Rob Liefeld - Criticism

Criticism

Liefeld's name has become something of a lightning rod in the industry. In an interview, Brian Michael Bendis described the polarization of opinion on Liefeld: "There is a great dichotomy...There's either some great and generous story about or you will hear some unbelievable thing like, 'How is he not in jail if he did that?' There is no middle ground."

In interviews, Liefeld has compared himself to other popular artists who experience meteoric success and acclaim early in their careers but near-pariah status afterwards, notably Britney Spears, who "became vapid pop music, and perhaps I was nothing more than a vapid comic book artist." He seems to credit his success to tapping into the zeitgeist: "I'll be the first to tell you that we were never the best artists. We were never the best at anything, but just like a song or a band or whatever, we caught on and we toured rigorously."

He is not without supporters in the industry. The A.V. Club says of Liefeld's critics, "Rob Liefeld is the punching bag of choice for many discerning comics fans. But he’s also the man who defined what the 1990s looked like in superhero books, so he’s crying all the way to the bank. For every detractor who thinks he’s the worst thing to happen to comic books since Fredric Wertham, there are a dozen ravenous fanboys ready to snatch up whatever he does next." Writer Jeph Loeb, with whom Liefeld collaborated, and writer Mark Millar are reported to be admirers of his work. Millar in particular wrote the foreword to the 2008 Youngblood collection published by Image Comics, in which he defended that series as an entry in the celebrity superhero subgenre that predated The Authority and X-Statix. Millar also compared critics of Liefeld's layouts and figure work to those who would have criticized Jack Kirby for exhibiting a cartoony style rather than photorealism, and asserted that his own children are avid fans of Liefeld's work in general, and Youngblood in particular. In 2012, Rich Johnston of Bleeding Cool said of DC Comics' decision to assign Liefeld the co-scripting and drawing duties on three of their flagging New 52 titles, "Rob does have a habit, of course, of pulling out sales and attention like a rabbit out of a hat."