Rob Liefeld: Dead Calm

By Mike Jozic

Mike Jozic: You've been catching a lot of flack for a long time now and...

Rob Liefeld: Really? For how long, and for what?

MJ: [laughs] Since the very beginning, probably starting with HAWK & DOVE, there has been a contingent of readers and pros who have been really down on you for the way you do your work, not to mention the recent, and many, setbacks you've run into with your company, Awesome. But in my travels, most of the people I've interviewed or spoken to rarely have anything bad to say about you. They readily come to your defense and stand up for you and the way you do your business, particularly the way you handle creator's rights.

How does it feel to have, in the middle of all these people trying to tear you down, a group of steadfast supporters of you and your work?

RL: Ummm...

MJ: I mean, you manage to get a lot of big names behind you. Jack Kirby, Alex Ross, Alan Moore, Jeph Loeb, Keith Giffen and Walt Simonson, who has been defending you and your upcoming back-up for him over on the ORION message boards.

RL: I never really understood the flack. I try to step away from it and analyze it. Say to myself, "Why is this happening?" And it interests me, because I've never truly understood it, and I can honestly say that it has never impeded anything I've tried to do, or the effort that I put into things. If I ship a late book, it frustrates people, and that carries a weight with it. But if people don't like the way that I draw, or the way I write, I just throw my hands up, you know? I don't really know how to address that.

I think that I was very successful when I was twenty years old, and a lot of the youth that I had then played against me. I got slammed at a very young age, but I was not a very good artist at that age. I probably should not have had the level of success that I had. Since I've gotten older, I've tried to improve my craft, and I think I've done that. That's kind of my dedication to my fans, and myself, and beyond that, I can't really do anything more.

I think that I have integrity. I'm an honest guy and I think that's why I've been able to work with the names that I've worked with. When there are problems, I try and solve them.

MJ: I was a little surprised when the announcement was made that your latest project was going to be writing and drawing Marvel's WOLVERINE title until the regular creative team can get settled in. The last I had heard was that you and Marvel were not getting along all that well, when in reality, everything is fine. Their doors are open to you.

RL: Absolutely, and the door has been open there for me for a very long time. I think that surprises people, too. Marvel and I have had a very successful relationship. I respect where they come from, they respect where I come from, and it's been a mutually profitable relationship. And in business, those are the relationships that people favor.

MJ: So, your sudden departure from CABLE...

RL: I was only supposed to do up to issue #75, and the thing that most people don't know is that my father was in the hospital for four months during that time. He passed away while I was doing CABLE #75 and I was unable to, as a result of that, do issues 72 and 74. But I did 71, 73 and 75. I felt that I had to fulfill my commitment to that, but they always wanted to go in a new direction. They basically asked me, "Do you want to finish up the Apocalypse storyline?" I said, "Sure."

Mark Powers is a good guy, a nice editor, and a few months back he asked me if I would help him out on the WOLVERINE stuff when Steve Skroce couldn't do beyond his first story-arc because he was going to do more movie stuff. Mark called me, he said, “Could you help me out? Could you do some issues?” And again, there's a good relationship there and I'm more than happy to do it. I love Wolverine, I've never had a chance to do the book so I jumped at it and it's been a great experience.

MJ: How many issues will you be doing for WOLVERINE?

RL: Five issues.

It introduces a lot of new bad guys in the first storyline. The first storyline treats Wolverine in more of a Han Solo sort of light. This guy's been around a long time, he's made a lot of enemies and a lot of people would like to see his head on a stick. So, they're bounty hunters and stuff.

There's an organization that we learn about that wants to dissect him and use his powers and abilities, and then you kind of find out that there's a bigger story to that. This is the first time they've done something like that. It also introduces this new group of mutants that sort of war against this organization. It's pretty packed. It's got a lot of stuff going on for the first two issues.

In the second two issues there’s a cool mystery. There's a menace under Manhattan that is doing terrible things, [and] I don't really want to get into it more than that. Wolverine is drawn into it with this elite S.W.A.T. unit led by this new female character, and they both find themselves knee-deep in this plot when Spider-Man jumps in. Spider-Man is already on the trail of this thing as well, so it's kind of like a great Marvel Team-Up story.

Ian Churchill is drawing it and I wrote those.

MJ: Oh, you're not drawing it?

RL: I do the art in the first two.

MJ: And the covers?

RL: Just the ones that I do. Ian is doing the covers to his.

So, I'm writing the five issues and drawing three of them. The first two and the last one. Right now, I'm planning on making the last one a self-contained story.

MJ: I just got down from the Bryan Singer lecture and I thought I'd ask you about your thoughts on the X-Men movie?

RL: I thought it was fantastic. They took the material seriously [and] stuck to the comic book. It was like the classic Byrne / Claremont stuff. The love triangle was great, it had humor, action...great movie.

MJ: Awesome has had to weather some pretty rough storms in it's time, how's it doing now?

RL: It's just going. Awesome will always be around and we'll always be publishing books. We've got a great new mini-series called CENTURY drawn by Keron Grant, who is an amazing artist.

It deals with the future. Youngblood, Supreme, Glory and Prophet are all in it. It's written by Eric Stephenson who's kind of been with the company for ten years. He's worked with Alan Moore, editing all the books, and he brings some of that knowledge and experience into it. He's a really good young writer. I gave him a shot at this because it would be a great thing for him to break out on.

But Awesome will just keep publishing books. There'll be a mini-series here, a special there. As a company we have to respond to the market, and the market doesn’t really want a whole lot more than Marvel or DC super-heroes, and the rest of us have to figure out how to fit into that niche. I firmly believe that the sales reflect that. But I think you could put out good story-arcs in different books and be successful in that way, and that's why most of the stuff you've seen us do in the last year - COVEN, LIONHEART, KABOOM!, and CENTURY - have all been mini-series'.

I love publishing comics. I had a couple of retailers come up to me and tell me that we don't do many books, but what we do is very high quality. The difference between now and the Extreme days is that there were a lot of Extreme books. We were putting them out to meet a quota and I wasn't really proud of them. I'm proud of, I would say, 99.9 to 100% of all the Awesome product. And at the end of the day, I feel better about what were doing. I'm sorry it doesn't come out more often.

MJ: Are you planning on collaborating with Jeph Loeb again any time soon?

RL: Yeah, I've got a Youngblood story-arc, probably six issues, that I've been working on for the last year. It's not like anything out there right now and that interests me. I think it's got a really good take on the characters and I miss them. I want to go back and do something with them. Make something that really resonates with people, a really powerful story. It's a little funny, it's a little controversial, it's a little...a little bit of everything. I can't wait to do it and I think that is probably what Jeph and I are going to do next.

	Mike Jozic has spent the last several years interviewing comic book creators and other entertainment related personalities for various publications. He has been published both online and in print, with his work appearing in The Comics Journal, FearsMag.com and Silver Bullet Comicbooks. He maintains his own website at www.meanwhile.net and currently serves as the Features Editor for SBC.