SoraRabbit Short Hop 024: That Time SoraRabbit Read More Liefeld Comics Part 1

A few years ago I went back in my Marvel Unlimited app to read the first appearances of Deadpool. Unfortunately, those first appearances were drawn by Rob Liefeld. I stuck with it though, and read not just that one issue, but the three final issues of The New Mutants. I did a post about it to help me keep my sanity. It was agony but we had fun doing it, since we could make fun of Liefeld’s sloppy art. If you want to see that ordeal it’s here:

SoraRabbit Short Hop 011: That Time SoraRabbit Read More X-Comics

I talk more in that post about why I dislike Rob Liefeld’s art, but mainly it’s just because, to me, it’s aesthetically ugly. And also lazy. And insulting to comic book readers and other artists alike. There are so many lesser-known artists with way more skill that could have been in his role, yet he was (and still is) given work that could have gone to them and is considered one of the greats of the time. Sure, his work has gotten a little bit better, judging by his recent guest spots in Deadpool, but there’s always been and always will be major problems with his art. (And writing, but we’ll get to that once he takes over the plotting of The New Mutants and starts X-Force.)

Now, I’m not saying I can draw better than him. (My style tends to fall more in the goofy exaggerated comic strip sort of style… lots of round heads, rounder noses, and anthropomorphic animals but at least I can be consistent and I give it my best.) My apologies to anyone who genuinely enjoys his work. I’m gonna be honest with you… this post is not for you. This post is to help me get through a difficult leg of my X-Journey with some amateur art critique.

Let’s go back a little to explain. See, I read a few X-Men comics when I was younger, but never would have considered myself a fan. Not, that is, until I got the fantastic Krakoa era reboot House of X and Powers of X. I reviewed those two interconnected series in an early blog post. Curious as to where it all started, I read the very first issue of X-Men by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. That set me off on a massive epic journey through all 61 years (as of the time of this writing) of X-Men comics. I’m not just talking the main series. Nooo… I’m reading every limited series, every one-shot, every run of every X title ever released by Marvel. (Including side stuff like 2099, Ultimate, New Ultimate, and MC2.) I am about two years into this journey now and I have hit this on two fronts. For one thing, I have caught up to current day using the 2019 reboot as my starting point. And then from the other side, starting from X-Men Issue 1 in 1963, I am now all the way up to 1990. This means I have lapped myself. I am now getting back to the end of The New Mutants all over again. And after that, X-Force. So I have a couple years worth of Liefeld drawn and plotted comics to get through before he bails on Marvel and cofounds Image Comics. I figured the best way to get through this dark era would be to make all of you, my loyal readers, suffer along with me. And maybe we can have some laughs at the expense of some sloppy 34 year old art.

So that’s what we’re going to do! I’m going to include some choice panels and covers from my reading and I’ll do as many of these as I need to or feel like doing. As long as it’s still fun, I’ll keep laughing at this stuff. We’re going to see all the markers of Liefeld’s 90’s art here: poor grasp of anatomy, hidden or misshapen feet, out-of-place sexuality, crosshatching, excessive white space, plain color instead of backgrounds, faces with an insane amount of lines, weird perspectives, and a little thing I like to call butthole-crotch. So with all that prelude aside, here we go!

Teefs. (Credit: Marvel Comics)

Taken From: The New Mutants #88, cover date April 1990. Writer: Louise Simonson. Art: Rob Liefeld.

Context: Honestly, I don’t remember what was happening here. I think Blob was just mad. Probably at Cable? Seems right.

Thoughts: EXTREME CLOSE-UP! Here’s a good example of Rob’s poor anatomy skills. Blob has 21 visible teeth on the bottom, when the average adult has 16. Lots of extra lines all over his face. You can’t see it well on this panel, but he tends to draw Blob with a cone-shaped head and huge man-boobs. Always an exaggerated and weirdly-extended jaw. (Hence the extra teefs to fill the space.) And look at that whopper of a tongue! He seems to be suffering from a rare ailment that can only be called Muppet-mouth.

The battle for the goiter. (Credit: Marvel Comics)

Taken From: The New Mutants #89, cover date May 1990. Writer: Louise Simonson. Art: Rob Liefeld and Todd McFarlane.

Context: Cable fights Freedom Force.

Thoughts: I had to include this cover, mainly to show off Blob’s huge goiter. I think he was going for double-chin and seriously missed the mark. He has a tendency to crank people’s necks beyond what the spine would allow in a real human, and this is shown here with Blob. I do like how Pyro is snuggling up to Cable’s crotch, though. Looks cozy. But where’d his right arm go? And check out Cable’s original costume! Padded vest with no shirt and dangerously spiked bracelet. Extra pouches with who-knows-what in them. It’s all sooo 90s.

To be absolutely fair, this cover is credited to both Liefeld and McFarlane, but I’ve seen enough of both their art to say with certainty that Liefeld penciled this and Todd did the finishing. (Mainly the inking, but probably some line corrections as well.) That bracelet, though? That’s McFarlane’s influence. It looks like Spawn’s original spiked wrist-band with slightly smaller spikes. Also of note, they’re battling in the blue dimension. Why bother with backgrounds… I mean the cover’s just supposed to sell the comic.

And finally, not sure if he was in charge of the words on the cover or if that’s layout’s job, but absolutely zero heroes fell in this issue. Just sayin’.

Reed Richard’s leg there. (Credit: Marvel Comics)

Taken From: The New Mutants #89, cover date May 1990. Writer: Louise Simonson. Art: Rob Liefeld.

Context: Cable continues to fight Freedom Force.

Thoughts: Wow, where to begin? First off, Cable’s taking care of all those extra teeth Blob has, so we don’t have to worry about that anymore. You can see his cone-head in this shot. Pyro appears to be decapitated here. Heads cannot move like that and remain attached. His neck would have to be a foot long! This whole panel is weirdly sexual… you have a tasteful glimpse of Blob’s man-boobs, Pyro’s booty is drawn in careful detail, and look at the vast expanse of Cable’s crotch. Those pants’re tight, yo. If he wasn’t kicking, could you imagine his thigh gap? There’s nothing wrong with any of that, mind you, but the 90s was an era of strangely-timed and misplaced sexuality. I don’t usually expect so much fan-service in my fight scenes. (And I watch anime!) This exact same kick is replayed multiple times over the issues I read by different characters. I think Rob only knows one way to draw a kick. Or maybe this is just the patented “Cable Kick” and he taught it to all his students and also Wolverine for some reason.

My favorite part of this panel, though, is Cable’s leg. It’s roughly twice the length it should be and looks to be broken in at least two places. Also I’m pretty sure he’s wearing his shoe on the wrong foot. This is beautiful work. I spent way too long looking at this panel. Especially that leg.

My lord. (Credit: Marvel Comics)

Taken From: The New Mutants #90, cover date June 1990. Writer: Louise Simonson. Art: Rob Liefeld.

Context: The New Mutants realize their teammate Rictor is missing and inform Cable, who has declared himself to be their new headmaster.

Thoughts: So many trademarks of Liefeld’s art here. For one thing, look at all that white space. That was actually on the page, not just part of the screenshot. (I left the black line on the bottom to show how little of the page was used.) Cross-hatching on the non-background. Cable’s left eye is missing and his right eye has no pupil. In the yellow character area: Sunspot’s bandana streams in the nonexistent breeze of the underground bunker. Rahne’s drastic leg-spread stance. So many of his characters stand that way, arms and fingers also spread and mouths agape, giving a comically shocked look. On the left, Cannonball looks to have double-jointed legs and is standing very crookedly.

But let’s focus our attention on Cable in that last panel. Not the fact that he appears to have cut off the sleeve of his jumpsuit only so he can show off his metal arm. No, the main reason I grabbed this screenshot was to show that Liefeld, drawing the character that he co-created, cannot remember which of Cable’s arms is metal. Earlier in the comic it was his left arm like it should be. Halfway through the comic he forgot and made the right arm metal and it stayed this way for the rest of the issue. Forgetting one of the key physical traits of your own character shows a low attention to detail and, yes, a laziness that irritates me to no end.

Hangin' around. (Credit: Marvel Comics)

Taken From: The New Mutants # 94, cover date October 1990. Writer: Louise Simonson. Art: Rob Liefeld.

Context: Boom-Boom, Sam/Cannonball, and Warlock are held prisoner by the Mutant Liberation Force.

Thoughts: If Boom-Boom’s arms were really that long, when she held them at her sides, they would stretch past her knees. Plus she seems to be the same height as Sam here, who is taller than all of his teammates. (Check the previous screenshot where they’re side by side and Sam is over a foot taller than her. Two feet if he straightened those crooked legs.) Warlock is just hanging around with his hands in manacles… alien hands that can change shape at will, so why is he staying a prisoner? Anyway, Sam has some serious butthole crotch going on.

WHUT. (Credit: Marvel Comics)

And this is not related to the art… although I generally enjoy Louise Simonson’s work (aside from the tacked-on awkward romantic bits) this was sloppy as all hell. See how Sam is chained up? See how both his hands are restrained? In this issue he tricks the guard into kissing him so that he could steal her key. Uh… how? He’s just shown holding it with no further explanation offered. There was some sort of lazy explanation of it being in her headdress, but why the hell would she keep her key there? And even so, how did he get it out of there without hands if he was busy kissing her? And how did he then use the key to get them loose with his hands shackled? Did all their manacles use the same key? So confusing.

Hey look, I know that guy. (Credit: Marvel Comics)

Taken From: The New Mutants # 94, cover date October 1990. Writer: Louise Simonson. Art: Rob Liefeld.

Context: Cable and Wolverine fight because it sells issues.

Thoughts: Hey, Cable’s metal arm is back to the left like it’s supposed to be! I’m not sure why they’re fighting in front of a screen-door that keeps changing color. Liefeld draws Wolverine so weird, but you can tell he enjoys it and takes his time with him. But does his mask and boot-points have to be so long? He looks silly. His calf muscles are as thick as his thighs! Wolverine looks like he’s got a baby stump for an arm. I don’t know what it is, but the perspectives and the angle of his claws are wrong. All through this issue Liefeld would forget to draw Wolverine’s claws in one panel and then remember to draw them in the next. It looked like he was constantly retracting and popping his claws for no reason.

This also shows one of my big pet peeves regarding Wolverine. To be fair, Liefeld is not the only one who does this, but, his claws are too freaking long. When retracted, his claws go back into his forearms. If they’re too long, he wouldn’t be able to bend his arms at the elbows. I know it sounds nit-picky, but it’s always bothered me.

ACTION! (Credit: Marvel Comics)

Taken From: The New Mutants # 94, cover date October 1990. Writer: Louise Simonson. Art: Rob Liefeld.

Context: Sunfire and Boom-Boom fight armored guards.

Thoughts: Yay they’re fighting in the void! I love when the walls and floor are white as the snow. It makes for some compelling comic book panels! Especially when 30% of the page is already white because he only draws in the center 70%. Sunfire appears to be in the process of hopping on one leg. The middle guard is just standing off-balance with no indication of who or what hit him. I have no idea why Boom-Boom is jumping to throw her timebomb. Or maybe she’s Cable Kicking him? But if so, why is she swinging her arm forward like she does when she throws her bomb? Of course, she can’t set off her bombs without counting down from 3. Either way, she aimed right for the guard’s heavily-armored crotch, which shows some good combat-sense. Cable is teaching these kids well. Far be it from me to tell an artist how to do his job, but my impression is that art is supposed to depict what’s happening. If every few pages you’re left with an unsolvable mystery, well, I guess that’s a different form of art.

They's nekkid. (Credit: Marvel Comics)

Taken From: The New Mutants # 95, cover date November 1990. Writer: Louise Simonson. Art: Rob Liefeld.

Context: Storm, Rahne/Wolfsbane, Rictor, and Boom-Boom have been teleported to the island nation of Genosha. The teleportation process doesn’t work on clothes.

Thoughts: And finally we come to a huge medium-wide problem. I’m not saying it started in the 90s, but it certainly flared up in that decade. Over-sexualization that serves no purpose in the plot. I can’t blame the disappearance of their clothes on Liefeld, though. That happened previously in Uncanny X-Men #235 when Rogue and Wolverine were teleported to Genosha. (Although they were mostly in tasteful shadows when it happened to them.) If anything, blame Claremont! Or blame crude 90’s teleportation technology that can’t bring your clothes with you. Seems like a serious design flaw.

So, okay, nude teleportation was canon… still, Liefeld clearly had way too much fun drawing a nude battle scene. Fine, do what you love. He had a choice in how he depicted this scene and how much skin he showed. He made that choice. It’s not how I would have done it… it could have been better, and probably couldn’t have been much worse in a comics code compliant title. That aside, my big problem comes in the fact that Storm, at this point in continuity, had been de-aged to preadolescence. While not explicitly stated how old she was, in her appearances before this, she was drawn to be around ten or twelve. Firstly, and this should go without saying, but a child should not be depicted sans clothing regardless of what bearing it has on the plot. Sure, there were plot-related reasons for her to be sent to Genosha which ultimately result in her ending up back at her normal age and power level. I believe that it was Simonson’s job to get her there a different way so she didn’t have to go through the nude teleportation process. The writing failed at this. But we’re not here to pick apart the writing. We’re here for the art.

Um, where are you looking, Rictor? (Credit: Marvel Comics)

Yeah… I’d say this could have been avoided. There are so many things wrong with all this, but I don’t want to harp on it more, so I’ll make another point. This, right here, more than the gratuitous nudity, is a major problem with Liefeld’s art. The second he gets his hands on a female character, they jump up a few cup sizes and start looking like pin-ups. It doesn’t matter what age they’re canonically supposed to be, they get put through the horny filter and it’s frankly gross. Look at Boom-Boom in the two screenshots above. Before Liefeld’s stint on The New Mutants, she was a rail-thin, scrawny teenager. He has no regard for what a character is supposed to look like, just how he wants to draw them. Sure, there’s artistic license, but this isn’t that. This is all about drawin’ da boobies. (Granted practically every artist of the era did it. Look up how Mary Jane Watson looked in the 80s compared to the 90s when McFarlane got to her.)

And it’s not just the women who get massive knockers, either. Google “Liefeld Captain America” if you’ve somehow missed the most infamous of his drawings.

Only the word balloons let us know what's really happening here. (Credit: Marvel Comics)

As a little side note, there were also a few times in this issue where Liefeld kind of went rogue and refused to draw what Simonson’s script called for. In a scene where the villain Cameron Hodge was complaining about Rahne pulling out the tubes giving him Warlock’s power, Rob instead elected to draw her getting whacked with a tentacle. Of course they added the word “RIIIIP!” to make up for it. The word balloons do not match the art at several points. Why show us the robot gradually turning human or Rahne’s heroic sabotage when he could show tentacle whacking and boobies? (Rahne was another one who had to buy new bras after meeting Liefeld.)

Fly little boy, fly! (Credit: Marvel Comics)

Taken From: Captain America # 1, cover date November 1996. Writer: Jeph Loeb. Art: Rob Liefeld.

Context: Captain America is in a pocket universe where Nick Fury has brainwashed him and given him a family of LMDs. (Life Model Decoys— essentially high-tech robot doubles.)

Thoughts: Bonus panel. I didn’t actually read these. I was just curious about the art on this run since it’s slightly later art than The New Mutants and I know this series sold poorly after he took over duties on it.

As you can see above, he still does that spread-eagle standing stance. Also, where did Cap’s left leg go? It vanished! I’m assuming Cap’s weird arm stance means he’s shrugging on his jacket, but if so, why is he already holding his little suitcase? Did he shove it through the arm hole? Did he start to put on his jacket, stop and pick up his suitcase and then finish putting it on? It boggles the mind how difficult easy things are made when the art is bad. The perspectives were all wrong throughout and his shield kept changing sizes. One character looked tiny next to Cap but the shield was the same size in both their hands. Also he made the interesting choice to draw Cap without lips. Actually, none of the men had lips in this.

And finally— this is thankfully something that doesn’t come up often— Liefeld suffers from the problem many comic book artists have… how to draw kids. In the hands of many— even the best— artists, little kids or even babies can look like weird little shrunken adults. Here it just looks like Cap’s head was put on a tiny little body. And if I were him, I wouldn’t try flying in an all-white void of a room. It’s dangerous. Also, that’s totally Badrock— an Image character of Liefeld’s— on the lunchbox. Was he allowed to advertise his non-Marvel characters in a Marvel comic?

Scrappin' in the void. (Credit: Marvel Comics)

So that’s what I have for you this time! We shouldn’t take too high a dose of Liefeld all in one sitting. It’s not safe. You start to become numb to its effects. I feel the need to reiterate that this post was done in fun and to help me suffer through a low point in my X-Men read-through. Everything contained in this post is my own personal opinion and just down to personal taste. That said, I am absolutely right about everything and never wrong. So there.

Thank you for joining me! I had fun doing this post, and it actually did help me read through these issues faster. I just kept pushing through looking for new horrors to share! X-Force is gonna be a breeze! I have other comics to read for now (Uncanny X-Men, X-Factor, Wolverine, Excalibur, etc.) When I get back around to the final issues of The New Mutants and the first issues of X-Force, I will be back with another installment. Until then, I appreciate you all, and I’ll be back with something else soon!

Yup... he ain't giving them clothes until someone makes him. (Credit: Marvel Comics)