RabidFerret

Right?? It's like you can finally see the light!

I was mightily impressed by the Liefeld XF1. Didn't expect it to move after the crazy bidding last week, but it still jumped a bunch during the live portion and hammered at $9k. That's a 300%+ increase on the same auction house over 3 years! July 2012 - $2151 http://comics.ha.com/itm/original-comic-art/rob-liefeld-x-force-1-splash-page-22-and-23-original-art-marvel-1991-/a/7063-92209.s?ic4=GalleryView-ShortDescription-071515 November 2015 - $8962.50 http://comics.ha.com/itm/original-comic-art/rob-liefeld-x-force-1-double-page-spread-18-19-original-art-marvel-1991-/a/7152-92162.s?ic4=GalleryView-ShortDescription-071515 Is this nostalgia for Liefeld? The Deadpool movie? Is Warpath now cool? Curious any thoughts...

I've been watching this Liefeld X-Force #1 DPS in the November auction with curiosity. Not a lot of XF1 pages appear and Liefeld has been moving hot recently. Tonight this piece jumped to $6500 with 5 days to go. I'm impressed! I wasn't sure think it'd clear $5k. Go, Liefeld, go! http://comics.ha.com/itm/original-comic-art/panel-pages/rob-liefeld-x-force-1-double-page-spread-18-19-original-art-marvel-1991-1-/a/7152-92162.s?ic2=mybidspage-lotlinks-12202013

I rarely post art days, but this one just took a fun twist that made me want to share it. I'm an admitted Todd McFarlane fanatic. He's my favorite artist, hands down. This bad boy just arrived this week and I wanted to gush:) http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=1242598 This is a very fun and interesting piece. Peak era Todd McFarlane, full pencils, oddball inker, used as a cover and a puzzle and a card! McFarlane inked his own art almost exclusively after Amazing Spider-Man 305 and this is one of the few pieces created after that point that someone else touched. It was done in 1989, somewhere during his already insane year of ASM 311-328, the real hey-dey of McFarlaneMania. It was first used as the secret puzzle you could assemble out of the backs of the cards in the 1989 Todd McFarlane Trading Card Set. It then popped up again a year or two later as the cover of the Spider-Man Keepsake Collection II and as an over-sized trading card inside. That strange twist I mentioned above? I only found out it was used for the puzzle earlier tonight. It wasn't mentioned in the auction description:) Easily the best of the 3 ways it saw print, and it wasn't even known! I can't imagine the price wouldn't have moved a bit more if that was known. http://spiderfan.org/cards/1989_mcfarlane1/images/backs.jpg Mark Pennington(Harvey nominated this year!) inked both of those puzzles and I think did a stellar job on this. It was inked entirely with a brush and brought a nice bold line to Todd's art, different from the nib McFarlane used. Todd had a few inkers try to work over his pencils and most couldn't handle it. Pennington is one of the better fits to Todd's style that have tried. What's probably the most amazing thing about this bad boy though is the sheer size. Aside from true covers, you simply don't see McSpideys at full page size, let alone with about as perfect of a Spidey pose as you can dream of and framed in spaghetti webbing! At McFarlane's Spidey peak in 1988-90 I think there were maybe 25 pieces with a pose of this caliber and size, and most were covers like 300 and 301 or full page splashes like in 317. How this insane multi-hyphenate oddity fell to me for a single-kidney price I'll never know, but tonight I'm even more happy for it!(Card set already en route!) And here's my favorite part - it's got the cover signature! The McFarlane in the scroll!! To me that little McFarlane was the end all, be all, coolest freakin' signature on Earth. You can only get them on covers and pinups and trading cards, so this is an exciting bonus:) It's also centered, another uniqueness to the piece. I'm very giddy about this very delicious display McFarlane that is gonna look pretty damn good staple-gunned to the mantle... -j

Strawman argument.

And simply stating "I hate it" proves your point then? I broke down a page panel by panel highlighting the aspects that make it a solid example, pulling the reader through the page, even touching on offsetting border thicknesses and overlapping panels, all of which successfully tells a story without needing to read a single word, and yet, like your friend RMA, you dismiss it with insults of "someone can be so patently off-the-mark in understanding sequential art". Just mindboggling.

What planet are you two insufficiently_thoughtful_persons living on? Go research some of the wildly_fanciful_statement you're trying to shovel. This is a complete fallacy. Liefeld solicited a comic called Berserkers, a ripoff of X-Force, that was going to be released through Malibu at the same time he was doing XF. Marvel went berserk and threatened to sue and fire him. Liefeld talked to McFarlane, explained what he was doing, and it snowballed from there. The entire thing started from Liefeld. McFarlane had already quit Marvel and was playing daddy, completely unsure what he was doing next. Are you kidding me? You've mostly named a list of popular current writers and a hack artist who was popular for a few years for doing photo reference paintings. There are plenty of great artists and writers throughout history, but the vast majority of them could have vanished and things wouldn't have changed. The only ones on this list that belong are the ones who truly changed the landscape of comics. Lee and Berger arguments could be made for but even Berger is too small in the grand scheme, working at a single company. Lee at least created Wildstorm, ran multiple studios, then took over DC. The same argument could be made for Johns and Quesada. Perelman sadly belongs as well, and an argument could be made for Geppi. Your perspective is utterly, utterly off. Karen Berger is responsible for Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Grant Morrison (among others) working at DC. Karen Berger CREATED Vertigo. Liefeld has had 1/100th the impact on the comics industry that Geppi and Perelman had. Seriously....stop already. You don't know what you're talking about, you know *just enough* to sound like you do, and you keep digging yourself a deeper and deeper and deeper hole. Because you keep making absurd arguments and making mess up! You put your foot in your mouth and immediately follow it up with your own insults and claiming "everything you say is a strawman argument". I've never run across such a broken record.

Now THAT is a far more valid list. :clap: It wasn't a competition, which is a very, very large part of your problem. It's certainly not a competition! But some people clearly understand the history of comics, such as DuPont here, as opposed to rambling off the names of your favorite writers. Yes, fine, great, I'm happy you read all the popular stuff people and magazines tell you to read. It doesn't mean any of them changed comics.

Hahahahahahahahhahahahahaha I love that all of your arguments hinge almost entirely on your personal feelings about what a word means. "Well to me 'artist' means this specific set of requirements and without them you can't possibly consider yourself an artist!" Hahahaha. You are a trip. Do you know how many professionals never draw outside of work? Who draw only because it's the career they're in? But apparently they aren't artists huh? And I love that after proclaiming that McFarlane is not an artist based on your bizarro world logic, you then actually say "an artist wakes up every morning with a desire to create" - but clearly that doesn't apply to creating a toy, a video game, or any art not used in a comic book?? Hahaha, really starting to think you're writing to us from he psyche ward in Bellevue...

If I don't think the artist has ever submitted a decent page of art, what am I supposed to think of the opinions of his fans and collectors? It's the same argument as with Liefeld. Even if you don't like their art, whether you want to admit it or not, every artist peaks at some point. Every artist has a point where their work is the best it will be. If you don't like McFarlane that's fine, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have a peak of his work that shows off his skillset the best. Here's an example of McFarlanes art that I think shows off what he brought to comics. - You start with a cool image of Spidey crouching down dropping you into the page from the top, but with speed lines to give it some momentum and pull you in to the hand - Then zoom in to a close-up of Spidey's hand reading a vital piece of information. - That panel then overlaps with the one below, bringing you into the wreckage as it cascades from upper right to lower left, where we then see Spidey walking out the door in thought. Also note the placement of the word balloons being stacked vertically. - Peter Parker returns home still scratching his head while MJ's workout mimics the rubble/word balloon layout above, BUT with a thick black border that helps it to offset with all of the black used in the top 2 panels. Also note the use of black in MJ's shadow, leotard, and the TV to help establish the angle.. You may not like his anatomy, you may not like his detail, but the man certainly knew how to layout, design, and tell a story with pictures.

Now THAT is a far more valid list. :clap:

Stephenson deserves to be in the conversation as well, but Snyder and Vaughan are yet more of the flavor-of-the-year writers. Why not include Fraction too? Alan Moore? Just include every popular big name writer over the last 20 years? There are endless writers out there and endless artists. It takes far more than a few good stories to change the industry.

Hahahahaha, you are the most delusional person I've ever seen learn how to type. I wish I could meet you in person and give you a banana for all you've accomplished. 300 was brilliant - complete agreement there, but the absolute peak of McFarlane's skill was 315-328 - the absolute consensus among all his fans and collectors. His work on SM was rushed and his work before was often butchered by horrible inking and a 2 week turnaround when the book went bi-monthly. The more you post the more clearly it comes across that you personally like a certain type of art and judge all art on those standards. The closer it gets to older styles and less creativity the more you like it. And clearly when it has an amazing lamp in the background:)

What planet are you two insufficiently_thoughtful_persons living on? Go research some of the wildly_fanciful_statement you're trying to shovel. This is a complete fallacy. Liefeld solicited a comic called Berserkers, a ripoff of X-Force, that was going to be released through Malibu at the same time he was doing XF. Marvel went berserk and threatened to sue and fire him. Liefeld talked to McFarlane, explained what he was doing, and it snowballed from there. The entire thing started from Liefeld. McFarlane had already quit Marvel and was playing daddy, completely unsure what he was doing next. Are you kidding me? You've mostly named a list of popular current writers and a hack artist who was popular for a few years for doing photo reference paintings. There are plenty of great artists and writers throughout history, but the vast majority of them could have vanished and things wouldn't have changed. The only ones on this list that belong are the ones who truly changed the landscape of comics. Lee and Berger arguments could be made for but even Berger is too small in the grand scheme, working at a single company. Lee at least created Wildstorm, ran multiple studios, then took over DC. The same argument could be made for Johns and Quesada. Perelman sadly belongs as well, and an argument could be made for Geppi. But this only solidifies my position - Geppi, Perelman, and Liefeld are 3 that are villains in this list, who may not have changed comics for the better but certainly influenced it hugely.

I am now convinced RabidFerret is just trolling. No one would legitimately think that, ever. Please, enlighten me with your wisdom - who would you put in that category? I think the list would be small... Joe Quesada? Jim Lee? Rob Liefeld? Robert Kirkman? People that revolutionized the industry means they need to do more than just create a best selling comic. Mike Mignola created a huge universe with Hellboy, but it didn't change the industry. It was just a very successful book. David Peterson and Mouse Guard could be argued as a huge moment in time since he did a strange format book that has since been copied by many, as well as kept alive Archaia through their almost bankruptcy. But Liefeld created a large number of popular characters still known to this day, created a comic company, created a clone army, and brought a lot of people into the hobby. For good or for bad, there's no doubt that without him the comic book world would be a very different place today.

I'm in agreement here. Comics are a monthly thing for financial reasons only, and the best books are the ones that come out less often but with more care put into them. I would always prefer a book to come out less often and be good, than be rushed out to give me a weak monthly fix.

Ok so you like to repeat yourself and use ALL CAPS. Suddenly your argument is sound and reasonable! Oh wait, no it's not... Out of one side of your mouth you're arguing storytelling is essential and out of the other that it doesn't matter for the artists you like. Oh really, they're doing great storytelling on their covers? Seriously? Or this one is clearly about how the Joker takes up photography, right? Or how about his one? How to draw a comic book? I really wanted to find the cover of the girl on the toilet. I assume that was about getting bad Mexican food? Riveting! They are great covers, very well rendered and creative and they draw you in, but they certainly don't tell you what happens inside. Not at all. Again and again you people keep assuming you know Liefeld and his intentions. There doesn't need to be some altruistic goal in creating a comic book. For most professionals it's a job. Liefeld has repeatedly stated that what he cares about is creating properties that he can license in the future - which is exactly what Marvel and DC and Wildstorm were bought for - their properties. And as a few people confirmed clearly, he's done that well - people love the work of Alan Moore on Supreme and Deadpool and Prophet and even the Allred version of X-Force. So by the standard of creating properties, I'd say he's done fine. So now the creative process doesn't matter, it's just about the payoff? So in effect, you're now entirely supporting Liefeld's approach to cranking out art to make money? Cuz that's what it sounds like? How much work do you remember Jim Lee doing back in his heyday? He did a handful of issues of Punisher War Journal before moving to UXM where he did spot issues for the first year or two. I think his only consistent run on the book was maybe 10-15 issues long? Then less than a year on X-Men. It's not like Jim produced a book/month for years straight. Todd did. Liefeld did. Jim was slower. If I wanted to waste the time calculating I suspect we'd be surprised to see his output has been steady for decades. Yeah, guys like Neal Adams pushed for artist rights...and never got them. Frank Miller did when he was a huge success. But to this day the Kirbys are still fighting tooth and nail. I don't think you remember well the world at that time. There was talk about all of this but it wasn't happening. If you worked at Marvel and DC you got nothing. If you left you struggled to stay afloat. The world today, full of places like Archaia and Image, is 1000% more encouraging to your artists and their rights. Simply brushing aside a pivotal moment in time as if it was inevitable is just doing a disservice to the whole industry.

And where did any of that start from? Would Kieth have left Marvel to start his own book? Doubtful. And then you point to Stormwatch, a Jim Lee book, and Supreme, a Rob Liefeld book, again refusing to give credit to the creators, and only those who followed along afterwards. Clearly you have a thing for Alan Moore. He is sexy, I'll give you that.

Yeah, Liefeld failed as a businessman. We've already established that and there's little disagreement. But that does not mean he wasn't a great salesman, and didn't fill a marketplace with what people wanted. The books sucked, yes. They never hit deadlines, yes. But without that constant steam of media attention and rising sales Image would very easily have vanished in a year(as many pundits repeatedly claimed it would). The arguments about Image Comics have gone on for years and years, but guess what - they're still around, and producing far better comics than Marvel or DC are. It's not much different from any industry where it takes years and growth for a company to find it's real place. It's not like Marvel Comics appeared in 1960 and just started cranking out amazing books. It was a barely surviving vestige of 30 years before that had mostly copied what everyone else did to make a profit. There was little to no art form then as much as a desire to make a living. It was only after decades of time and near collapse that it became what everyone now thinks of. Valiant I think is a great example here - what happened to them? They went under. They hit a high peak where everyone clamored for their books and the prices soared...and then crashed because people stopped caring and they were poorly run and had to be resurrected to be around today.

I wasn't aware that Frank Miller, Jeff Smith, Barry Windsor-Smith, and Charles Vess were Image founders, too! "Best" and "most popular" were definitely NOT convergent during that time period. Ok I will clarify - most popular, most successful, with the largest audiences of the day. Best is subjective. So your counterpoint to the creation of Image Comics is pointing to a handful of artists like Smith, Vess, and BWS who self-published their own work? They didn't push for the rights of anyone else. They didn't publish any books but their own. Self publishing has existed for a long time, but mostly in obscurity except for a handful of notable successes like TMNT, Bone, Cerebus. And Miller? Sure let's use the example of the most successful and acclaimed comic artist of the previous 2 decades who was given anything he wanted. The reality is that Dark Horse and Vertigo were not in the business of encouraging lots of creator owned works but in attracting top tier talent. Valiant certainly wasn't. Maybe BWS finagled rights to A&A but I doubt it. Shooter sold the whole catalog for a fortune. The thing about Image was that they did something that had been tried before and failed. Artists had left to try their own studios and publishing and all went under quickly and crawled back to the big 2. Or they left 1 at a time like Byrne and found the entire world didn't follow them. When Image started the fans came along. New fans joined in. It was a phenomenon unlike any other artist revolution in comics, peaking with Image selling more books than Marvel or DC.

You are hopeless. Image today has nothing to do with Rob Liefeld, almost nothing to do with Jim Lee, and very little to do with Todd McFarlane. Image got where it is now despite these three, not because of them. What planet do you live on where everything a person accomplishes can be cast aside with excuses? Image Comics would not exist without Rob Liefeld. Period. End of story. Liefeld decided to self publish his own books. He decided to leave Marvel. He got McFarlane on board and together they brought on the best and most popular creators of the day. Liefeld launched the first book of the company that set the precedent and was a large part of their output the first 2 years. (Yes, it was fairly bad quality books, but the most vital part of growing as a publisher is having content). Creator rights began on day 1 of Image and led to a large variety of people taking the leap, and not just at Image. Prior to Image every set of artists who tried to set up their own company failed. None lasted. Liefeld was the creator and driving force behind Image Comics, Deadpool, Cable, and Domino - all successful to this day. Whine as much as you want, it is what it is. There may not be a more important figure in comic book history over the last 25 years.

Hahaha, no, its not that, it's that you wrote a fair minded post. Clearly that era has ended quick:) That's ok. I accept that as part of the process of coming to terms with your Liefeld induced deliria. I think it's pretty clear I can't be cured:)

I read comics for fun and entertainment. This is not a college class where people are trying to achieve high grades and appease a textbook definition of good and bad. Yes, storytelling is incredibly important, but it's not everything. I would generally prefer a lesser artist with more skill telling a story, no doubt. And yeah, Liefeld certainly falls at the other end of the spectrum. But comics are not about having 1 or 2 core skills on a checklist. It's about telling a story and entertaining your audience. And let me throw out another thought - what comic art sells for the most money? What is it that the vast majority of collectors chase after and appreciate? Is it the sequential storytelling? The panel pages? Or is it the covers, the splashes, and the doublepage spreads? It's the art with the least amount of storytelling possible. And there are plenty of amazing artists who do nothing else these days but covers - Art Adams and Brian Bolland come to mind right away. I believe Bolland's last feature length sequential story was The Killing Joke? So continuing to stick with this attitude that storytelling trumps all and artists are defined largely on their storytelling is ignoring a large number of artists and what fans seem to focus on. And this is all Liefeld's fault how? Because Marvel became greedy? Because the standards for artists dropped? Because Liefeld's books sold and they paid him well? I'm with you 100% that the world of comics went to complete mess in the wake of the boom, but this is half of my point in this thread - fandom continues to point the finger at one person, a cog in the machine, and tries to put this all on his shoulders. He was one person in an industry that employed hundreds or thousands. Let's ignore the publisher who kept approving the stories and art. Let's ignore the investors who were demanding higher profits at all costs. Let's ignore the fans and speculators who bought all this stuff. Let's instead focus on one person who rode the wave. I don't even know where this rant is coming from. Are you seriously insinuating that successful comic book artists are supposed to stop world hunger? McFarlane continues to draw to this day, just not penciling comics. Follow him on FB or Twitter and you'll see all the work he continues to do, inking Spawn, drawing for his toy business, designing entire video game universes, character art for others, directing music videos, etc. He's arguably the most actively creative person of the 3 you list. Jim Lee stopped drawing for a brief time while when he ran Wildstorm and nurtured an entire studio of artists, before he took over much of DC and has continued to work steadily since on Hush, Superman, B&R, etc. I'd even be tempted to suggest he may be more productive today than he was when he was doing Uncanny and X-Men. And Rob Liefeld, for all the negativity, has continued to draw comics nonstop for 20+ years. Yeah, he was a horrible businessman. He squandered his money. But he didn't flee the industry like Platt or Keown or the vast majority of artists from that era. He continued to work. And that says a lot. And yeah, what DID they do...except start Image Comics? Revolutionize the comic industry? Give artists back the rights to their own stories and a place for them to get their work out? A company that has lasted 20+ years and is arguably one of the best publishers in the market today?

Hahaha, no, its not that, it's that you wrote a fair minded post. Clearly that era has ended quick:)

This is...a surprisingly solid post from you. Good stuff man. But I still challenge the last point, and this blanket "accept it for what it is", with the tone that it's universally bad and there's no disputing that. To this day I continue to look at his prime work and learn from it. Sure, there are plenty of things you learn to avoid, but there's plenty to still learn from. The way Liefeld inked himself on X-Force #1 still influences the way I ink. The way he tried to make every panel interesting and "awesome" is a valid positive because it engaged the audience and pulled them in. Even if it's the passion of a 12 year old mind, you don't hear that same passion for a large number of other books and artists we read at that time. Even if it's only appealing to a 12 year old, there's something there that makes it so. I don't look at Liefeld for his storytelling ability or his backgrounds or his anatomy, but there are some things he did right, at least for a little while.