40 MORE Of The Worst Rob Liefeld Drawings, Numbers 10 Through 1.

10.


Oh, Robert! Your tawdry escapades will certainly go down in the ribaldry hall of fame!

I don’t even know what sort of clothing Suprema (yep) Is meant to be pulling off/removing here. Perhaps she is merely pulling taffy while wearing her skirt. That’s probably it.

If I were Suprema, I would never stop screaming I would probably get my front-spine checked out, as well as my broken clavicle and my extremely narrow set of abs between two of my larger sets of abs. Because that is probably a hernia.

9.



Captain America's shield is lens flaring IN THE RAIN AT NIGHT.


I have no idea why Liefeld gave Captain America such a Ren & Stimpy ass, but there you go. And I'm pretty sure that drawing of Cap started out as Cap from the front. You can't even tell, can you? Liefeld torsos look like Liefeld backs and vice versa. You also can't tell the difference between kneecaps and the backs of people's heads when he draws them.


This is just awful. Crossbones is at least 12 feet tall and has a skull-themed pouchbelt (where he keeps his crossed bones) around his waist and another around his thigh, and he's wearing WHITE DINNER GLOVES. What is it with Liefeld and white gloves? Every six years he learns to draw a new thing and puts it in everything. Learned how to draw white gloves? Cable suddenly has white gloves! Learned how to add lens flares on the computer? Cover Cable in flares! Learned how to draw a woman from the neck down?


lol no

8.


Here is a brilliant, BRILLIANT (read: catastrophically horrible) example of "Liefeld likes to draw shit out of order." In the original pencil drawing for this cover, do you imagine Warchild was ever meant to be holding a sword? Or that sword, at any rate?

  1. Extend index and middle finger of right hand. Bend slightly at first knuckle
  2. Clench fingers and thumb of left hand together like you’re making a chicken’s head with your hand
  3. Press right and left hand together
  4. NOW HOLD A FUCKING SEVEN-FOOT SWORD

Once again, the blade of the sword doesn’t even come close to meeting up with the handle of the sword, but I guess when you’re adding it all in after the fact, it doesn’t matter. Oh…oh no. He…he was holding his wang in the first draft, wasn’t he? Just pointing his peener right at the audience.

Also what is going on with the blood in that guy’s mouth in the background? Does blood form in a web and I just never knew that before? Holy shit, I can’t believe Rob Liefeld never "invented" an "edgy" version of Spider-Man called "BLOODWEB." He could have a shitty haircut and pouches, or something. Maybe have a couple of swords on his back and carry a gun that looks like a hair drier. I dunno, I’m just spitballing here, Rob. You’re the professional.

7.


I WILL FLEX SO HARD I WILL BEND THIS SWORD

AND ALSO CLENCH MY FIST IN SUCH A WAY AS TO HAVE THE SWORD HANDLE COME OUT OF SOME INDETERMINATE POINT SOMEWHERE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF IT.

Let’s not deal with the angle of the sword and the angle of the reflection and exactly what course Cannonball is taking towards Shatterstar and/or his sword. It would take too long and be too big of a headache and nobody cares (least of all, Rob Liefeld), so let’s just agree "lol" and move along to the next talking point.

Rob Liefeld will just keep adding lines to shit. Just keep adding lines and keep adding lines and won’t stop until his pen runs dry or his assistant comes by and wrestles Rob’s arm free of the drawing board. No person exists with that amount of striation in their muscles. No one. Look at how many side-abs he gave Shatterstar. It’s like a bowl of peanut M&Ms.

Let’s take just a moment to talk about composition for a moment. At first glance, you think, hey! The sword comes to the foreground and gives space to the character in the reflection. The negative space suggests the offscreen character. But no. It doesn’t. Liefeld just found a way to draw less. "Hey! If I move him over HERE, I only have to draw one arm and just part of one thigh! I don’t even have to draw a second hand! Second hands are tricky, because the thumb is on the other side on the second one. No one will even notice that he’s just sort of awkwardly standing there with his sword held over his ding-dong area and flexing the shit out of every muscle. It’s the perfect crime!"

6.


"Hi, my name is Rob Liefeld. For Halloween, I'm dressing up as Jae Lee."


5.


Modern-day Liefeld occasionally goes for what he feels is a more photorealistic approach. Except that his version of "photorealistic" usually translates to "crinkle-faced, horse-skulled pig-snoutery."

The guy on the right is Sam Guthrie, AKA Cannonball, who is supposed to be anywhere between 17 and 25, depending on who is editing the comic. The guy on the left, I don’t know, so we’ll just call him Soul Patch Jones. I don’t know how old Soul Patch Jones is supposed to be, but I’m going to guess significantly older than Sam. Because he’s tanner. There’s literally no way to tell any sort of age difference between these characters. They look like they’re both 80. Cannonball looks like Morgan Fairchild looked into the Ark of the Covenant.

This is Liefeld’s idea of an ideal face, everyone. A jawline you can slice roast beef on and eight-inch cheekbones. Skin like onion paper that’s been pounded with a meat tenderizer. A philtrum you can store a cashew in and lips the texture of Red Vines. And of course, floppy bangs.

4.


Yeah, Shrink is like finding out Bil Keane has died and put Joseph Kony in charge of the Family Circus.


This shit wouldn't even fly in Highlights For Children. Gallant would take one look at this garbage and throw it in the toilet. Goofus would probably publish it and call it "awesome comics".


3.


This is the prototype of "that" Captain America drawing, and I honestly can’t decide if this is worse, or better. What sort of reference guide so you suppose Liefeld looks at for drawing musculature and anatomy? Ha! I’m kidding, of course.

"Hey dudes, how many abs are on a guy? Like a million? Shit, wait, what do abs look like? They’re like those small, edamame-looking things, right? I’ll just stick those in there. Nice. Hey, how do veins work? They’re all criss-crossy, right? Heh, what am I talking about? They gotta transport blood everywhere, right? So they probably just intersect and overlap all over the place. Easy as cake. Hey, come over here. How does a shirt look where the arm meets the chest? What’s that? ‘Like a cat’s asshole’? Hey, makes sense to me! Crud, I’m getting kinda close to the deadline here. Knew I shouldn’t have waited until the day before "YOUNGBLOOD: STRIKEFILE" #5 went to the printers. Well, I’ll just sort of fade ‘im on out down at the bottom here with some crosshatching. Whoops, no time to cross; just "hatching" it is, then. No one looks at the bottom of drawings, right? Thought so."

2.


i can't with this


In the first panel, Wolverine looks like he was drawn by Kate Beaton as a joke. I've already typed "lens flares" so much in this post I want to literally vomit, and I can't even begin to explain away the "it's small so I'll half-ass it" qualities of the bottom two panels. Liefeld has no idea how action works. There's no flow or motion to anything he draws. He's just drawing one of the ten poses he knows, coloring in a background (or not) and sending it to press.


I guess the problem with Liefeld's legs is that he is compelled by Christ (or whoever) to draw them HYPER MUSCULAR, so they don't look normal standing or jumping or walking and he's got to find ways for characters to stand with one leg straight and one out or have them jump and bend their knees and jam their heels into their crotches or hide the legs completely. And then Cannonball shows up, and he doesn't have legs! PAGE DONE.


1.

Hoo boy. This is it. This is the mother lode. The perfect storm of every Rob Liefeld criticism all sitting there in a jumble of tumorous musculature. You've got the tiny feet, the hidden feet, the people balancing on their tiptoes because drawing is hard, the awkward "chest-and-ass thrust out as hard as possible in opposite directions at all times" poses, the inconsistent perspective and sizing where everyone is either twenty feet tall or five feet tall or the entirety of reality is in flux oh my god what is happening I can't feel my face.

The real crux of this piece, of course, is "Troll." Liefeld took Wolverine's head and slapped it on Puck's body and then gave him hooves and filled him full of horse steroids and gave him a uniform that bunches up like crazy around his dick for some reason. Troll is supposed to be holding a helmet under his arm in the first panel, but the only reason you know that is because I just told you. If I hadn't told you that, you would assume the gold area under his arm is just part of his costume and that his arm terminates suddenly in a near-90-degree angle. I know I'm weird, but when I have one arm bent in toward my body and the other arm hanging by my side, they're not the same length.

See the lady standing on tiptoe for no reason? Her name is Psilence. PSILENCE. No further comment is needed. PSILENCE.

Please take a moment to enlarge this so you can check out Shaft (guy in background, in red, to the left of PSILENCE). His top half and bottom half are stuck together at opposing angles. Check out how his legs sort of trail nebulously off behind the foreground bench. And where Liefeld couldn't avoid it: one tiny foot.

The only things keeping this from being the perfect Liefeld drawing are 1. woeful lack of pouches and 2. only six of the nine characters shown have shit strapped to their backs.

Numbers 40 through 31
Numbers 30 through 21
Numbers 20 through 11
The 10 worst! (you are here)
The 2007 "Worst Liefeld Drawings" List


Comments

a triumph.

this was even better than the last list, and the best thing we’ve done since moving to the new blog. so awesome.

In 14 and 16 Thongeralla’s hips look like the Iron Giant’s.

Hark! A Liefeld.

APPLAWS

I owned that copy of “Youngblood Strikefile,” but I swear to God, it came from a bargain bin, or possibly was given away as a freebie by some local Virginia comic shop shedding inventory.

DYING

Actual tears coming from my face

Thank you

I now realize this hack was responsible for how crappy my childhood drawings were. My friends and I drew our own comics, and every character’s upper torso was filled with millions of tiny, round abs. We didn’t know why, but that’s what we knew comic book heroes looked like.

Damn you, Liefeld.

Bless your heart for subjecting yourself to these horrors for our enjoyment, sir.

Also, “A philtrum you can store a cashew in” made me absolutely lose it for some reason. Holy shit.

#9's Truly Biggest Failure

This is inspired work and I truly feel for the poor bastards who did the leg-work. Doing the research necessary to put this all together probably hurt your brains badly.. but I feel like you might have missed the biggest failure of #9.

Find the point at the base of Cap’s skull (his foramen magnum, to get all snooty about it), and trace a line downward. On normal Homo sapiens, this would simply lead to the spine, but not on Liefeld’s Captain America. No, Rob’s understanding of anatomy is far more… err, complex? Instead, Cap’s head here is situated directly above his right shoulder-blade. It’s as if he was originally a pair of conjoined twins, but Steve Roger’s parasitic twin (Stan Rogers?) was surgically removed, leaving only the hero we all know and try hard not to stare at.

In other words, it’s bad. So bad. So, so bad.

#1 and #3

First I didn’t know that was a helmet until you said it; you were dead right lmao. It’s still the worst looking character I’ve ever laid eyes upon.

Secondly I had always thought those “veins” were scars…massive networks of scars. It makes sense thinking of how many knives and swords there are but in true Rob fashion no logic shall ever apply; even within his own universe.

#20

is that blobby looking mass of lines behind Shaft supposed to be Bedrock’s body?

You missed one...

I think the most egregious Liefeldism came in Hawk and Dove #1, in which he couldn’t decide from panel to panel if Hawk had fangs. Then there was the close-up of Hawk’s face, with giant vampire fangs, and FIVE incisors in between the two fangs. Because, you know, running your tongue over your teeth to count them is too much effort to put into research.

One heck of a grip....

Lovely Liefeld linework #2: Okay, I know nothing about Cannonball, so stupid question: Does he have any specific ability to carry people in flight? Because look at the way he’s holding Wolverine. Since Cannonball’s providing all the forward thrust – I guess his legs are in that massive fireball? – he should have caught Wolverine on the back so he could use his arms to carry him along. But his hands are up FRONT, so unless there’s something special I don’t know about, he’s dragging Wolverine by nothing more than his grip.

On Wolverine’s chest.

Hold on to your manboobs, gentlemen. This is going to be a rough flight.

#1

Why is Troll’s head not in the middle of his shoulders?

Just like Jim Carrey

HA HA HA, in the second panel in #1, Troll has a speech bubble coming out of his asshole!

That doesn't look right...

Did anyone else notice in #10 the center line of Suprema’s abs (I don’t know what the technical term is) don’t line up with the valley of her breasts or her privates? I’m reasonably sure they’re supposed to. Even if she’s bending backwards their suppose to line up in a fairly smooth curve.

I can hear you behind me

In #9 Captain America’s ears are..BACKWARDS!! what a joke of an artist

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

“Cannonball looks like Morgan Fairchild looked into the Ark of the Covenant.”

Maybe the single best sentence of art criticism ever written in the history of the world. Oh my goodness.

And the “Them’s the labia” line. Oh shit. I am literally in pain. High-larious piece. If Liefeld read’s this he’ll quit on the spot and commit hara-kiri.

Holy shit!!

This guy seriously needs to start working with models! Wow. Just wow. I haven’t seen drawing this bad since I tried to introduce figure drawing to 6th graders. This guy has zero idea of proportion, anatomy, portraiture, or creating a visually-appealing setting. He has no concept of perspective or depth. And he has even less concept of how bodies actually move.
This is why artists should become at least passingly familiar with anatomy. This is so bad that it looks like a cross between a documentary about steroid abuse and one of those horribly illustrated Victorian textbooks detailing horrific diseases.
Hacks like Liefeld are why talented new artists aren’t getting any love from the big studios.. he doesn’t know when to step aside and let someone better take over. There are thousands of as-yet-unknown artists out there who are far, far more talented than Liefeld… hell, even some of those sixth graders in that figure drawing class I led were better than this fool!

he's so inconsistent, too...

One of the things that really is a hallmark of Leifeld’s shittiness and laziness is his complete inconsistency: characters’s costumes, hair, facial hair, size, equipment, etc. changes from fucking panel-t-panel. Case in point, #2. on this list… notice the Venom-like enemy creature has 4 arms. Notice that in the 1st and 4th panels, it’s pretty clear that the lower set of arms pretty much protrude from the armpits of the upper arms (spider-like). Notice that in the 3rd panel, the lower arms are a good half a torso (or about a normal foot) distance lower. The guy just simply doesn’t care, or he’s drunk or stoned when he draws. I don’t know.

Number 9

I’m disappointed that number 9 didn’t mention that either the Captain’s spine does two 90 degree turns inside of his back, or his head is on his shoulder.

Thank you so much

This was the perfect outlet for my Liefield hatred and fucking hilarious to boot. I’m so glad that this article and its predecessor exist.

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