Artist Rob Liefeld returns to his 1990s landmark series X-Force with X-Force: Killshot #1, due out ... [+]
Love him or hate him, Rob Liefeld has been one of the most bankable names in comics for the past three decades. His testosterone-powered, in-your-face art style defined the look of the top selling superhero comics of the 1990s; his swaggering, in-your-face persona and meteoric rise made him a polarizing figure to fans and fellow professionals. When he and other superstar artists including Todd McFarlane and Jim Lee left Marvel to form Image Comics in 1992, it upended the comics industry forever. Since then, his ballyhooed arrivals and stormy departures on various titles have all made news, even if the days of multi-million sales of comic book single issues are long in the rearview mirror.
Last week, Marvel announced Liefeld would be returning to X-Force, the book that made his early reputation, for a 30th anniversary celebration issue, X-Force: Killshot, due out in November. This is a big deal for fans of a certain age: the 90s kids who had their worlds rocked by the bold style of Liefeld and his cohorts, and who are now in their 30s and 40s, with steady incomes and a desire to recapture the passions of their youth.
Just don’t call it a comeback. “Here’s the thing,” said Liefeld. “I never leave but I’m always returning. Those characters are a part of me.”
Comic artist Rob Liefeld, 2021
Back in 1989, Liefeld, a rising young artist who had proven himself on a remake of DC Comics D-listers Hawk and Dove, took over a slow-selling title in the X-Men family, New Mutants, and wasted no time introducing a slew of new characters including Cable and the wiseguy assassin Deadpool, who quickly became fan favorites, and, in Deadpool’s case, much much more.
For Liefeld, that was a life and career-changing moment. “I was an X-Men fan my entire life,” said Liefeld, now 53. “Marvel brought me in to refresh New Mutants, which wasn’t selling well. They asked me if I want to introduce a new leader, and so I submitted this Cable character. And then, a whole bunch of new villains, called the Mutant Liberation Front, and this mysterious character named Stryfe. Sales turned around. We sold a million copies of the last issue without any gimmicks – no variant covers, no scratch-and-sniff, no polybags, just the story and art. That’s my proudest achievement, when people ask me.”
Marvel decided to capitalize on the success by relaunching the series under a new title, X-Force. The debut issue sold 5 million copies – a record that was only surpassed later that year by X-Men #1 (7 million copies.) To put that in perspective, today, periodical comics top the sales charts with sales of 100,000 or less, and the sales of BRZRKR, the Keanu Reeves comic from Boom! Studios that has sold more than half a million, are considered titanic.
“I am still, as they say, dining out on all that was set in motion, back then,” said Liefeld. “X-Force created an entire new wing for the X-Men office. It was like we built a new wing on the mansion.”
Soon afterward, Liefeld and a group of other top-selling artists left Marvel behind to launch an upstart company called Image Comics. That put Liefeld in competition with his former employer, but within the comics business, alliances are always shifting and rivalries can’t withstand the pull of a potential sales bonanza. Consequently, Liefeld returned several times over the years to offer his unique take on some of the company’s top characters or to revisit his successes with Deadpool, X-Force and his other creations.
The 30th anniversary X-Force return was not a foregone conclusion. Liefeld says he negotiated certain contracts with Marvel in the early 90s that survived Marvel’s mid-90s bankruptcy and subsequent acquisition by Disney, and enforcing his rights under those contracts sometimes gets in the way of the creative relationship. This appears to have cropped up last year, when Liefeld declared he was done with Marvel for the foreseeable future” after undertaking a series of variant covers for Deadpool’s 30th anniversary.
“Unfortunately, you can keep everything behind the curtain, but sometimes you have to acknowledge that there is a curtain behind all of the fun stuff you see,” said Liefeld. “There were definitely some issues behind the scenes. Those got solved and we moved on. I have a long standing relationship with Marvel Comics. If I see an issue, it's on me to point it out.”
From the sound of things, Liefeld was happy to put the dispute behind him for an opportunity to return once more to the site of his early triumphs.
“It is ridiculously spectacularly awesome because I feel like it may be my last shot to do something really memorable and impactful with the characters,” he said. “I’m not a young guy anymore. I mean, I lost my glasses last night at the Black Widow premiere and I had to call in the prescription today so I could see while I was drawing, and it's a reminder that, hey man, you may you not be able to draw soon. I've told [Marvel editor-in-chief] C.B. Cebulski that I'm approaching this like I may never draw these characters again.”
Asked whether he feels any pressure from the high expectation of nostalgic fans to “play the hits” in his return to a property from his youth, Liefeld said that, while he has developed in certain ways, he has always kept true to his initial inspiration.
“I don’t really deviate from what brought me to the dance,” said Liefeld. “I have a style I adhere to and try to grow within those parameters. I push the envelope. My spirit animal is [Marvel universe co-creator] Jack Kirby. Not the superficial aspects of Kirby’s style, but the storytelling, the staging, the gestures, the camera movement. Whenever I’m doing a page, I say, do not forget to apply the Jack Kirby. That’s what powers my work.”
Liefeld says that while some creators harbor lofty ambitions, he prefers to stick to stories that maximize the visual impact. “I did the best-selling GI Joe book in 20 years [GI Joe: Snake Eyes, from IDW Publishing] that's because people like the candy that I sell, ok, and I am definitely selling candy. I am not going to give you Maus. I’m not going to give you a romance comic. That’s not my intention.”
Echoing the sentiments that Kirby himself famously declared in the 1970s, Liefeld added that “comic books are a visual medium first foremost and always. If you take the pictures away, you’re in the novel business. I'm not in the novel business, I am in the visual arts comic book business, and the style and approach that I bring appears to have been a success. I'm still booking gigs all the time 34 years into my career, so I just stick with what got me here. Every time I put a new creative element in, I try to adhere to [the core style] and don't get too far away.”
That philosophy has helped Liefeld weather some ups and downs in his relationships with various publishers and the jeers of the portion of comic fandom that is not shy about expressing distaste for his artwork, subject-matter or public utterances, yet still feels compelled to pay attention. “I thank them for keeping me relevant,” said Liefeld of his critics.
Now that the fans who first got into comics in the 1990s are starting to pour money into back issues and original artwork, he and his older work are seeing a new surge of interest. “I saw some of my old pages for sale at a comic art convention last weekend and I couldn’t justify paying $25,000 to buy them!” he joked.
Liefeld believes the pandemic caused people to rediscover the things they loved in their youth. With no conventions or other expenses to spend money on in the last year, high-rolling collectors sharpened their focus on acquiring or re-acquiring these items, driving prices into the stratosphere.
Will that same 90s nostalgia bring fans – and perhaps now their kids – back to a Rob Liefeld X-Force special? He’s leaning into it hard, from the sound of it, and told fans to expect an over-the-top story featuring the convergence of five different timelines to take down Stryfe. “That means five Cables, five Shatterstars, five Major Xs,” he enthused. He also teased an appearance by Venompool, a mashup of Venom and Deadpool who has become a popular subject of toys and sculptures.
“It’s going to be the ultimate nostalgia bomb,” he said. “But it’s also got fresh ideas.”
Rob Liefeld returns to his famous X-Force characters this November.
