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Rob Liefeld (born March 10, 1967) is an American comic book writer, illustrator and publisher, who is one of the Modern Age’s most popular and controversial figures. Although an undeniable superstar in the 1990s, a backlash against his unrealistically exaggerated art style and allegations of plagiarism made him known as "The Most Hated Man in Comics."

In the early 1990s, Liefeld became a superstar due to his work on Marvel Comics’ The New Mutants, and later X-Force. In 1992 he and other popular Marvel illustrators left the company to found Image Comics, which was dedicated to the relatively recent idea of comic books owned by their creators rather than their publishers. Liefeld’s high-profile line of comics, however, failed to gain much critical approval.

Fans praise Liefeld’s artwork as energetic and action-packed but it has been widely criticized for excessive flamboyance, limited versatility, arbitrary use of cross-hatching, and improbable anatomy. Liefeld's original creations, like many Image properties, have been panned as two-dimensional and generic. A few of his characters bear specific similarities to previously existing ones, leading some to deem Liefeld a plagiarist. He was also known to turn in his art pages on The New Mutants out of order in order to disguise the fact that he was changing the story without notifying the writer or editor, but he is not the only artist known to have done this, and writer Louise Simonson, with whom he was paired on The New Mutants, has even good-naturedly asserted that the stories were improved by him in some cases.

However, most readers agree that unrealistically exaggerated artwork and decreased focus on character development were widespread trends in mainstream comic books in the early 1990s. For this reason, some consider Liefeld merely the most vilified representative of an industry-wide fad. But few deny that Liefeld's lines of comics were marked at that time by rather primitive writing, that his characters and conceptions were often derivative, and that his erratic publishing schedules alienated both retailers and consumers.

Biography

In 1985, at the age of 18, Liefeld completed his first significant published work, pencils for a mini-series featuring the superhero pair Hawk and Dove for DC Comics. After disputes with his collaborators at DC, he soon moved to Marvel, where in 1990 he became the regular illustrator of The New Mutants (starting with issue #86), starring a junior team of X-Men. The popularity of Liefeld's art soon allowed him to increasingly take control of the series' story. At the suggestion of Marvel editors, Liefeld introduced a new leader for the team, the heavily-muscled, heavily-armed, glowing-eyed cyborg Cable, who instantly became a popular anti-hero.

Liefeld also created the wise-cracking assassin Deadpool and a group of immortal mutants called the Externals. Both were popular, but prompted Liefeld's first charges of plagiarism, as fans debated similarities between Deadpool and DC's Deathstroke the Terminator and between the Externals and the immortals from Highlander.

With The New Mutants #98, Liefeld assumed full creative control over the book, pencilling, inking, and plotting, with Fabian Nicieza writing scripts. He then transformed The New Mutants into the platoon-like X-Force. The 1991 debut issue of X-Force sold four million copies, an industry-wide record soon broken by X-Men #1, illustrated by Jim Lee. In both cases, variant editions were used to sell multiple issues to single collectors; but where X-Men used multiple variant covers, X-Force relied on multiple variant trading cards polybagged with the comic itself.

However, Liefeld soon grew dissatisfied at Marvel. He was one of a group of young, popular artists (including Lee) who left Marvel in 1992 to form Image Comics, in a migration sometimes called "the X-Odus" (many of these artists had worked on X-Men related titles for Marvel). Liefeld's superhero team series Youngblood was the first Image comic to hit the shelves and contained many elements that became Image stereotypes: huge muscles, huge breasts, huge guns, huge explosions, and plentiful violence. The characters in the series were often considered derivative of existing Marvel characters. Nevertheless, Youngblood and its sister titles sold very well.

Within the Image structure, Liefeld owned two imprints: Extreme Studios and Maximum Press. Once Image began publishing, Liefeld's artwork appeared much less frequently. Liefeld claimed the delays sprang from his management responsibilities; some observers attributed them to Liefeld's sudden acquisition of substantial wealth and lack of supervision. He continued to plot and create properties, however, including Youngblood and its various spin-offs, the Superman-like Supreme and the femme fatale Glory. Critical approval of these characters was scarce.

In 1996, Liefeld and Lee returned to Marvel to reboot some of the company's classic series, an event dubbed "Heroes Reborn". Liefeld was contracted to write 12 issues of The Avengers and write (with Jeph Loeb) and illustrate 12 of Captain America, but he failed to meet the agreed-on publishing schedule and his output met with an unenthusiastic response. Marvel terminated the agreement, and the balance of the series were assigned to Jim Lee's studio.

Later that year, Liefeld left Image Comics, after disputes with his partners led Marc Silvestri to temporarily break away from Image. The comics press reported that tension arose from various factors, such as the effect of Liefeld's erratic output on the company's reputation, Liefeld's supposed misuse of his position as Image CEO to unfairly benefit his publishing efforts, and his imprints' raiding the "talent pools" of the other Image partners in violation of their informal agreements. As further financial reverses followed, Liefeld moved all of his publishing ventures into a new company, Awesome Comics, which concentrated its efforts on newer properties.

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, perhaps so Liefeld could then re-use his art with only minor alterations. Marvel threatened legal action, so Liefeld acquired the rights to the Fighting American, an obscure patriotic superhero invented in the 1960s by Captain America's creators, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. Liefeld's Fighting American was also nearly identical to Captain America (his shield no longer contained a star in the center, for example: the shield logo had moved to his chest), but at least he was a legally legitimate property. Marvel and Liefeld settled their dispute with limits placed on Liefeld's use of the character: for example, the Fighting American was supposedly prohibited from throwing his shield.

Meanwhile, Liefeld hired legendary comic book writer Alan Moore to revive many of his creations, which were dwindling in popularity. Moore wrote a few issues of Youngblood and Glory, but his most lauded work was on Supreme, which played on the character's derivative nature in an undisguised tribute to the Mort Weisenger-era Superman. Awesome, like Liefeld's previous imprints, soon collapsed under the burdens of its unpredictable publishing schedule, its erratic content, and Liefeld's declining popularity with mainline comics consumers.

Some have attributed the collapse of Liefeld's ventures to a flawed business model: his projects began with bursts of revenue from speculative comics buyers and the optioning of movie/TV rights, but never generated the consistent revenue stream required to run the ongoing businesses and return investment and profits to their backers. Liefeld's reportedly extravagant lifestyle did not help.

In recent years, Liefeld has returned to the X-Men franchise, pencilling the occasional cover and/or interior of Cable and X-Force, which continued to be somewhat popular properties until the early 2000s, when both were cancelled.

In 2004, he reunited with Fabian Nicieza for an X-Force miniseries and illustrated the early covers for Nicieza's Cable and Deadpool. In that same year, Liefeld formed Arcade Comics and is once again attempting to revive Youngblood. He is also working with Devin Grayson on two issues of DC's Teen Titans.

Liefeld's new website was launched in May 2005 at Rob Liefeld.net, with an online comic titled Shrink, a string of one-panel jokes.

Artistic Criticism

Below are common characteristics of Liefeld's artwork. Some are idiosyncratic, while others were fairly widespread trends in mainstream comics of the 1990s.

• Limited facial expressions, generally ranging from barely-restrained rage to unrestrained rage (see X-Force covers above)
• Concealment of characters' feet, almost without exception
• Concealment of characters' wrists: many of his own designs have bracers or large gloves
• Disproportionate or misplaced facial features
• Bizarre proportions such as tiny heads, wrists, and ankles and oversized breasts and muscles, as well as the occasional "swipe" with female face and breasts layered onto a male figure
• Panel-to-panel inconsistencies in costumes, backgrounds, and even the number of fingers on characters' hands
• Poses that appear to be illogical (in the context of the plot), uncomfortable, or anatomically impossible
• Skewed perspective: often a picture will be began in one perspective then be finished in another (see Captain America above)
• Plagiarism: Aside from charges of plagiarism in character creation, Liefeld is also accused of "swiping" (copying illustrations from other comics without acknowledgment)

Trivia

• Liefeld was featured in a television commercial for Levi's "501" jeans, directed by Spike Lee.
• Liefeld marketed the action figure of Youngblood's archer character, Shaft, as "Rob Liefeld's Shaft: 7 Inches, fully poseable," an unintentional double entendre.

External Links

• Rob Liefeld's official website
• Extreme Genesis - a Rob Liefeld fan site with many samples of his artwork
• Rob Liefeld - a list of Liefeld's work while at Marvel Comics
• Official Rob Liefeld forum
• Examples of supposedly "swiped" artwork

• Cartoonists
• Comic book artists