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Why Is Rob Liefeld the Most Hated Man in Comics?

The only name that seems to evoke more drooling, steaming, foaming, passionate out-and-out hatred than that of Ron Marz seems to be that of Rob Liefeld, industry celebrity, one-time Image stalwart, one-time comics pinch-hitter, and still-working artist / writer / publisher.

Looking at him (see picture--the smiling redhead), one gets no clues as to what great, secret evil makes him wear the mantle of Enemy of Comicdom. But, nonetheless, he seems to bear this title, whether he's really living up to the demands of the office. Search the Web for "Rob Liefeld" and what will come back is vitriol, diatribes, and long, passionate damning of the man. Furthermore, searching terms like "worst writer" and "worst artist" and "comics that suck" will, likely as not, return you something with his name on it. To take the opinion from the web, an unbiased observer might begin to wonder if, instead of writing and drawing comic books, Mister Liefeld hadn't done something terrible and hidden the bodies afterwards. What is the deal?

He's behind Youngblood (now cancelled), Supreme (now cancelled), Awesome Comics, a movie script and the Youngblood video game. These things are precisely what we might expect of a declining comics celebrity. But what is it about this young man that makes so many people hate him so much?

To someone who's sat out the years of comic books between 1983 and 1997, it's sort of baffling what any one human being could have done to merit the universal condemnation that Liefeld's name routinely elicits. But what is it? Did some district attorney catch him, hidden in an apartment somewhere, with pieces of schoolchildren stored in pickle jars for later consumption? Was he photographed running the ovens at Dachau? Did he architect the fall of Rome, Byzantium, the European empires of Britain, France, Italy?

My research hasn't caught him doing anything more important than comic books. And come on, folks; while even Adolf Hitler has sites on the web that say he's a cool guy, I can't find anything that Liefeld didn't compose himself that suggests that he might be less evil than the Prince of Darkness. Yet the most dangerous implements he's used would be pen, ink, typewriter, word processor; and the most ominous papers he ever endorsed were contracts to work for various comics companies and now to pen a movie script.

What Has He Done

In the middle of all this hate-Liefeld passion on the web, it's difficult to find a good overview of his career. This is one reason no images appear on this page to demonstrate either Liefeld's kisser or samples of his work (and, also, the fact that Mr. Liefeld doesn't want anyone to use his stuff).

Sometime when this author wasn't reading comics (after 1982), Liefeld appeared as a penciler on The New Mutants, and may have had other mainstream comics credits. However, with the creation of the ill-fated Image Comics in the early 1990s Liefeld had definitely became a "name" in the industry.

His pencils are certainly distinctive. Looking at his stuff, you can easily imagine a smell of sweat and rampaging adrenaline (perhaps in quantities adequate to signal an oncoming heart attack). While definitely an acquired taste, his style of rendering superheroes was more interesting than much of what passed for comics in the mid-to-late eighties, when, at times, it seemed that the medium had dissolved in a sea of indifference.

The founding of Image Comics placed him firmly among a stable of celebrity artist/creators who, for their short moment, would shake up the industry and throw a scare into it so profound that readers can now find many signs of Image's influence on the Big Two comics publishers. This bubble burst for a variety of reasons, and, if we look fairly, we can't say that Liefeld either created or destroyed it; very likely it would have gone the same way had he (and most of the other Image creators) never entered the business.

Why Everyone Hates Him

A few obvious reasons why people might hate Rob Liefeld come to mind.

• His style is an acquired taste. Liefeld's style contains idiosyncrasies that some readers may not find particularly endearing: anatomical distortions (limb proportions, odd-looking wrists, and some other things); facial expressions that fall into a narrow range; composition/storytelling that sometimes falls flat, is redundant, or unimaginative; lack of background detail. People who judge artists on technique criteria can find a number of reasons to dislike Liefeld without having to consider the whole work.
• He is a fading celebrity who rode the crest of an annoying fad. People tend to hate celebrities when they see an enthusiasm expressed for a celebrity who doesn't do anything for them. A reader who dislikes or is indifferent to what Liefeld does quickly could come to dislike him from the unnecessary adulation he once received.
• He's part of the artist/creator movement. The myth of the artist/creator presumes that the best work comes from a single artist/inker/writer/editor who creates his stories and characters from the ground up, and therefore that's how artists should work. Jack Kirby, Will Eisner, Jim Starlin, and a number of other figures made careers on their cross-disciplinary one-man approach to comics; but that doesn't prove that anyone else can do it. The sentiment of many, many comics readers is that Liefeld's writing is weak.
• He's a visible target to mark for the excesses of the "New Comics". As big a deal as Image seemed in its early days, that company and its style of "New Comics" are now looked upon as a discredited form, defined by critics as excessively cynical, overly graphic, bloat-muscled, too-violent exercises in immoderation with plenty of lovingly rendered violence and almost-nude female characters. Why these traits aren't really so new is that they simply exaggerate excesses of the medium as it has always existed; in a sense, they make the "New Comics" like a humorless parody of the medium. Many people don't like the "New Comics" and therefore don't like Liefeld. Never mind that the new is the obvious offspring of the old.
• People miss the Silver Age. There is no shortage of worshipful descriptions of comics' Silver Age. The Silver Age has passed, though, and it had been gone a long time before anyone heard of Rob Liefeld. Comparisons of "New Comics" to Silver Age comics often miss this point; the "New Comics" never displaced the Silver Age comics, which had died a natural death already. The "New Comics" originated in a vacuum created by the uninspired state of mainstream comics that were generally incapable of generating enthusiasm. Rob Liefeld did not end the Silver Age.
• He did weird stuff for Heroes Reborn. The best way to make a reader angry is to tamper with his favorite characters or titles. Marvel Comics hired Liefeld to do both for Captain America and The Avengers and the storm of protest is still going strong. Marvel made a decision, during this period, that followed a certain logic: Since Image(-style) comics are outselling the hell out of Marvel comics, Marvel's market share will improve if we remake some titles in Image's image. The strategy failed, leaving no one happy; no one liked Liefeld's recent Marvel stuff, Marvel didn't sell many comics, Liefeld didn't get to finish out his contract.

A Verdict

Even with all these faults admitted, this writer can't summon the righteous indignation to banish Liefeld from the medium. No, his stuff doesn't really do it for me, but I'm not everyone in the world and I can still find stuff I like--that is to say, Mister Liefeld could thrive, be happy, become a millionaire comics magnate and be all over the place, and it would not lessen my satisfaction with life in the least.

I know people don't like him. That's their decision. What's odd is that they can't simply ignore him. I spent the first three decades of my life not worrying about him at all, and, once this habit begins, it's easy to maintain.

Consider that there may be a day when comics sink so far that people nostalgically pine for the days when Liefeld was ascendant. And also consider that people didn't get this mad at Josef Mengele.