Captain America #1/Illustrated by Rob Liefield
The facts are these:
- Rob Liefeld was sitting at Chicago Comic-Con, greeting fans and doing sketches.
- Comics reader Ryan Coons approached Liefeld’s table, said he was a fan of Captain America and asked for an apology for Liefeld’s participation in Marvel Comics’ Heroes Reborn.
- Liefeld blew Coons off.
- Later Coons’ purchased a copy of Stan Lee’s and John Buscema’s book, How to Draw Comics the Marvel Comics Way, from 1978, and dropped it on Liefeld’s desk.
After that, details become a little sketchy. In Coons’ blog post chronicling his version of the story, Liefeld sports an “Action hero sneer.” Once that blog reached critical mass and garnered the attention of comics news sites like Newsarama and CBR's Robot 6, Liefeld responded to Coons on his Twitter account, calling him a “mumbler,” and someone “I wouldn’t trust around my kids.”
It’s worth noting a few things before continuing:
Rob Liefeld is one of the most controversial figures in comics. There is almost nothing he’s associated with which isn’t wildly polarizing. His first major published work was for DC Comics’ Hawk and Dove miniseries in 1988, but he rose to fame penciling Marvel Comics’ New Mutants and X-Force, where he created (or co-created, depending on whom you believe) the characters Cable, Domino and Shatterstar, among others.
He left Marvel in 1992 to co-found Image Comics with several other Marvel creators, but returned to Marvel for "Heroes Reborn." "Heroes Reborn" was event where several prominent Marvel characters were transported to an alternate universe, where they were “rebooted” (where a character’s history is wiped clean and his evolution begins at the start—think of turning back to the first page of a Choose Your Own Adventure novel). Liefeld was most involved with the new Captain America series.
Liefeld is often associated with, and cited as an example of, creative decline in super-hero comics in the 1990s, where dynamic art, exaggerated (and some would say poor) anatomy, and cover gimmicks replaced good storytelling.
Liefeld is also often accused of “swiping,” or the act of taking an image from another comic or form of media and appropriating it for your own use. You can find some examples of Liefeld’s supposed swipes here.
In short, Rob Liefeld is not beloved by everyone in the fan community.
After reading both Coons’ and Liefeld’s reports of the encounter, there are a couple of interesting things to notice:
- After reading both reports, neither Liefeld nor Coons are portrayed in an especially flattering light.
- However, even with Coons’ video of the encounter, you never see him give Liefeld the book. It just shows up. Liefeld doesn’t have a line in front of his table, so there’s no need to hurry off. But Coons’ apparently just drops the book on Liefeld’s table and scurries away.
Now, why is all this important?
If you have ever visited any comic book message board, you’ve no doubt noticed the level of discourse can drop to vitriolic name-calling and saber-rattling. Comic book creators who visit and post on those message boards often say something to the effect of, “Yeah, some people have a lot of courage from behind the safety of their keyboard, but I’ve never seen anybody say anything like that to my face at a convention.”
Coons did confront Liefeld directly... to an extent. But there’s nothing to indicate in either reports or the videos that indicates that Coons approached Liefeld with the Marvel book with any more confidence than a high school freshman boy dropping an anonymous love note in locker of the prom queen.
Over the past few weeks, a “conservative manifesto” has been making waves as it gives instructions to disrupt liberal politicians’ rallies and town hall meetings, dragging the level of discourse down to a shouting match, instead of formal protests or engaging the politician in a real discourse about the issues.
And that’s the level of discourse Coons presented. He didn’t present an argument to Liefeld. He barely even talked to him. Instead, he took a book, wrote a note in the front of it, hid the book in a convention bag, and dropped the book on Liefeld’s table so fast that even the video Coons has on his own site doesn’t show him actually delivering the book.
This does absolutely nothing to improve super-hero fans’ reputaions for being cowardly nerds. The rain hat and trenchcoat in August don’t help.
If there’s a creator you don’t enjoy and really feel the need to vent your opinion on, don’t just drop a "nerd grenade" on his desk; debate him, challenge him, but most importantly, interact with him. That’s why he’s there in the first place.
Otherwise, all you’re doing is making the rest of us look bad.
For Rob Liefeld’s official site, click here.
For a short introduction of comic books, click here.
What do a priest and the Joker have in common? Click here.
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