Rob Liefeld whines again

Popverse says dreadful artist Liefeld is complaining that he's not listed as a writer/artist in one of Marvel's latest archives for New Mutants:

Rob Liefeld has never been shy about his opinions on... er, anything, really. But for our purposes, he's never held back on his opinions over how the work he did at Marvel has been handled by the company. Take, for example, a recent expression of his frustration regarding his work on the '90s X-Men title The New Mutants, in which Liefeld introduced perhaps his most famous creations, Deadpool and Cable. According to the seminal artist and Image Comics co-founder, a new collection of said comics miscredits him egregiously.

Liefeld's thoughts came via a social media post made June 6, in conjunction with Marvel's advertisement for an upcoming comic book omnibus. Specifically, that omnibus is The New Mutants Volume 4, which as some fans brought to Liefeld's attention, only credits him as an artist.

"Yes," said Liefeld, "despite writing the best selling issues of New Mutants ever published I am not listed [as a writer]."

But wasn't Louise Simonson the writer at the time? The only issues where he appeared to have credit as writer - or perhaps more precisely, as plotter - were the last 3, issues 98-100, and even there, it wasn't alone. It was with Fabian Nicieza. And I also noticed, interestingly enough, that issues 92 and 97 had Bob Hall and Guang Yap, respectively, credited as artists, not Liefeld. So it sounds like Liefeld's once again trying to give tabloid news sites like Popverse more material they can exploit for trivial matters, and simultaneously, Liefeld's trying to pretend he's one of the finest artists around, even though he's not. Rather hiliariously, he even admits he only "wrote" the last 3 issues in 1983-91's New Mutants:

Thus began a series of posts in which Liefeld not only voiced his annoyance of the oversight, but reminded readers of the success of the comic book the omnibus collects.

"It was through my writing that issues #98-100 sold 2.2 million copies," Liefeld said in another post. "That is more than the entire year previous to my joining. New Mutants was selling 110.000 copies in a sea of X-books selling 350k and above."

No kidding. It sold that much with his otherwise awful art? Well, I do recall the P.T. Barnum phrase "a sucker is born every minute", but even so, if anybody actually bought stories where it's not clear he was the writer per se as Nicieza was, it's a terrible shame they had to help prolong the dreadful career of such a pretentious artist.

Finally, Liefeld stepped back from his own experience to point at other artists who've conveyed their exasperation not just with the comic book industry, but with Marvel itself.

"In closing, Marvel treats creators like shit," Liefeld concluded, "They always have. Jack Kirby sued them. For two decades. The estate wants to sweep it under the rug now that they settled, but it turned Jack’s stomach. Steve Ditko sued Marvel. They can’t help but create the magic makers like shit."

Oops, did he really say "create" instead of "treat"? And since when was Liefeld a "magic maker" with that awful art of his, where he couldn't draw feet, let alone consistent panels with coherent art? Liefeld, alas, appears to be pretty arrogant, and with that kind of approach, is it any wonder he's otherwise on the sidelines now? It's a real shame Marvel had to hire him to work on at least 2 comics in their unsuccessful Heroes Reborn "experiment", which was like a textbook example of how mainstream publishers aren't marketing and selling on merit. Liefeld's only making clear he doesn't think his sloppy, derivative art is an embarrassment to the whole concept of artmaking. Yet all these pretentious news sites see fit to lavish attention on him they likely wouldn't give to writers like Chuck Dixon, or even artists like Brandon Peterson and Kirby himself, who're more talented than Liefeld ever was back in the day.

All we learn from this is that Liefeld's got a pointless grudge against Marvel, proving they shouldn't have ever done business with him in the first place. And Image shouldn't have let him take part in the company's founding.