Rob Liefeld hates gifts, also public scrutiny.
August 11th, 2009 -- mini-url
Note: the first part of this article was written about 5 hours after the now infamous ‘Avengers Avenged’ blog was posted. A followup reaction to the strong reactions posted over the next twelve hours is attached at the end.
I woke up to this link of a comic fan at Wizard World pranking Rob Liefeld. Thank you, Yellow Hat Guy. Rob Liefeld‘s ridiculous lines are a part of comic book history, and this was a pretty good epic footnote to it.
you are a dick for expressing your views of this creation to the creator in a public setting
To the more eloquent defenders of Liefeld who commented on that link, I understand how you feel about something like this. “Here’s this guy who is pranking a creator at a convention while that creator is trying to work, this is an incredibly rude thing to do.” While it certainly was rude, it’s also a non-violent reaction to art work that inspired an emotional response.
Comics books are an artistic expression, and that expression has formed a community. The artists and writers who create them are exchanging their time, talent, and creative spark for a paycheck that, no matter how large, will never truly repay that creator for those moments of self-perceived genius they feel for getting the wording just right or the lines just so.
Readers are on exactly the opposite end of this. They cough up their paychecks to follow their favorite characters and stories every month, hoping to be inspired, tickled, and moved by the contents of these pages. Their entire goal is to have an emotionally charged opinion about about an issue.
When that opinion is the same, issue after issue, they look back and take note of the creators involved with the series. When the Yellow Hat Guy was happy with the art, the artist was George Perez. When he was upset by it, the artist was Rob Liefeld.
Rob Liefeld is on a far end of the artist appreciation spectrum for most fans. While I’m sure his intent was never to become ‘infamous’, he has certainly provoked an emotional response, which is the purview of every creator.
In interviews with Liefeld and creator friends of his, it is frequently acknowledged that he is a “controversial” artist. He knew this when he showed up to a major, sponsored convention. He had to have understood that fans of creative properties he did work on, but did not own, would probably show up and that these fans might have a reaction. That the fans in question were basically merry pranksters, and not belligerent, screaming buffoons, says a lot about the community we’re in.
Liefeld has every right to be upset that a group of fans, armed only with five dollars and a negative opinion of his work, bought him an ironic present. The Yellow Hat Guy also has every right to his opinion and his expression of it.
Comedians get heckled, bands get booed, plays get walked out of. Comics are just as public an art form, and will receive just as public a response. That response will not always be positive, or indeed pleasant. This is the nature of public works, and comic creators should be able to take the comparatively vast public adoration with the truly minor public ridicule.
Author’s edit: Since I originally wrote this article, I’ve read Liefeld’s account (via twitter) of the incident (yes, it is now an incident) as well as responses by fans and pros at the original post.
It seems a large number of those who posted there are throwing their support behind Liefeld in as crude a fashion as they are comfortable with while sitting in front of a computer screen. Many of the professionals who posted to the board also displayed immature habits, asking questions about the original poster’s masculinity, testicular status, and how often he masturbated.
To the comic pros who thought the prank was even a little funny but didn’t want to post about it for professional reasons, I completely understand.
While a few comic fans apologized for the emotional way they delivered these statements, none of the comics professionals who posted in such a fashion extended the same favor at the time of this edit. The hypocrisy of responding to bad behavior with bad behavior is not lost on me, and is, frankly, a bit sickening.
Neither taste nor talent guarantee wisdom or integrity.
Cory Ringdahl will try to post less of a scathing-review-of-humanity in the near future.
Tags: avengers, Avengers Avenged, captain america, George Perez, Rob Liefeld, testicles, twitter, Yellow Hat Guy
Hear that comic pros? When made to eat shit, grin and bear it! Otherwise, you have no wisdom or integrity. Don’t even THINK about standing up for your colleagues in the face of inexcusable and totally unjustifiable rudeness if you want us fans to think you have any wisdom or integrity!
In fact, no matter what you do, comic pro: We the fans are always right and you the creators are wrong, and FUCK any standard of politeness, decorum or anything resembling decent human behavior on our behalf! You know why? Because our goal as fans is to have “emotionally charged opinions”! And that justifies any and all douchebaggery. You see, we are only “merry pranksters” and not “screaming buffoons,” so don’t complain about our passive-aggressive rudeness and be thankful we haven’t started assaulting and verbally abusing you yet!
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Cory Ringdahl Reply:
August 11th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Thank you for proving my point more succinctly than I could.
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Karl Reply:
August 11th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
T’Cheesy- You are everything wrong with comic fans. The fact that you won’t even understand why this is the case only makes it worse.
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Comment by T'Cheesy — August 11, 2009 @ 10:44 am
Why is The Lie such a hot-button issue? I mean, his art is… well, bad. If not for the valiant efforts of his inker, I can’t see how some of this stuff passes muster at any serious publishing company. The only way that you could call his stuff a “unique style” is if he was actually channeling Picasso. And sure, I’m no artist, but I can still tell when a human torso is grotesquely and awkwardly disfigured. However, I doubt that some sense of artistic outrage is behind the vehemence with which his detractors attack him. It’s more visceral than that: the characters that he’s defacing are beloved pop-culture icons to their fans.
Now, why the fans aim their hatin’ at The Lie instead of at the money-grubbers who simply seek to have his unearned celebrity status married to their properties is possibly a more telling question, but harder to answer. Beyond that is the question of how someone so… untalented… could weasel their way into the ranks of truly capable artists who earned their place in the pantheon of Comic Art Demi-gawdhood.
My view is this:
Liefield detractors are right in that they see him for the hack he is. However, trapped in their own delusions of semi-competence (even if just as critics), they withhold the scorn that they should be heaping on the publishers who continue to perpetrate such awful eyesores on the fanbase. Their jealousy of Liefield is in direct proportion to the amount of effort they put into developing a comprehensive knowledge base of (if not skill in producing their own) comic art, especially that dealing with their favorite Liefield-besmirched character.
Liefield supporters may or may not be in denial; it depends on whether or not they see the flaws, or are so mentally skewed that they can’t. I would bet a key factor in THAT determination is whether or not they think their own scrawlings are worthy of publication. However, they see something of themselves in Liefield’s success, drawing hope from his inexplicable acceptance amongst the elite. Someday, they think, their poorly-constructed, semi-recognizable renderings of Wolverine beating up Lobo and a Salvador Dali painting (simultaneously) will be snapped up by Marve,l and all their hard work vandalizing the top of their homeroom desk will pay off.
Me, I see him as a hack, and I have a hard time looking at what is being passed off as comic art. However, he made nice with truly influential figures from the late 80′s and early 90′s, and worked HARD (if not capably) to help break various stalemates that had kept the comic industry rather stagnant before that. Props for that.
BUT, I sure wish he wasn’t so dismissive of his detractors. I think they have a very valid point in that his “art” hasn’t improved with time and practice; if anything, it’s getting worse. Does he INTENTIONALLY distort the anatomy of his figures in that way? It goes beyond just messing with proportion (which could be a perfectly valid style… look at the realm of art satire or caricature and you’ll see what I mean); his inability to keep perspective, eyeline, or any other unifying technique under control is beyond amateurish and is an insult to people who pay money for it, whether they are capable of perceiving it or not.
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Cory Ringdahl Reply:
August 11th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
Honestly, this is barely about Rob Liefeld anymore. This is about egos colliding, who’s right and who’s wrong, who deserves what and why, and how we’re all going to look like superstars on someone’s blog.
The whole thing is a very slippery slope. You have, on one hand, a guy who started out with good intentions, then artlessly executed those intentions. On the other hand, you have the other guy who did the same thing.
If it this had been twenty or even ten, maybe FIVE years ago, we wouldn’t have seen this commotion. But the comics industry is now filled with creators who are not only celebrities within their industry, but can be communicated with (at?) and also communicate back.
I will be interested to see how this Yellow Hat Man fiasco evolves; whether up-and-coming professionals comment more civilly, and whether fandom pranks become more elaborate, well planned, and well executed.
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Rodrick Reply:
August 13th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
“You have, on one hand, a guy who started out with good intentions,”
Public humiliation is good intentions all the sudden?
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Comment by CotFI2 — August 11, 2009 @ 1:29 pm