in retrospect, how did Rob Liefeld ever manage to hold down a artist job in the comics industry?

Naw, something closer to this actual pose. Liefeld is not capable of mentally re-arranging objects into different positions or imagining what they would look like from different perspectives. I wanted to say it was video game box cover art but I can't place what. Also note the suspicious dust kicked up where the snake meets the ground, obscuring any mis-matches, as if he couldn't even just sketch in the outline of a snake for chrissakes.

I thought it might be the golden snake in Conan #24, Barry Smith's last issue, but I checked and none of the poses are quite right.

I don't think it's a rip, but that might have been what forks was thinking of re Veitch.

probably a rip of something liefeld saw airbrushed on the side of a van

it's definitely a specific image that he lifted for the roughs and gave as reference because it's pretty dead-on in my memory. wood/corben/veitch/kubert/frazetta listed because it matches their styles, but it could easily have been an album cover, book illustration or video game ad.

maybe something taking place in the savage land?

This thread started a really dumb joke brewing in my head about Liefeld's inability to draw a kangaroo. Just guess the punchline.

Joey Kubert

A: Because it only has one pouch. Although I would also accept 'Because it has feet'.

HEYO

A: Because it only has one pouch.

Sexist.

http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1184992/CABLE_DEADPOOL_03_Rob_Liefeld.jpg

The impossible position of Cable's gun-arm gets stranger the more you look at it. It's positively Escher-esque.

did deadpool chew open his own mask so he could clench a knife between his teeth or what

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--kjXcmmzi--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_320/duhv2jp22dhp6oftfhtx.png

That's one of the better Liefeld drawings I've seen.

and its still rotten

Have been told by a reliable source that during his time on New Mutants Liefeld received considerable advice from a well-established and respected comic book artist, particularly to do with perspective.

advice which liefeld clearly only partially understood

That was almost exactly the punchline to the anecdote I heard

heh!

Cable's body length waaaay to short in that pic. Waitamminit, why am I expecting Liefeld to draw someone properly?

he also appears to have a bagel and several small baguettes strapped his waist

we should start a kickstarter to send him to the kubert school or another drawing program

he's only 47! there's still time.

I pretty much avoided every Marvel comic that wasn't Hulk or X-Factor in the early 90s - can anyone explain to me what Liefeld's appeal *was*, exactly? I mean, obviously his stuff looks ridiculous now - but it kind of looked ridiculous in 1991 too. Were the triangle breasts and pouches really enough to compensate for the terrible writing?

Which is to say, there a lot of popular things I don't like -- The Waking Dead, say -- but I understand their appeal. I just don't get what Liefeld's appeal was (other than maybe DC's concurrent stuff was kind of too square or too adult).

everything was super badass and was targeted directly at 12 year old boys

i guess the only answer to that is 'yes', although in retrospect the reasons why that might have been are unfathomable.

Cable is a half-cyborg time-travelling warrior who teaches teens how to kill bad guys

I thought Liefeld was pretty sweet in the early 90s if I'm being honest. I was born in 78 if that's a clue to why.

also used his future knowledge to invest heavily in the lucrative pouch and shoulder-pad industries xp

i was born in 80 and spent a lot of time and money on liefeld comics when i was 12. it really is one of the most baffling life choices i've ever made

I think his appeal had a great deal to do with who and what he was - a young guy who wasn't that much older than his readership, drawing in a fashionably noodly/detailed style that was actually fairly easy to copy/ripoff. You could look at Liefeld's work and imagine doing something pretty similar yourself, and thereby enjoy some of the same fame and income.

One of the theories I've heard floated around about Liefeld's popularity is the "hey, that looks like something I could've drawn!" factor. Which I'm not sure I fully understand but I guess I get why some people would be drawn to that. I got into X-Force at the time because that was the era of my burgeoning intrest in X-stuff in general, but I don't really remember being a particular fan of Liefeld. His characters were pretty easy to draw, though, so I'll give him that.

xpost!

I was born in '78 too. I did buy two copies of the polybagged X Force 1, but it might as well have been one those Spanish CBRs I accidentally download.

I think "super badass and directed at 12-year-olds" is probly good enough.

One of the first X-Men comics I bought on the newsstand as a kid was part of the "X-cutioner's Song" (oh god) crossover, and it featured Cable and Bishop, two men with giant torsos that shopped at the same giant gun store, killing stuff with Wolverine. On the moon.

he was like the sequential art equivalent of dubstep

^^^born in '70, stopped reading superhero comics forever in the wake of this shit

i remember that issue (in fact, i think i still have in a longbox in my parents' loft). your summary of it is infinitely more entertaining than the real thing. xp

it was completely incoherent and all the dialogue made you think something really important was happening, but I had no idea what was happening

You know it does sound more exciting than some of the stuff I was reading at the time, such as the JLI's exciting adventures with the Conglomerate, and the G'nort miniseries

I'm still chagrined that we never learned what the Cutioner was up to before he became an X-Cutioner.

I actually dug X-Force as it went along and after Liefeld left. Nicieza did some decent work on that book, particularly with the expansion of Cable's backstory.

had to read that post three times to make sure it wasn't by DJP
:)

Thank you for the compliment. DJP has good X-tastes, iirc.

Ha, I thought the same thing.

many xps I always felt Liefeld's appeal lay in the fact he was the Creed to Arthur Adams/Todd MacFarlane's Pearl Jam? (nb I think I stopped reading comics just before Liefeld's rise)

No no, Trent Kaniuga was the Creed to Todd MacFarlane's Spawn.

(Dear god, why do I have knowledge of these things...)

liefeld's heavily pass/agg commentary on that facebook post makes it very clear he wanted a producer / advisor credit for the to-be-announced film and they were like, nah we're good

i was 11 or 12 in liefeld's heyday and was pretty into his new mutants run... by the time Youngblood came out I was making fun of him though.

My mate who hasn't really read comics since he was a teenager was really surprised one time when I told him Liefeld was actually shit.