Rob Liefeld
Robert Liefeld is an American comic book creator. A prominent writer and artist in the 1990s, he is known for co-creating the character Cable with writer Louise Simonson and the character Deadpool with writer Fabian Nicieza. In the early 1990s, Liefeld gained popularity 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 Liefeld's Youngblood #1.
Liefeld has been called one of the most controversial figures in the comic industry for his drawing skills, business practices, and controversial comments.
Early life
Rob Liefeld was born on October 3, 1967, in Fullerton, California, the younger child of a Baptist minister and a part-time secretary. He and his sister, seven years his senior, grew up in Anaheim, California.Liefeld's love of comics began as a child, which led early on to his decision to be a professional artist, a practice that began with his tracing artwork from comic books. As a high-school student, he took basic fundamental art courses, and attended comic book conventions at the nearby Disneyland Hotel, where he met creators such as George Pérez, John Romita Jr., Jim Shooter, Bob Layton, Mike Zeck and Marv Wolfman. Liefeld cites Pérez, along with John Byrne and Frank Miller, as major influences. He has also noted how the influence of Arthur Adams is visible in his art.
Career
Early career
After graduating from high school, Liefeld took life drawing classes at a local junior college, working odd jobs for about a year, including as a pizza delivery man and construction worker, while practicing his artwork, samples of which he sent to small comics publishers, as he was too intimidated to send them to the "Big Two" companies of Marvel Comics and DC Comics.Among the editors he sent art samples around 1985 to Gary Carlson of Megaton Comics. Carlson was working on Megaton #4, and was looking for replacements for artists who had moved on to bigger projects. Liefeld's submission packet consisted mostly of pinups of DC Comics characters like the Teen Titans and Legion of Super Heroes, as well as some sketches of Megaton characters. Some of these earlier pinups are visible on Liefeld's website. Although Carlson thought Liefeld's depictions of his characters was not sufficiently accurate, and exhibited what Carlson characterized as "some goofy anatomy", he found Liefeld's storytelling to be clear, and his rendering style evocative of the influence of artist George Pérez. Although Carlson liked Liefeld's work overall, he felt the young artist was not ready for professional work. Weeks later he received another set of samples that were an improvement, and later still, a four-page Berserker story, along with pinups of the Megaton characters Ultragirl and Ultraman. Carlson used one of the pinups as the inside front cover to Megaton #5, and Liefeld's Ultragirl pinup in the company's Who's Who–type reference book Megaton Explosion #1. The book also featured an entry for Liefeld's own creation, a team of superheroes called Youngblood, the very first appearance of that team in print.
Carlson and his colleague Chris Ecker later met with the teenaged Liefeld, who at that point had not yet obtained his driver's license, at the Ramada O'Hare Hotel, which was then the location of the Chicago ComiCon. Impressed with the artist's enthusiasm and the new art samples he showed them, Carlson gave Liefeld a test script in order to judge his ability to draw a page-to-page comics story. Although Carlson was impressed with Liefeld's layouts, the story was eventually drawn by Gary Thomas by the time it saw print in Megaton #7. Two months later Liefeld drew the team in an advertisement in Megaton #8, which indicated that it would next appear in Megaton Special #1, by Liefeld and writer Hank Kanalz, with a cover by artist Jerry Ordway. However, Megaton Comics went out of business before that could be printed.
Success with DC Comics and Marvel Comics
Learning from a friend of a comic book convention in San Francisco where a large number of editors would be in attendance, Liefeld and his friend drove several hours to San Francisco, where they stayed with his aunt and uncle. At the convention, he showed editors his samples and offered a package, which consisted of 10 pages of sequential art featuring his own characters. Editor Dick Giordano, to whom Liefeld showed his samples at the DC booth, requested that Liefeld send him more samples. Although Liefeld was apprehensive about approaching the Marvel booth, he did so at his friend's urging, and as a result, editor Mark Gruenwald offered Liefeld a job illustrating an eight-page Avengers backup story featuring the Black Panther, much to the 19-year-old artist's surprise. Though the published story was ultimately illustrated by another artist, Liefeld was later given character design work by the publisher. His first published story, was a DC Comics Bonus Book insert in Warlord #131. Editor Robert Greenberger recalled that Liefeld "was discovered by my office-mate, Jonathan Peterson, who was scrambling to find something for him to do. I had the Warlord Bonus Book slot coming up, so to keep Rob from finding work at our rival, I tapped him for that." Next came the five-issue miniseries Hawk and Dove for DC Comics, the first issue of which was published with an October 1988 cover date. It was this work that first garnered Liefeld visibility among readers of mainstream comics. That same year, Liefeld drew Secret Origins #28.Liefeld's layouts for Hawk and Dove #5, which took place in a chaos dimension, were oriented sideways so that a reader would have to turn the comic book at a right angle to read them. Because this was done without prior editorial approval, editor Mike Carlin cut and pasted the panels into the proper order, and Karl 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." Liefeld explained this was how the dimension had been portrayed the only other time it had been shown. Kesel disputed this, asserting that this was the first time that dimension had been shown, but a 2007 article in Comic Book Resources pointed out that artist Erik Larsen had indeed portrayed that realm in this manner in Doom Patrol #14, which had been published three months prior.
Shortly thereafter, Liefeld began doing work for Marvel Comics as well, his first assignment for them being The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #23. In 1989, Liefeld became the penciller for the Marvel series The New Mutants, starting with issue #86. He is generally credited for turning this lowest-selling title of the X-Men franchise into a financial success, which underlined the increased popularity and clout that his stint on the title had earned him.
With The New Mutants #98, Liefeld assumed full creative control over the series, penciling, inking and plotting, with Fabian Nicieza writing dialog. The New Mutants series ended with issue 100, and was replaced with a revamped version of the team called X-Force, whose 1991 debut issue sold four million copies, setting an industry-wide record later broken by Chris Claremont and Jim Lee's X-Men #1. The sales numbers were propelled by 1990s direct market sales strategies: five variant edition trading cards were polybagged with X-Force #1 to encourage sales of multiple copies to single collectors, while X-Men #1 was sold with five variant covers. As of 2013, X-Force #1 remains the second highest-selling comic book in history.
In mid-1990, Levi's began producing a series of TV commercials directed by Spike Lee for their 501 button fly jeans, which included an onscreen 800 number that viewers who worked in unique jobs could call in order to appear in the company's commercials. After calling the number and leaving a message describing himself and his career, Liefeld appeared in one of the commercials, in which Lee interviews Liefeld about his career and his creation, X-Force.
Liefeld was subsequently interviewed by Stan Lee in the second episode of the 1991 documentary series The Comic Book Greats, in which he discussed how he broke into the industry, demonstrated his drawing technique, and talked about his Levi's commercial.
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 Buyer's 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.File:10.2.10LiefeldMychaelsByLuigiNovi1.jpg|thumb|left|Liefeld and Marat Mychaels share a laugh as they sketch at the Big Apple Convention in Manhattan, October 2, 2010.
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 partially a derivative of a 1991 Teen Titans series Liefeld had proposed to DC Comics, was the first comic Image published. He appeared on an episode of The Dennis Miller Show to promote the book.
The series' first issue met with negative reception from fans and critics for the unclear storytelling effected not only by Liefeld's art, but by the book's flip format, which some readers found confusing, as well as the book's poor anatomy; incorrect perspective; non-existent backgrounds; poor dialogue and the late shipping of the book, a problem that continued with subsequent issues. In an interview in Hero Illustrated #4, 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. Writer and Comics Buyer's Guide columnist Peter David pointed to Liefeld's scapegoating of Kanalz as an example of Liefeld's failure to take responsibility for his project, and evidence that genuine collaboration with good writers like Louise Simonson and Fabian Nicieza, which some of the Image founders did not appreciate, had previously reflected better on Liefeld's art.
Other titles produced by Liefeld's Extreme Studios during the 1990s included Brigade, Bloodstrike, Glory, Prophet, Supreme, Team Youngblood, Youngblood Strikefile, Troll, New Men and Avengelyne.
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. Due to disappointing sales, Marvel terminated the agreement after six issues, and reassigned the two series to Lee's studio, one of the most controversial episodes in Liefeld's career.