One thing I heard about the Image founders is these superstar artists found out they no longer had time to draw on a monthly schedule. Each had their own art studio that they were CEO of (and getting their feet wet with), and Image was just the publishing arm. Liefeld had Extreme, Silvestri had Top Cow, Jim Lee had Wildstorm. They had to become business minded and deal with all the things the "suits" at Marvel did. It took up so much time, keeping their own monthly titles on track was a chore. Now, I don't know for certain, but I think Rob Liefeld had to rush his work on Captain America. He seemed to being trying to fill a contractual obligation that he didn't have time for which is why this looks so bad compared to his previous work on X-Force and The New Mutants. I don't think any of the 4 Heroes Reborn titles had the same artist on the book for all 13 issues. On a side note, the issue 13 crossovers blended the Marvel characters with Omage characters. Wildcats Maul was in the Fantastic Four group, for example. Unfortunately, due to legal rights issues, the issue 13 Heroes Reborn books aren't collected together. They have to be found as floppies.
Liefeld imprints a ton of energy into his drawings, regardless of the errors and miscalculations in angles, proportions and postures of his characters. I think that is his charm; the dynamism and expressivity of his work really have an appeal to them.
Oh, man! Leifeld and I are both from Anaheim, and I worked for a short time with his sister in Disneyland's Marketing Dept. She was a print coordinator, but left Disney to work for her brother on licensing merch for his comic book characters. I agree with your assessment of Leifeld's work. One of his strengths that you may have been groping for was, to me, his incredible detail in all kinds of whacky things. He DID have an eye for dramatic layouts but, as you mentioned, his technique was overwhelmingly amateur. I think he could see what he wanted in his mind but, unfortunately, his command of anatomy, proportion and simple reference to reality were hysterically bad. And then there was that energy you mentioned. But yeah, he put the "comic" back in "comic books." Leifeld is a true enigma. I always love your take on artwork.
I was 6 to 16 years old in the 90's and I get and appreciated Rob Liefeld's art. He is an impressionist like Van Gogh, Picasso and Andy Warhol. Look at their artworks, it is not realistic.
Liefeld's art makes my eyes bleed. All of it. Even the supposed "good stuff." It looks like the high school notebook-doodle cat-scratchings of a 15 year old hyper-active headbanger. It's aesthetically un-appealing in every way. I think he uses a 40 year old photo of Clint Howard as the basis of all his male faces and then just adds a bunch of extra teeth and an explosion of random cross-hatching.
Heroes Reborn was the New Coke that everyone needed to appreciate the classic. Kurt Busiek and Mark Waid certainly brought a back to basics approach to the Avengers characters, which was refreshing.
You hit the nail on the head with this one. Liefeld is terrible. And they were stupid to get rid of Waid and Garney - I was really pissed off at the time because I loved their series. The only good thing Heroes Reborn gave us was the Thunderbolts, which had nothing to do with Image.
I was 6 to 16 years old in the 90's and I ger Rob Liefeled's appeal. His artworks are very creative and imaginative. I loved the pouches. Before Wolverine, Cable was my favorite X-men character just because of his look. As I became an adult my tastes have changed but I still appreciated Rob Liefeld's art. he is an impressionist. Van Gogh, Picasso and Andy Warhol art arent proportional or looks realistic. They are imaginative. Comics main audience are KIDS ad should be for kids. This is why comics are not selling that much these days, because most kids dont buy them anymore. At the American comics which is a shame.
If there is anything I hate, it's a writer, commentator, or in this case, illustrator, who doesn't do research. There is no excuse. They could have hired a talented highschooler who was into comics. This guy couldn't decide if it was Capt.America or Hulk.
Rob talks about Heroes Reborn on his podcast, Robservations. It’s a pretty interesting story. I loved the Waid/Garney Cap but Marvel was struggling at the time and Robs version of Cap did sell.
So bad, I was embarrassed to have a couple issues of Youngblood from the Image hype in the 90's. Marvel slid downhill so fast in those days too, the artwork from Spider-Man 2099 was even worse than Liefeld.
On his channel Chuck Dixon talks about this comic which he basically disowns. Main complain is that he offered Liefeld any kind of reference required and of course Rob didn’t care.
Perfect timing, just watched the great recent video by matttt about Liefeld but I didn't truly appreciate just how bad his Captain America was until you went through the first issue, lol
Check me on this...does the first page of Captain America not look like the airplanes (and maybe tanks?) from the old Mad magazine "Spy Vs. Spy" cartoons? You know I'm not even a big huge fan of comics but that artwork is bizarre. I mean, really weird.
I don't remember much about this... but I believe Image was running out of gas at the time and it was a bit of a lifeline for both sides of the deal. ( I doubt Liefeld and Lee would've signed on if their Image numbers were as high as they started with.) I recall seeing Liefeld's art on Marvel Mutant comics and knowing there was a buzz about it. This Cap stuff is pretty hard to take, but what Liefeld had was a kind of adolescent, hormonal energy in his early stuff that resonated with his young fans. He drew the way they wanted to draw.
When even the lazy gimmick of fighting evil Nazis falls flat (and that’s been used and used as comic book sales fall) you know the writing needs…some work at least… Liefeld and feel…something always blocked off someone’s feet… I don’t think he liked drawing them… this is the worst of 90s excess… yep…pretty dire.. muscles and guns huge……oh boy…
You are so right. I only bought one or two issues back then. Leifeld. Not a great artist but I would never badmouth him as much as you do. Even if he deserves it.
You are too much of a gentleman! But remember, I’m not slamming Leifeld himself, just his terrible art. I figure if you put art like that out in the world you deserve all you get!
I completely avoided the Image-isation of the Marvel line because I thought it was a cheap con job perpetrated on the readers, then I returned to the titles after the failure of the experiment and the characters returned to the normal Marvel Universe. So I don't feel that I can comment on this series. I'll leave that to you Michael as your criticisms are completely justified. And like you, I'm surprised to see a solid writer like Jeph Loeb attached to this book - I thought he would have replaced his name with Alan Smithee.
At least Bachalo kept working on his craft and did get better. A lot of that crew seem to have learned nothing from all the pages and issues they’ve done.
Kids today globally have more and more have switched to reading manga. I mean look at the youtube channels which discusses Japanese Manga, they have a LOT MORE SUBSRIBERS than youtube channels who discuss American comic books, especially Golden to Copper age comic books. The consumer for Marvel, DC and American comic books are mostly (not all, Think of fans of Miles Morales and Spider Gwen) adults because of nostalgia.
I’m ashamed to say that I enjoyed Rob Liefeld’s work at the time. Not so much his Captain America, but a bunch of his other books. Not quite sure what I was thinking. I look at it now and I cringe.
His work drips energy, and when we’re younger, all that massive over-rendering with a zillion scratchy ink lines can feel like real detail, same as with stupid sci-fi movies filled with very complicated machinery and starscapes. I was old enough to see the flaws in the Image guys’ work, but, um, I thought many foolish thoughts about hacks of earlier times.
I'll be one of the few people to defend the Rob liefeld! he has too many haters! There were so many bad wannabe comic artists that failed and he didn't! It was just jealousy!
I've never been a big fan of American comic books - had a few Iron Man and handful of different DC stuff from the 80s and 90s, but that was about it. So from an objective Outsider perspective I have to say I don't think Liefeld was a bad artist at all. I think it is just his style and aesthetic choices that you don't like - actually, I don't care for them myself...but I still believe he had ability and talent as an artist. I can see this stuff took skill to draw, it's just full of bad choices style-wise.
Ok do you like the lord of the rings movie or the harry potter movies if you do you are wrong because both movies franchises have inaccurate versions of Mordor and some of the cast of Harry Potter
Wow .. thats aweful, the pre-Image The New Mutants and X-Force didn't seem that bad. Be strong and just say "no" if Heroes Reborn Cap ends up as an Epic Collection, I have a run of Wonder Woman books from George Perez to Gail Simone but no way on earth am I ever buying the three volumes of Wonder Woman by Byrne just to be a completist, that stuff is utter rubbish too.
Comics mostly have bad stories. just look at the Golden age. The Dart and Ace? Look at DC from the 50's to 60's, the stories are bonkers and stupid for adults to read them. Only kids read them.
His head looks too small on the cover I thought. That WW2 page is awful. The drawings look cartoonish and the stories seem quite lame. Please dont buy the epic collection if it comes out.
wow. what an awful comic book you've been holding up to the camera. my eyes ... hurt. please - burn it, wash your hands and we will never speak of this again.
A bunch of hair metal bands had technically proficient musicians and production people, though. The equivalents to people like Liefeld and McFarland would be like a whole band of guys who lip synced and pretended to play - just having adventures in modern recording, as the Buggles put it. If you read Sean Howe’s Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, it’s clear that Marvel management genuinely didn’t know what they were doing. Sales sucked, and spraying out random stuff was working as well as in the ‘70s (that is, it wasn’t), aging bosses were even more disconnected from readers than they’d been in the ‘70s-‘80s…and the company came fairly close to folding before things straightened out. That splash page reminds me of a bit in an early Sam & Max, Freelance Police bit. The characters need to go to the Philippines. So there they are in a landscape with rice paddies, a windmill, tulips, a dinosaur… “Here we are in the Philippines!” “Drawn without reference material, I see!”
Yes. But I see Liefield benefitting from a certain “fadiness” of that era more than anything. Nothing against him personally. He would probably find a niche drawing for some interesting Indy comic writer. As it is, Liefield’s work frequently seems like someone else doing a parody of Rob Liefield, and that is not an easy achievement.
One thing I heard about the Image founders is these superstar artists found out they no longer had time to draw on a monthly schedule. Each had their own art studio that they were CEO of (and getting their feet wet with), and Image was just the publishing arm. Liefeld had Extreme, Silvestri had Top Cow, Jim Lee had Wildstorm. They had to become business minded and deal with all the things the "suits" at Marvel did. It took up so much time, keeping their own monthly titles on track was a chore. Now, I don't know for certain, but I think Rob Liefeld had to rush his work on Captain America. He seemed to being trying to fill a contractual obligation that he didn't have time for which is why this looks so bad compared to his previous work on X-Force and The New Mutants. I don't think any of the 4 Heroes Reborn titles had the same artist on the book for all 13 issues.
On a side note, the issue 13 crossovers blended the Marvel characters with Omage characters. Wildcats Maul was in the Fantastic Four group, for example. Unfortunately, due to legal rights issues, the issue 13 Heroes Reborn books aren't collected together. They have to be found as floppies.
All I can say is "Thank God for Busiek and Perez!"
My god what was that art!?!?! I can’t believe they published that!
Liefeld imprints a ton of energy into his drawings, regardless of the errors and miscalculations in angles, proportions and postures of his characters. I think that is his charm; the dynamism and expressivity of his work really have an appeal to them.
Tintin is my favorite comic book.
Did you like Liefeld's version of Tintin? It was more violent, but at least it was badly written.
Oh, man! Leifeld and I are both from Anaheim, and I worked for a short time with his sister in Disneyland's Marketing Dept. She was a print coordinator, but left Disney to work for her brother on licensing merch for his comic book characters.
I agree with your assessment of Leifeld's work. One of his strengths that you may have been groping for was, to me, his incredible detail in all kinds of whacky things. He DID have an eye for dramatic layouts but, as you mentioned, his technique was overwhelmingly amateur. I think he could see what he wanted in his mind but, unfortunately, his command of anatomy, proportion and simple reference to reality were hysterically bad. And then there was that energy you mentioned. But yeah, he put the "comic" back in "comic books."
Leifeld is a true enigma. I always love your take on artwork.
I was 6 to 16 years old in the 90's and I get and appreciated Rob Liefeld's art. He is an impressionist like Van Gogh, Picasso and Andy Warhol. Look at their artworks, it is not realistic.
And you did not even have to show Liefeld’s infamous Captain American barrel chest drawing.
I didn’t think it would be fair since that image never actually appeared in the comic.
Liefeld's art makes my eyes bleed. All of it. Even the supposed "good stuff." It looks like the high school notebook-doodle cat-scratchings of a 15 year old hyper-active headbanger. It's aesthetically un-appealing in every way. I think he uses a 40 year old photo of Clint Howard as the basis of all his male faces and then just adds a bunch of extra teeth and an explosion of random cross-hatching.
Ha ha! Too darn funny! At least you found the right tie to wear for our hero!
The problem with Liefeld's art is that once you've seen it, it is impossible to 'unsee' it.
True.
Heroes Reborn was the New Coke that everyone needed to appreciate the classic. Kurt Busiek and Mark Waid certainly brought a back to basics approach to the Avengers characters, which was refreshing.
You hit the nail on the head with this one. Liefeld is terrible. And they were stupid to get rid of Waid and Garney - I was really pissed off at the time because I loved their series. The only good thing Heroes Reborn gave us was the Thunderbolts, which had nothing to do with Image.
Hello Michael Hello ! I hope someday you'll tell us something about Lee Falk, Mandrake, and the Phantom
That was painful😢
Steve Rogers looks like Liefeld's self-portrait
I was 6 to 16 years old in the 90's and I ger Rob Liefeled's appeal. His artworks are very creative and imaginative. I loved the pouches. Before Wolverine, Cable was my favorite X-men character just because of his look. As I became an adult my tastes have changed but I still appreciated Rob Liefeld's art. he is an impressionist. Van Gogh, Picasso and Andy Warhol art arent proportional or looks realistic. They are imaginative. Comics main audience are KIDS ad should be for kids. This is why comics are not selling that much these days, because most kids dont buy them anymore. At the American comics which is a shame.
If there is anything I hate, it's a writer, commentator, or in this case, illustrator, who doesn't do research. There is no excuse. They could have hired a talented highschooler who was into comics.
This guy couldn't decide if it was Capt.America or Hulk.
Rob talks about Heroes Reborn on his podcast, Robservations. It’s a pretty interesting story. I loved the Waid/Garney Cap but Marvel was struggling at the time and Robs version of Cap did sell.
The look on Roger’s face says it all.
This man's hat is amazing.
LMFAO you are so funny. I agree but DAMN
I really feel your pain Michael get a hug from Roger that’ll cheer you up
So bad, I was embarrassed to have a couple issues of Youngblood from the Image hype in the 90's. Marvel slid downhill so fast in those days too, the artwork from Spider-Man 2099 was even worse than Liefeld.
The only thing that would make this video even better would be to bust out the meme of the guy saying "what the hell is even that??"😂😂😂
On his channel Chuck Dixon talks about this comic which he basically disowns. Main complain is that he offered Liefeld any kind of reference required and of course Rob didn’t care.
Liefield is infamous
Not Heroes Reborn!
Perfect timing, just watched the great recent video by matttt about Liefeld but I didn't truly appreciate just how bad his Captain America was until you went through the first issue, lol
Check me on this...does the first page of Captain America not look like the airplanes (and maybe tanks?) from the old Mad magazine "Spy Vs. Spy" cartoons? You know I'm not even a big huge fan of comics but that artwork is bizarre. I mean, really weird.
I thought of Spy vs Spy too! lol...
Demon eyes. Demonized
I don't remember much about this... but I believe Image was running out of gas at the time and it was a bit of a lifeline for both sides of the deal. ( I doubt Liefeld and Lee would've signed on if their Image numbers were as high as they started with.) I recall seeing Liefeld's art on Marvel Mutant comics and knowing there was a buzz about it. This Cap stuff is pretty hard to take, but what Liefeld had was a kind of adolescent, hormonal energy in his early stuff that resonated with his young fans. He drew the way they wanted to draw.
When even the lazy gimmick of fighting evil Nazis falls flat (and that’s been used and used as comic book sales fall) you know the writing needs…some work at least… Liefeld and feel…something always blocked off someone’s feet… I don’t think he liked drawing them… this is the worst of 90s excess… yep…pretty dire.. muscles and guns huge……oh boy…
You are so right. I only bought one or two issues back then. Leifeld. Not a great artist but I would never badmouth him as much as you do. Even if he deserves it.
You are too much of a gentleman! But remember, I’m not slamming Leifeld himself, just his terrible art. I figure if you put art like that out in the world you deserve all you get!
I completely avoided the Image-isation of the Marvel line because I thought it was a cheap con job perpetrated on the readers, then I returned to the titles after the failure of the experiment and the characters returned to the normal Marvel Universe. So I don't feel that I can comment on this series.
I'll leave that to you Michael as your criticisms are completely justified. And like you, I'm surprised to see a solid writer like Jeph Loeb attached to this book - I thought he would have replaced his name with Alan Smithee.
last viseo sic fi books contune ? fantasy and horror version maybe.
Dark times for Marvel,indeed...Rob Liefeld, Chris Bachalo, Texeira...I just wasn't feeli' their art at at!
At least Bachalo kept working on his craft and did get better. A lot of that crew seem to have learned nothing from all the pages and issues they’ve done.
Kids today globally have more and more have switched to reading manga. I mean look at the youtube channels which discusses Japanese Manga, they have a LOT MORE SUBSRIBERS than youtube channels who discuss American comic books, especially Golden to Copper age comic books. The consumer for Marvel, DC and American comic books are mostly (not all, Think of fans of Miles Morales and Spider Gwen) adults because of nostalgia.
I’m ashamed to say that I enjoyed Rob Liefeld’s work at the time. Not so much his Captain America, but a bunch of his other books. Not quite sure what I was thinking. I look at it now and I cringe.
His work drips energy, and when we’re younger, all that massive over-rendering with a zillion scratchy ink lines can feel like real detail, same as with stupid sci-fi movies filled with very complicated machinery and starscapes. I was old enough to see the flaws in the Image guys’ work, but, um, I thought many foolish thoughts about hacks of earlier times.
I'll be one of the few people to defend the Rob liefeld! he has too many haters! There were so many bad wannabe comic artists that failed and he didn't! It was just jealousy!
¹920's clothing fashion. Newspaper seller !?!?!?!!
I've never been a big fan of American comic books - had a few Iron Man and handful of different DC stuff from the 80s and 90s, but that was about it.
So from an objective Outsider perspective I have to say I don't think Liefeld was a bad artist at all. I think it is just his style and aesthetic choices that you don't like - actually, I don't care for them myself...but I still believe he had ability and talent as an artist. I can see this stuff took skill to draw, it's just full of bad choices style-wise.
Ok do you like the lord of the rings movie or the harry potter movies if you do you are wrong because both movies franchises have inaccurate versions of Mordor and some of the cast of Harry Potter
Wow .. thats aweful, the pre-Image The New Mutants and X-Force didn't seem that bad. Be strong and just say "no" if Heroes Reborn Cap ends up as an Epic Collection, I have a run of Wonder Woman books from George Perez to Gail Simone but no way on earth am I ever buying the three volumes of Wonder Woman by Byrne just to be a completist, that stuff is utter rubbish too.
Comics mostly have bad stories. just look at the Golden age. The Dart and Ace? Look at DC from the 50's to 60's, the stories are bonkers and stupid for adults to read them. Only kids read them.
His head looks too small on the cover I thought. That WW2 page is awful. The drawings look cartoonish and the stories seem quite lame. Please dont buy the epic collection if it comes out.
It could be the one Epic I don’t buy.
wow. what an awful comic book you've been holding up to the camera. my eyes ... hurt. please - burn it, wash your hands and we will never speak of this again.
As the 1980s music scene had hair metal, so did 90s comics have Rob Liefield.
A bunch of hair metal bands had technically proficient musicians and production people, though. The equivalents to people like Liefeld and McFarland would be like a whole band of guys who lip synced and pretended to play - just having adventures in modern recording, as the Buggles put it.
If you read Sean Howe’s Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, it’s clear that Marvel management genuinely didn’t know what they were doing. Sales sucked, and spraying out random stuff was working as well as in the ‘70s (that is, it wasn’t), aging bosses were even more disconnected from readers than they’d been in the ‘70s-‘80s…and the company came fairly close to folding before things straightened out.
That splash page reminds me of a bit in an early Sam & Max, Freelance Police bit. The characters need to go to the Philippines. So there they are in a landscape with rice paddies, a windmill, tulips, a dinosaur… “Here we are in the Philippines!” “Drawn without reference material, I see!”
Yes. But I see Liefield benefitting from a certain “fadiness” of that era more than anything. Nothing against him personally. He would probably find a niche drawing for some interesting Indy comic writer. As it is, Liefield’s work frequently seems like someone else doing a parody of Rob Liefield, and that is not an easy achievement.
@@macrosense Can’t argue with any of that. He and the others were the right kind of hacks for their moment.