How the comics artist that got me into comic books became the perfect crystalized reason that I care SO much about superhero stories.

A hopefully fun thread.

I am one of the GMs/Players at @ProteanCity, a pretty cool actual play podcast of Masks: A New Generation published by @MagpieOfficial. It's a game about young superheroes doing their best and dealing with emotions AND villains.

It's neat and I love our show.

But I'm gonna start like... 20 years earlier when I was thirteen and my old babysitter gave me a box of books and comics. He was moving and getting rid of things and clearly didn't actually sort through it. It was a REAL mixed bag of stuff.

It included a couple Wheel of Time books, the LotR copy I still have today, some tiny steel miniatures, AD&D, a BIZARRE book about sex, and the topic of this story...
A bunch of 90s comics.

My mom had never let me get comics (because they were too violent for 13 year old Brandon) so this was my first real exposure to them. I DEVOURED them. It was all of the greatest dumb 90s stuff. There was Carnage, Punisher, and most importantly, X-Force.

So I read X-Force with NO previous comic experience. Rob Liefeld was my FIRST exposure to the X-Men. I'd seen Wolverine t-shirts but there's a possibility Cable was the second X-Men character I knew by name.
I LOVED them. I LOVED the cast of weird characters.

I loved that they were clearly forbidden, that they had massive guns, huge muscles, gritty faces and they kicked butt. I loved the bright costumes and pithy lines.

Yes, Rob Liefeld's art was my introduction to comics.

Once I was hooked, I started getting my own. X-Force was my favorite, so I went to X-Men first and got to New Mutants. New Mutants changed everything.
Suddenly, the gritty face slashes of X-Force was the end point to my new favorite, the New Mutants. It was beginning and end.

I had this beautiful, incredibly drawn emotional, sad, scary comic series with the first importantly Latino hero in New Mutants. And it's end was where I started reading comics.
I started to notice the flaws in Liefeld's art. It seemed less real and action packed.

Cable and X-Force in general ended up back in my lists at one point and honestly, Cable with the New Mutants later on gets pretty damn good. That's way more writing than art, I think, but it got there even though I would still chuckle at my previous taste in Huge Dude Huge Gun.

Flash forward to 2017. I'm reading SO many comics again and we decide to start @ProteanCity. In our very first episode, I talk about Liefeld, the twisted contorted forms, the pouches, the over the top grit, the SO many teeth. It's new to the rest of the group!

Over three years, any time a character needs to be badass, we insert Liefeld jokes and references. When a character goes super gritty, I COVER him in pouches. We have entire issues with no feet.

The last episode we recorded (that dropped today) was about CHAYNLYNK and he is EVERYTHING Liefeld. He even has the glowing star eye.

But two days ago a new listener was livetweeting episode 1.

They laughed at us dunking on Liefeld and my co-host James replied that we always love dunking on Liefeld.

Then, last night, impossible happened.

Rob Liefeld, Blue Check and 102k follower Rob Liefeld replied to us. https://twitter.com/robertliefeld/status/1280670972232622080?s=19

Now, as you can see, we didn't tag him. So he was vanity searching which... Fair! I do that too! It's great! No shade to you!

I, admittedly, fanned out a little bit and invited him on. He didn't respond and has been tweeting all day, so I'm pretty sure that's a no.

But now I want to come back to this: Does anyone care?

Does anyone care that we dunk on Rob Liefeld? Does anyone care about our podcast?

HELL. YEAH. PEOPLE. CARE.

Last night, our discord was on FIRE. We were DYING of laughter. People who had never read a comic knew who Rob Liefeld is because I reference him constantly because he is TRULY important to my comics journey!

My cheeks were BURNING when I woke up this morning from laughing and smiling so much last night.

But this brings me to the sentimental part of this...

I invited him on, he's not gonna come on (I'm sure even less likely now), but it brings me to why I do this project and tell superhero stories.

Rob Liefeld sucks.

It's not just that he's a weirdly bad artist to be so famous. His women are twisted sexualizations. His men are hateful and shitty with toxic masculinity. He believes he understands the Black experience because he drew Luke Cage. He's doesn't want his characters to be gay.

Last night 40 minutes before he told a group of young(ish) comics podcasters that nobody cares about their stuff, he Faved a known alt-right scumbag.

He doesn't fit on our show and even if he had said yes, I would have rejected him.

Because, like in Masks: A New Generation, the older generation can only influence you so far.

Rob Liefeld brought me to comics AND brought me the funniest moment of my entire f-ing life, but we have moved past him.

I'm not gonna be disturbed by some blowhard with 400 teeth and no feet.

I make superhero stories because anyone can be a hero or a villain if they decide to be. You don't need to be a perfect impossible person steeped in violence.

Indeed, you probably shouldn't be.

So, Rob, this is OFFICIALLY me disinviting you from the show. It was hilarious thinking that you could come on, but it's just not gonna work out.

We tell a comic about people fighting against power and authority. About care and love.

It's often about how hard care and love is, it's rarely happy, and it's always dramatic. But it has no space for you.

I guess what I'm saying is, that was the funniest moment of my life AND I'm confident in my work AND I know I'll never fill your shoes.

They're far too tiny.