Rob the Punchline

So today (or on the 22nd of August, dependin gon when you read this) Rob Liefeld announced that he'll be leaving the DC books with September's issues. This brought about the usual amounts of comments like:

"Hawkman, Grifter and Deathstroke to be readable, starting issue #13!"

or

"This is the best DC news I've heard in weeks!"

or

"Liefeld is a talentless nerk who gets by on past "glories". Good riddance to bad rubbish say I."

or

"I suppose we where amazed and annoyed DC humoured him with 3 other books in the first place."

I could keep going for pages here.

Ya know... I'm... Yeah, look. I understand it's still baffling to people that someone who draws as inconsistently as Rob Liefeld still gets work. But seriously, it's been over 20 years now. When is this going to stop surprising people? Yes, his art is... Questionable. That's established. But he's NOT going away, until the day he croaks, or the day he puts his hat on the right way. He's an over-excitable dork, but at this point in time, expressing shock over Rob Liefeld working is almost like when the news media make a report about how comics aren't for kids anymore. It's been said so many times that it's old and tired.

True story. I remember one convention, I was looking at a sketchbook of Liefeld's while someone (I think it was Moser) was standing in line for something. And the thing that caught my eye was that he drews in a very cartoony art style in his sketchbook. And I don't mean Joe Mad cartoony, I'm talking animation cartoony, like Don Bluth and Disney. It's very clean and streamlined, and... Shockingly... Didn't look bad. Not extraordinary, but far from horrible. It's an honest to God wonderful example how different a picture looks before inking it and after. But once he starts inking, he inks it in that typical hatched/over rendered style he always does and it... Well, looks like what he's know for.

I've often wondered how does someone work for 20 years and NOT get better? If you're an artist reading this, there's not a single one of you who didn't improve drastically since 2002. I know I have. Yet in 20 years, he's drawn exactly the same way. There's only one answer to this: He's drawing that way on purpose. It's the Rob Liefeld style, and thus the style that'll sell. Now I know the thing a lot of you are thinking is "If that's true, then why doesn't he just start improving his artwork? Draw in that better style and earn better respect?"

Because he's Rob Liefeld. And I don't mean that in a "derp!!" sort of way, but in that way that anything he does, no matter how good or bad, will be scorned. Yeah, I'm not a fan, and I wished I could have seen more of that artwork I saw in that sketchbook years ago. But he's the punchline to a joke, and he's more valuable to the industry as a punchline than he is as an average or even decent artist. If he improved, no one would give a shit.

And he knows it.

And that's got to be soul crushing for anyone.