Originally published October 17, 1997, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1248
One never knows.
With all the topics I write about, all the opinions I toss around—what column of mine drew the single greatest number of comments? The one where I took the liberty of lettering Rob Liefeld’s first issue of Captain America, making use of the special preview which Rob had graciously supplied.
Well, since Rob was kind enough to provide a similar preview of Fighting American at the Chicago con this year, I decided to take another stab at it. I hope it will meet with the same degree of amusement afforded by my previous endeavors.
So I present: Fighting Digression.
• 
I still remember the original solicitation for Rob’s Fighting American. It was such a blatant rip off of his Cap run that it was hilarious. Coming right on the heels of his being removed from the Heroes Reborn project, it was a fantastic F-You! to Marvel. Obviously, the finished book came out very differently than how it was solicited in order to avoid a lawsuit, but I still love the bravado involved in soliciting it at all. While Liefeld isn’t in my top ten list of favorite creators, this incident gave me a new found sense of respect for him.
While i wasn’t aware of this at the time, isn’t it a re-purposing of art he did for an actual Captain America story before being kicked off the project?
That’s what I understood back at the time. The pages were already in progress and reworked into the “new” book.
I always wondered where he
swiped… uhm… got that homage for the Strangelove picture. Reminds me more of Sam Kieth than Rob Liefeld’s work.Neither of the latter two pages look like Liefeld’s. In fact, the signature on the bottom left of the middle one indicates that it’s by Stephen Platt, who was a McFarlane clone, rather than a Liefeld clone.
I always thought Platt was more Jim Lee inspired.
I remember back then thinking Platt’s work was VERY reminiscent of McFarlane.
Goodness, I don’t know anyone who has ever achieved astronomical popularity that has had so many people tearing him apart as Liefeld. Even Mcfarlane has ripped him apart.
I guess Liefeld just tends to be a polarizing figure. I rarely have much to say about an artist, but I absolutely detest his art (with Greg “Pornface” Land also on that short list).
Weird faces, over-sized muscles, tiny or no feet, and a fixation with big guns that makes me wonder if he’s compensating for something somewhere.
The infamous Heroes Reborn (iirc) Captain America pose really is the epitome of all that was wrong with comics in the 90’s.
“Goodness, I don’t know anyone who has ever achieved astronomical popularity that has had so many people tearing him apart as Liefeld.”
Snookie.
The thing that broke me up was how Todd (in particular) wrote a whole essay about his good friend and dear pal, Rob Liefeld. He did it in his opinion column he started in ‘Hero” that was supposed to be his answer to “But I Digress.” (Lasted about six months, I think.) And then a year or so later he was ripping into Rob with far greater viciousness than anything I ever said. And of course when they started turning on each other it simply verified cautions I’d expressed in earlier columns.
PAD
Peter David: Lasted about six months, I think.
Luigi Novi: Well, what did you expect? It required him to actually write, and didn’t allow him to use artwork to cover up his lack of talent or skill in that area.
@Luigi Have you ever read a McFarlane written book before? The problem isn’t that he uses too few words: it’s that he uses TOO MANY!
The pacing is horrendously slow because he buries the page with excessive internal dialogue and mind-numbing, pointless expositions.
I’m willing to bet that the latest issue of Spawn has three times the number of words as the latest issue of X-Factor, and I mean that literally.
No, McFarlane doesn’t attempt to cover up his lack of writing ability- he flaunts it clearly.
He draws a guy riding an enormous phallic object,and then gets mad when Shatterstar gets outed!
Well, I’ll give him that one; he was just referencing “Doctor Strangelove.”
PAD
Wait, Macfarlane blasted Liefeld about his anatomical inaccuracy?
Really?
That’s like Madonna blasting Lady Gaga for being too over-the-top.
I don’t recollect Todd criticizing Rob’s art. All of his attacks were ad hominem. I’d rather not repeat them because I know how the Internet works: I put them up here and it becomes, “Did you hear what Peter David said about Liefeld?!?!”
PAD
Wild. I went back over the comments, and you’re right. Somehow I got it into my head that someone had Macfarlane going off about Rob’s art. Huh.
Mayhap the heat doth affect my brain more than I know…