Rob Liefeld

Rob Liefeld (born October 3, 1968 in Anaheim, California) is an American comic book writer, illustrator and publisher, who has been one of the Modern Age’s most prominent and most controversial figures. Although briefly but undeniably a superstar artist in the 1990s, the backlash against his bombastic art style and widely derided writing, his repeated failures to maintain publishing schedules, his contentious ouster from the Image Comics partnership and allegations of plagiarism have eclipsed his early successes. Liefeld and his partisans now flaunt his image as "The Most Hated Man in Comics," a particularly ironic form of self-aggrandizing in light of the frequent accusations of plagiarism: The label is lifted from Jim Steranko's self-promotional materials.

Related Topics:
October 3 - 1968 - Anaheim - California - American - Comic book - Modern Age - 1990s - Image Comics - Plagiarism - Jim Steranko's

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In the early 1990s, Liefeld became a superstar due to his work on Marvel Comics’ The New Mutants, and later X-Force. In 1992 he and other popular Marvel illustrators left the company to found Image Comics, which rode the peak of a wave of comic books owned by their creators rather than their publishers. Liefeld’s high-profile line of comics failed to gain much critical approval.

Related Topics:
The New Mutants - X-Force - 1992 - Image Comics

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Fans originally praised Liefeld’s artwork as energetic and action-packed, but his later work was regularly criticized for excessive flamboyance, limited versatility, arbitrary use of cross-hatching, and stiff, contrived anatomy ranging from the improbable to the impossible. Liefeld's original creations, like many Image properties, have been panned as two-dimensional and generic.

Related Topics:
Cross-hatching - Anatomy

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Most observers agree that overly flashy artwork and decreased focus on character development were widespread trends in mainstream comic books in the early 1990s. For this reason, some consider Liefeld as the most visible representative of an industry-wide fad. But few deny that Liefeld's lines of comics were marked at that time by rather simplistic writing, that his characters and conceptions were often painfully derivative, and that his undependable and unpredictable publishing schedules quickly alienated both retailers and consumers.

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