The Rob Liefeld Dilemma

By Ada Mina

The Rob Liefeld Dilemma

Rob Liefeld is an infamous cartoonist considering that there's a lot of criticism for his character designs, storytelling and most especially anatomy. In reality, Liefeld isn't the only one of this calibre though he's arguably the most well-known among this group. There are a number of cartoonists and artists who are about as bad as Liefeld is when it comes to drawing. The mastermind behind the shoot-em-up video game Touhou Project isn't a good artist himself. Zun is good at a few other things like programming, music and some writing but his biggest flaw is his drawing even though his character designs are eye-catching enough to be redeemable. Which is interesting to think that Zun's habit of even the Touhou women hats and accessories is practically no different from Liefeld's habit of giving characters pouches, leg bands and arm bands since both use these as a way to make it up for their questionable grasp of anatomy. Zun's figure come off as stiff whilst Liefeld was at some point capable of doing dynamble figures when the story calls for it and was actually competent at human anatomy though as what others say he sometimes got tired of it.

If Rob Liefeld is the worst comics cartoonist of the 1990s, that would make Christian Weston Chandler to be one of the worst webcomics cartoonist of the new millennium. That's fair to say that Chandler began doing Sonichu in the early 2000s whilst Liefeld broke into the comics industry in the mid-1980s. There are some differences between the two though one might wonder if it hints at some parallels as well. Rob Liefeld was something of a superhero fan before he immediately got into the industry but the same can be said of his peers and others before him like Alan Moore for instance. Darwyn Cooke pointed out at around the time when superhero comics began selling only at specialty shops did we witness the emergence of superhero fans who would work professionally. This means that Liefeld and many others aren't alone in this regard though Chandler never became a real comics professional and that Sonichu is at best a terribly done amateur story.

Sonichu can be described as the 2000s version of Youngblood in the sense that Sonichu is a mashup of two popular Japanese gaming franchises (Pokemon's Pikachu and Sonic the Hedgehog) while Youngblood incorporated parts of Liefeld's proposal for a DC project and that of an earlier work of the same name. They are rather infamous for being bad save for that Youngblood was going to be adapted for a cartoon series. Sonichu could've been a big franchise but given Chandler's limited resources, unprofessionalism and accessibility online that never came to fruition leaving Chandler to be mocked endlessly by trolls. Much like Liefeld's aesthetics, the Sonichu comics inspire a lot of parodies and reboots of sorts as well as a message board and a dedicated wiki.

Another person who would be comparable to Liefeld's calibre would probably be Shamine Athena King. I consider her to be a pretty close match in the sense that both of them started their careers at an early age, demonstrated a lot of potential and have a lot of passion for the things they like even if it doesn't always turn out right and can be painfully incompetent. While King isn't that experienced in the publishing industry the way Liefeld is, she's had some experience in getting her comics published such as "Only in a Harem" and a comic strip story done in the style of Jhonen Vasquez. Since both King and Chandler were active online longer than Liefeld did, if Liefeld was born much later he would have been closer to them. It says a lot about the differences between Liefeld's generation and those of later online lolcows. Between Liefeld and these two, you've got Snapesnogger for her questionably androgynous snakepeople, Dave Cheung's descent into guro porn even though he has done something similar to it before and Andrea Avrett's vain attempts at getting hired at Disney as well as her infamous Mary Sue character Marina Seadrift.

Four of them had professional aspirations tempered by fannishness save for that Liefeld actually got employed for good whether if one likes it or not while the latter three don't have much of a chance to be employed at a company for life. In fairness, Liefeld was from another generation where he was lucky to get published. Had he been much younger, he would have ended up at DeviantART or some other website and get mercilessly mocked by trolls. His chances of becoming a competent professional would have been dashed. There was bashing for Liefeld during the Usenet days though in hindsight that was surprisingly tamer than what became of the lolcow artists of this generation. It would also mean that Liefeld is far from the worst cartoonist as there are several others who would rival him in sheer incompetence, unprofessionalism and idiotic aspirations.