more 90s stupidity
June 30, 2008 this side of "reality" No Comments
I hopped on the NEW MUTANTS bandwagon about two seconds too late to snag the first appearance of Deadpool (a personal fave) in issue no. 98. Deadpool has the distinction of being maybe the only cool thing, and probably the only enduring concept, that ever came out of a comic plotted by Rob Liefeld—and who really knows how much of the credit should truly belong to the scripter, Fabian Nicieza?
That sounds mean and it probably is. Rob Liefeld has gotten a lot of grief in recent years, and I’m not quite sure that he deserved it all. In a way, his biggest crime is that he was popular enough that the house style at Marvel became “draw like Rob Liefeld” for a while; perhaps it isn’t fair to hold him accountable for that.
Taken on his own merits—though his draftsmanship was (and continues to be) poor by any professional standards (Rob having, apparently, learned his trade by reading comic books rather than by studying such artistic trivialities as anatomy and perspective)—there must have been something to his art that kids in the early 90s found invigorating. And if that style had only been confined to a title or two instead of running rampant over the entire superhero line, I’m disinclined to say that it would have been such a bad thing.
So that said, I try to avoid being a hater—let’s face it, cheap shots at Liefeld are a dime a dozen, so much so that it has become almost passé. Like fish in a barrel, Liefeld’s deficiencies as an artist make him a broad target for a few easy laughs. Though at the same time, in retrospect, it’s just damn hard to understand what all the fuss was about back around the time of THE NEW MUTANTS. In March of 1991, I was 12 years old—theoretically a perfect mark for the Liefeld brand—but somehow I never truly bought into the hype, though ironically, hype is the only reason I own THE NEW MUTANTS No. 99. I’ve never been a fan of the characters.
I did pick up THE NEW MUTANTS No. 100, but then gave up on Rob Liefeld after X-Force No. 1 or thereabouts, and it was saddening when an army of imitators commenced coming out of the woodwork displacing genuinely talented artists for a while.
Ye gads—this comic is only valued at about $2.50 these days! Does anybody own an Overstreet or something from circa 1992? I guarantee you this was fetching $10 to $15 easy.
Admittedly, the cover isn’t too bad. As I looked at this, I thought, “Maybe Liefeld wasn’t total rubbish. This cover has a nice compositional element to it with its use of forced perspective.” Then I noticed the signature box in the lower right-hand corner of the cover.
Ahhh…Rob Liefeld’s best idea for this comic—naturally it was cribbed from a vastly superior artist, John Byrne (X-MEN No. 138).
Byrne’s cover resolves, by the way, a small problem that I have with Liefeld’s rendition: Liefeld’s background characters are all penciled with Rob’s usual superfluity of detail (read: “cross-hatching”), but if they are far enough away from the foreground figure to create such a dramatic difference in scale, they should be rendered fuzzier somehow if only to draw your eye to the one element on the cover that actually matters.
By comparison, on the Byrne cover, the team are rendered in a deep blue, almost making them shadows in the wake of the departing figure of Cyclops in the foreground. Granted, this is perhaps something that Liefeld’s colorist could have recommended. I do think that the stark whitespace works pretty well, however.
Anyway, there’s nothing that I could say about Rob Liefeld that hasn’t been said by many others both sharper and wittier than I am, but I do feel the need to get this one thing off my chest.

What the hell, Rob? Why just one mouth?
Okay, that’s a lie—Rob Liefeld did keep a variant mouth in his artistic repertoire. It’s basically just the same thing as this, but open. Whether the character is sad, angry, amused, frustrated, pensive, whatever, he or she will be showing some gritted teeth.
I don’t know if you’ve ever attempted it, but it is literally impossible to reproduce Liefeld Mouth in an actual human face without the use of CG.
I gave it the old college try by attempting Cable’s face in the above panel, but as I’ve now made it painfully obvious, you basically can’t pull it off without looking like an extra from a George Romero film. Imagine if people walked around making that face all of the time? Spooky.
If, by some marvel of will power and genetic facial pliability you could do Liefeld Mouth, you still wouldn’t be able to—at the same time—suck your cheeks in to provide your visage with that anorectic aspect with which Rob endows all of his characters. If anybody could do it…maybe Jim Carey. But I doubt it.
God, when my wife sees this image on the left, she’s going to cry. I assure you, I’m not that hideous. For her benefit, I’m putting up a photo of myself on a normal day.
In this self-portrait I’m thinking, “Really, Rob Liefeld? Is that the mouth you’re going to go with for the eighth straight panel in a row?”
Okay, I should say something nice about Rob Liefeld…for good measure.
How’s this? Some of his character designs aren’t bad. Some are actually pretty good. Example: others have refined Deadpool’s costume over the year (who designed the bitchin’ belt buckle, I wonder?), but Rob did pretty well with it the first time around, though I think some would say it’s derivative of Spider-Man’s costume. Apart from the obnoxious leg pouch thingy, it’s mercifully free of Liefeld’s typical excesses. So good on you, Rob.
See? A little positivity doesn’t hurt every once in a while.

Hell, I suck at this. Anybody want to help me out?



Given my tendency to watch the same movies over and over again—especially ones with tank tossing and 






Great investment, really. Chuck Dixon basically writes as good a Batman as I’ve read—at least in the mainstream interpretation of him. He’s not an insufferable prick, he’s not infallible, he’s just supremely prepared and he knows how to pick the right people to help him do the job that needs doing. The Outsiders follow him not because they have to or even because he’s paying the bills, but because he’s just that good at this sort of thing. Plus he serves finger sandwiches.