When an artist draws something like this, you'd think he'd earn a permanent ban from the industry. So why do people keep hiring Rob Liefeld? Or better yet, why does he beloved by some fans? This was a comment posted in a long running thread at "The Drawing Board" by Chris Knowles.
I think the massive size of this thread speaks somewhat to Rob's hypnotic powers. I mean, you have to admit that it's a lot of fun deconstructing his work. If you want my take on it, I've always felt that the reason he and Todd and Michael Turner and the rest were/are so popular is that they draw like fans. They draw like precocious high school kids. Betty Edwards has said that adolescent boys are fascinated by intricate surface detail and complexity. It's part of the way their brains process visual information. I think you see in Comics that slick artists who have weak basic drawing skills but have a knack for decorative detail are usually the fan favorites. I think the fact that the superhero audience is getting older accounts for the growing popularity of photo-tracing and "widescreen" artists- older fans are more sophisticated in their visual tastes and want the patina of film and photography (and perhaps "maturity") in their comics. Younger readers are drawn to Manga, which of course the Image crowd borrowed heavily from. Perhaps if there were more younger ( and I mean 13-20 yo) readers for superhero books, Rob Liefeld would still be very highly in demand. Carmine Infantino had said that Neal Adams never had any big sellers in comics because his style appealed to older readers, and it was the younger kids (7-12 yo) who were still the overwhelming bulk of the audience. The Adams style mutated a bit when Byrne synthesized it with Kirby and Ditko and made it popular with teens.
