November 2nd, 2007
Rob Liefeld can’t draw feet
Around the mid 90’s, Poncho was big into Image Comics. I read more than my fair share of them, Youngblood, Spawn, Savage Dragon etc. They were enjoyable reads but after a while my main reason for getting my paws on any Image title was to see if Rob Liefeld had any work in it. I was already well aware of his weird proportions, stiff composition and ludicrous plagarism but it took Poncho to point this out to me:
Rob Liefeld can’t draw feet.
It soon became an obsession, going through all the back issues , sometimes laughing, sometimes in awe of his ability to structure a frame or a page layout so that the feet are truncated or obscured.There was one classic page where Cable is standing, and everything looks good till your eyes reach his feet where a German Shepherd conveniently sits, a feet blocking German Shepherd. Here’s exhibit 1. Check these, my favourite one is the X-Force cover with Juggernaut, that dodgy looking cloud of yellow smoke rids the artist of any annoying forshortening.
And when he HAD to draw feet, they usually looked like this……….
And his figure drawing sometimes threw away all the rules and invented new ones. Check out the scale of these characters standing beside each other, and that Captain America is just silly looking!
But I honestly admire him. For somebody to reach such heights in any field with an obvious flaw should be admired. And the further I rank in the biz the more I respect him. Yeah, he’s a hack but so am I. If I waited until I was 100% competent before getting into comics, my first published work would be out in 2056. Plus in the recent ‘Liefeld attacks Alan Moore’ scandal I take his side in alot of points. That’s for another day.
So hate Liefeld if you want. But he’s sleeping sound tonight while you shuffle around the comic shops like the scrud that you are, talking about Kevin Smith and wearing some lame t-shirt, pulling the underwear slying out from the crack of your arse and when you get home you sniff your finger and it still smells. And this makes you happy.
