ComicsAlliance Video Vault Presents The Comic Book Greats: Rob Liefeld

 

 

Last week, I was browsing through Amazon and came upon a VHS release from 1991 entitled The Comic Book Greats: Rob Liefeld that, as reader and frequent War Rocket Ajax commentator Sean Hollenhors pointed out to me, had since been put up on YouTube.

Clearly, I had to share.

So head on over to CA today to read my minute-by-minute annotations of the whole hour-long saga, and find out what happens when I do my level best to be even-handed and objective when discussing the Comics Internet’s favorite target.

 

Thanks to Matt Wilson for the help with Courage Rob.

29 thoughts on “ComicsAlliance Video Vault Presents The Comic Book Greats: Rob Liefeld

  1. “Say what you want about the dude’s costume designs, but come on, folks: The guy who wrote “This Man, This Monster” says to add spikes, you add spikes.”

    Truer words were never blogged. And now I’m going to imagine Stan shouting this encouragement to everyone from the Bullpen days.

  2. So there were exploding boomerangs in those pouches? That actually does go a longways in justifying them, IMO.

  3. You know, people diss Rob Liefeld, but I still have a bit of a warm spot in my heart for him and his warped, borderline retarded comics. Nothing sums up the raging impotence and the sullen “finding myself” kind of rebellion of the 90’s more than Liefeld’s overly built heroes, wasp-waisted women, and guns with more guns on them. Every time I see one of his drawings, I wonder where my hypercolor shirt is and crave a dippin’ dots.

  4. Without going to look at it, let me guess. There is a joke about Liefeld not being able to draw feet. And one about pouches.

    Not to defend the guy or anything, but hasn’t picking on Liefeld become something of beating on a dead horse?

  5. Without going to look at it, let me guess: There’s someone in my comments section wondering why my latest work isn’t up to my alleged “standards.”

  6. Chris, I’m concerned with the quality level of your free content. I barely guffawed out loud at “A sword is better with a gun on it.”

    You’re slipping, mister

  7. Aw, come on. Dude was just a KID. He was probably too freaked out about being a brazillionaire to make the feet look even vaguely foot-shaped. And pouches were probably his comfort thing, like having a binky or rocking back and forth when you’re autistic. Poor little fella.

  8. “hasn’t picking on Liefeld become something of beating on a dead horse?”

    So long as people will laugh at bizarrely buxom superheroes, there will always be a corner of comicdom that will be forever Liefeld.

  9. Alas, Rob Liefeld is the Michael Bay of the comic industry: a person who is (at best) marginally talented, yet sends the fanboys into a collective swoon.

  10. I never mentioned your standards. Merely pointed out (1)that the linked piece would likely have the same jokes that everyone online have been making about Liefeld for years and (2) that picking on Liefeld, to me, has becoming beating a dead horse.

    And of course, the punch line is-the linked piece IS filled with the same old jokes about Liefeld that are all over the internet, jokes which stopped being funny about five years ago.

    You put something on the internet and open it to comments, sorry, sometimes people aren’t going to be impressed. But you go ahead and smart off to someone making a contrary point if that makes you feel better. It’s not going to make me laugh at a “ROB LIEFELD=POCKETS” joke.

  11. I’m ashamed of Chris and the internet. Imagine making fun of Liefeld. That is terrible. I don’t know if I can ever come back to this site for at least the next 17 minutes of total depression and disillusionment.

    I have a warm spot in my heart for Liefeld ever since I found out he looks sort of like a Liefeld person.

    I imagine since his planet was destroyed and he was sent her on a spaceship covered in pouches that he gets pretty lonely and he is just bemoaning humans’ lack of bajillions of tiny lines pulling to the centre of their faces, and their disturbingly symmetrical and proportionate features.

  12. Um, the article is actually kind of interesting and comprises more than just pocket and spike jokes..

    Five Million? Seriously? That cannot possibly be true.

  13. Wait, isn’t Final Fantasy VIII dedicated to the premise that gun/swords are awesome? Perhaps it’s all in the execution.

  14. As one of the many self-proclaimed authorities on Final Fantasy VIII you can find on the internet, The Gunblades of FF VIII never actually fired bullets (it just vibrated).

    Also artist Tetsuya Nomura later said that the Gunblade looked stupid

  15. I think that some people are just trying to troll so they can end up on War Rocket Ajax.

    Is it worth being a hater? :)

  16. Seedy saidy:
    Wow.

    Explosive. Boomerangs.

    Just let that one sink in for a minute.

    You know, Batman and Captain Boomerang used them all the time on Justice League and Justice League Unlimited, but until this post it never occured to me just how dang sure you’d better be that that thing will stick in whatever you hit with it.

  17. Chris, I’m going to try to avoid being too negative (and isn’t that a bad sign when someone starts that way) but this and the Broadsword Studios piece are the weakest of your Comics Alliance posts. The problem for me is the disconnect between your comments and the video. I think that they would be much better if you provided the comments as an actual Mystery Science Theater 3000 style commentary on those videos. WRA proves you can be effective with that kind of thing and it would be a much better segment for ComicsAlliance.

  18. Didn’t they do one of these videos where Liefeld, Stan Lee, & Todd McFarlane created a character from scratch? His name was OverKill, but they changed him to OvertKill when he appeared in SPAWN in what I assume was an attempt to screw Stan out of his royalties. Which I guess was poetic justice though the royalties from OvertKill likely wouldn’t have bought a package of Rhamen noodles.

  19. I think in a way 90% of his appeal was validation for every 14 year-old at that time growing up on a steady diet of comicbooks and big Hollywood action movies who were filling their own notebooks with cyborgs who know every martial art and gun-toting ninjas in Spider-Man masks. Rob drew and thought just like them and made it to the bigtime.

    Personally, I kinda liked his work better when he was trying to be Art Adams.