Link

[rowyn]

To truly appreciate this rant, you need to have been reading comics in the late 80s, early 90s, when Rob Liefeld first hit it big as a comic book artist.

You know, if he'd just been a lousy artist, I wouldn't've minded so much. What drove me nuts about Liefeld is that he was insanely popular. He not only drew horribly, he inspired everyone in the industry to draw horribly too, so that they too could make pots of money for drawing characters that looked like crap.

So, yeah, I did have better things to do than read a rant about a sampling of Liefeld's worst drawings, but it felt so good to hear someone else say "Hey! Look! The emperor has no clothes!"

Comments

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Some of the comments were funny, but (aside from the very first picture, my god) most of the things he was complaining about weren't that bad. I mean, compare it to something like Archie, or anything in the Sunday comics section of the newspaper. Yeah, whee, this arm is slightly out of proportion and OH MY GOD there's something obscuring a foot! Sheesh.

Not to mention the ones that amounted to "Hey look, this superhero's outfit is stupid-looking!" That makes about as much sense as "Ha ha, look at all that face paint that clown is wearing, what an idiot!"

Really, most of the pictures don't look any different than comics from before he even started drawing. Comics were always kind of ugly. Some of them are pretty now, and some of the pretty ones managed it by exaggerating stuff the same way Liefeld did, just doing it with some actual talent behind it.

... that said, that first picture is really frighteningly horrible. I'm going to have nightmares.