the industry. Writer Jeph Loeb, with whom Liefeld collaborated, and writer Mark Millar are reported to be admirers of his work.
Art style
Liefeld has been criticized for drawing figures with exaggerated muscular anatomy, long legs and tiny feet, along with an improbable profusion of weapons, accessories, and pouches, that have been subject to parody. On the one hand, these stylistic devices were seen as the impetus for his initial success, when such affectations were unusual in comics, and helped lend such characters to successfully merchandised products. On the other hand, the approach later became considered a cliché and led to a widespread hostility towards the style. Liefeld agrees for the most part with this estimation of his early work, saying, "In the mid-90's we Mortal Kombat'ed everything. I'm as guilty as anyone..."
Lateness
Liefeld has become known for producing late books, primarily for his own productions, though somewhat less so when doing work-for-hire. Some issues of his series Youngblood shipped as much as nine months late. Liefeld has attributed this to the greater incentive a freelancer feels when doing work-for-hire assignments for a company, as opposed to working on one's own self-owned work.
Credit and plagiarism disputes
At the beginning of Liefeld's run on the New Mutants the heavily-muscled, heavily-armed cyborg character Cable was created for the team, and became a popular anti-hero, although there is some dispute over Cable's origin, with Liefeld, Bob Harras, and Louise Simonson all claiming credit for some or all of the character concept. For a time, Marvel credited only Liefeld and Simonson as Cable's creators within the Cable & Deadpool series. He also was credited as the sole creator of Youngblood, when documentation suggests that Liefeld's longtime friend and collaborator Hank Kanalz co-developed that team with him.
In addition to this, Liefeld is also alleged to have made a habit of swiping, or copying, art from other artists. Liefeld responded to this accusation by stating that in these instances, which he said were limited to ten, he was offering tribute to the artists of the original pieces in question, rather than plagiarizing, and compared this to the work of filmmaker Brian DePalma, who explicitly used the techniques of Alfred Hitchcock, who influenced DePalma. Writer and Comics Buyer's Guide columnist Peter David responded to this rationale by pointing out that DePalma himself was criticized harshly by film critics for employing Hitchcock's techniques, and that Liefeld, who has identified himself as a "stickler" for credit, did not credit artists whose work he copied, instances of which exceeded the ten upon which Liefeld insisted. David also pointed out that some of these artists, such as John Byrne and George Perez, did not react to this practice on Liefeld's part as a "tribute," and expressed displeasure at the degree to which Liefeld relied on their work.
Personal acrimony related to departure from Image comics
It was alleged that Liefeld was too preoccupied by dreams of Hollywood, spending time in meetings with Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise, to effectively publish comic books or participate in the business side of the Image venture, a criticism that Liefeld admits is at least partly true. He reportedly fell asleep at numerous Image board meetings.
After the San Diego Comicon panel in 2007, Liefeld was interviewed by Wizard magazine about his feud with the Image partners. He claimed the feud was in the past, saying: "The divorce was ugly, but to me it didn't linger....I realized you just need to let it go."
Prelude to Deadpool Corps #1 (written by Victor Gischler, 5-issue limited series, Marvel Comics, May 2010, 120 pages, premiere hardcover, July 2010, ISBN 0-7851-4752-7)
Deadpool Corps (with Victor Gischler, Marvel Comics, June 2010—present)
