Originally published September 3, 1993, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1033

“If it’s something that I’m a stickler for, it’s credit. Give it when it’s due.” –Rob Liefeld

“Be careful of what you wish for. You may get it.” –Old Chinese Proverb

“Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.“ –Bill Bixby as Dr. Banner

So Rob Liefeld wants credit.

Friends, Romans, Countrymen… lend me your ears. To paraphrase Shakespeare, I come not to bury Rob… but to praise him.

Anyone who so diligently lives his life by the credo of giving credit where credit is due must certainly have his request honored to the maximum ability that this column, and its crack research team, can muster.

Since Rob expressed his gratitude to me for bringing up the matter of Cable’s origins–thereby providing him an opportunity to depict Louise Simonson, one of the sweetest and most talented women in the industry, as a profit hungry, acclaim grubbing leech–I feel it only fair to continue in my Rob-sanctioned efforts to spread credit around.

Certainly Rob himself is liberal enough. The gent dispenses more credit than Citibank. For example, in an interview conducted by Paul Grant that will appear in issue #5 of Hero, due out in October (and the Hero folks were kind enough to allow me to print this excerpt in BID a full two months before the magazine, so all of you be sure to head out to the newsstand in October and pick up the ‘zine when it hits the stands), Rob doles out the appropriate credit for the creative debacle called Youngblood #1.

“Youngblood #1 was a disaster, period, end of story. Put it behind me. It will always exist, but disaster. I worked with a friend, who I let go after that, who scripted the book. And when we reprint the first four issues, or zero through four, the whole probably will be rescripted and people will see how different, a different script on top of it. I did not write that. People, I was doing on that what I did on X-Force. I plotted it, and Fabian Nicieza would come in and script on me on X-Force. I plotted Youngblood #1, and I wanted two stories on each side. Little things like `To be continued’ didn’t get stamped down in the right places. I mean, that was a production problem, but the writing–you know the whole package, I look back and I go, you know, never gonna shake it that I can acknowledge that it didn’t turn out the way it was supposed to. Two, three and four, I’ll hold them up against any other comic book in terms of there’s a story going along, and the characters are wrapped up in it, battle one large villain character, and it was resolved.”

There it is, folks. From Rob himself–the reason that Youngblood had such an abysmal launch. Never mind that the first test of a comic book page is that you should be able to look at it unscripted and still be able to have some idea of what’s happening (it’s called “storytelling”). Never mind the bad anatomy, lack of correct perspective, and non-existent backgrounds. Never mind that the book shipped, and continued to ship, months late.

Rob squarely gives credit for the pure lousiness of Youngblood to “friend” Hank Kanalz.

Wotta guy. Wotta guy. I can only think of the Genie from Aladdin singing, “You ain’t never had a friend like me.”

In the world of Rob Liefeld, the writer exists to clean up after his mess. The writer as scapegoat: To be blamed when things crash and burn, and to be ignored–or even vilified–when things go well. To serve the convenience and whims of Rob Liefeld, master of credit.

He seems truly flummoxed that Kanalz was not able to do for him what Nicieza did for him: Namely, make him look good. Turn the you-know-what to shinola. After all, aren’t all writers interchangeable? All eminently equal and, likewise, disposable?

The inference to be drawn is that the much-despised Louise Simonson also slaved to make sense out of the pin-upped chaos that is a Liefeld page. She managed well enough to help make him a mega-star, and for that, she deserves… well, nothing but Rob’s approbation, it seems. Perhaps–and this is purely speculation on my part–perhaps she departed the X-books because she decided that staying where she was clearly not appreciated made even less sense than a page of Liefeld art.

Liefeld art.

By cracky, let’s keep doling out that credit which Rob values so highly, shall we?

As we know by know, image is everything. The artwork is the be-all, end-all of comics. As far as Rob is concerned, Louise’s contribution to Cable was negligible, non-existent. The words didn’t matter. Whatever Louise’s talents may have brought to the mix didn’t matter. Only the visuals mattered.

And credit should be given where credit is due.

You want it, Rob? You got it.

I yanked out the Cable trade paperback, plus some back issues I had of X-Force (gleefully tearing pages out and faxing them around), and the IBIDS–the Intrepid But I Digress Staff–swung into action. The mission was a simple one: Give Credit.

Now let’s not kid ourselves. Copying art poses is commonplace enough in this industry. Everyone knows about it. Lots of people do it. (Curiously, when writers do it, it’s called plagiarism, and is considered to be as low as a writer can sink; whereas when artists do it, it’s called swiping, and is considered a means of reference. Thus is the coin of the idea held to a higher standard than the art of the visual; but that never seems to occur to anyone.)

Let us also clarify the difference between referencing and swiping. Most, if not all, artists, use reference ranging from real life to work by others in their field. It’s done so that they can produce the best work possible. They want to “get it right,” as it were. Certainly there’s nothing wrong with that.

Nor is there anything wrong with an artist whose style is clearly influenced by another’s. No one came into this business in a vacuum.

Swiping, however, is another matter. It’s a sign of laziness. It’s a shortcut, a means of not having to work as hard. It’s when you’re too lazy to design your own page layouts, or figure something out on your own. So you have detailed files that show how superior artists in the field did things, and you stick them in where appropriate.

Drawing something in the style of, say, Will Eisner, is one thing. Doing a line-for-line copy of a page of Eisner, however, followed by John Bolton, followed by Wally Wood… that’s just a hodgepodge. It’s cheating.

In a nutshell–an artist whose using reference still produces work that looks consistently like his own style. A swipe artist produces work that’s all over the place.

And since Rob Liefeld so stridently claims that credit must be given, why, we can–nay, must–assume that if he were engaging in swiping (which I’m not saying he is), that he would, in fact, be crediting it.

Which means that any resemblance between a piece of Rob Liefeld art and some other artwork would have to be…

…coincidence.

And if by some hideous happenstance, they were in fact “homages,” why then, we’d have to make sure they were credited because, gosh darn it, Rob wants it that way.

Page 131, panel two of the Cable trade paperback, there’s a very impressive panel of Sunfire being tossed backwards. By staggering coincidence, an identical panel first appeared, line for line, in Fantastic Four #247. John Byrne: You deserve credit. Stand up and take a bow for your artistry. Why, y’know… I bet Rob’s doubtlessly-intended credit to John was supposed to appear on that very page, and dumb ol’ Louise forgot to write it down. Sure. That’s it.

On page 159, the first panel has Wolverine charging in profile. Now it’s not absolutely, 100% identical to a similar sequence on Page 17 of the Ground Zero trade paperback, drawn by Todd McFarlane. But it’s close. You be the judge.

The main difference is that Todd has Wolverine with his left arm sweeping in front of him. Of course, Rob has him with both arms pulled back so that he’s not only off-balance (inviting him to fall) but he’s also leading with his chin, offering no offense except his barred teeth. Cable, unsurprisingly, decks him the next panel.

But heck, why let common sense stand in the way of a Rob Liefeld page? Besides… the writer can probably cover it.

(Todd, by the way, explains in the third issue of Hero, now on sale, that Image’s inability to ship books on any sort of schedule thusly: “We’re growing roses… If you want me to squat something out, I can do it right here on the table. Let them [other publishers] get the crap out on time, we’ll grow the roses!” There you have it. They’re not disorganized or undisciplined. They’re constipated horticulturists.)

Want more? New Mutants #100. Shatterstar rams a sword through himself in order to take out a foe in a dynamic double-page spread. Holy cow, how staggeringly, coincidentally similar… right down to the line work… to a climactic moment in a battle from Ronin #1 by Frank Miller. An homage, no doubt… except no “After Miller” or similar acknowledgement appears. Perhaps it was a production error, committed by those same fools who left off the “To Be Continued” that would have made Youngblood so much more comprehensible.

Byrne, McFarlane, Miller. Who else should we be crediting?

Look. Over there. Now we’re starting to get paranoid, unsettled by these amazing coincidences. The world is swirling. Everything in Rob’s art is starting to look familiar. Could that be… Gil Kane Green Lantern or Atom? Why does Wolverine look like he was drawn by Neal Adams… oh, wait! Now he’s back to looking like Byrne! Is that a Steve Ditko Creeper scooting around? In our befuddlement, Stryfe is looking a lot like he stepped out of Michael Golden Micronauts, right down to those funky spigots on his chest… but on page 20 of the paperback, he’s lifting a guy off his feet in a panel identical to Dr. Doom threatening Kristoff in Fantastic Four #258, also by Byrne.

Where’s their credit?!

Far be it from me to accuse Rob of being some sort of swipe artist (Rob Hood: Prince of Thieves?), because that would be utterly contrary to his philosophy of due credit. We know how important that is to him.

And if it’s important to him, it’s important to us. And it should be to you, too.

But this is too big a job for the IBIDS alone, folks. So “But I Digress” is putting forward the following offer: Start going through your back issues of New Mutants, X-Force… heck! Go through Youngblood while you’re at it. Give some of those extra copies you bought to friends, so they can help.

See how many art poses you can peg. Send photocopies of both the original source, plus their reincarnation from Rob’s work, to: “STICKLERS FOR CREDIT,” To Be Continued, PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705. Yes, it’s a contest, I guess. But everyone is a winner, because for every confirmed sighting you turn in, you will receive a genuine, pin-it-on-your shirt, limited edition button (which I’m having produced even as we speak–at my own expense, because I believe so firmly in Rob’s vision) that says, “OFFICIAL ‘BUT I DIGRESS’ STICKLER.”

(Editor’s note: This contest has long since expired. Please do not send in entries.)

And Rob… if you’re out there, and you’re wondering “Why me?”, let’s remind you: your good friend Erik Larson started it, by writing a belligerent letter to Wizard in response to David Michelinie’s polite missive about Venom’s origins. And you perpetuated it by doing the same in regards to Walt Simonson. If you had been satisfied with my acknowledgement that you had the most legitimate claim to Cable’s origin, and Walt’s gentlemanly description of Louise’s contributions… if you had even followed Jim Valentino’s rather chivalrous example in his clarifying that he was not intending to insult Louise… then this column would not have been written.

For that, Rob… you can take full credit.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, is quite serious about the above offer. Make a party of it. Have friends over. Order in pizza, but be sure to pay with credit.)









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