Rob Liefeld’s Anatomy (X-Men Reread)

The Krakoan era of X-Men comics (sometimes called “The Hickman Era) has revitalized my favorite comic book franchise. Inspired by that run, and by Connor Goldsmith’s excellent CEREBRO podcast, I have been re-reading all the X-books starting around the Australian Outback era in the late 1980s.

I’m up to the line-wide relaunch in 1991, which is right about where I began reading X-Men, and comic books in general. The very first comic book I ever bought was Uncanny #278, which I got poly-bagged at the dollar store along with an issue of X-O Manowar which I didn’t enjoy much and have long since forgotten.

The X-Men book, for whatever reason, grabbed my interest. It’s possible this had something to do with Rogue’s shower scene, but one way or another I was immediately a fan. Like every other comics fan I bought that X-Men #1 and its famous Jim Lee gatefold cover, and re-read it about 100 times. I found myself doodling little Wolverine heads on all my school papers. What can I say, I’m basic.

Little-known fact: Comic books are what made me want to be a writer. I was an avid reader as a child, but I didn’t start writing prose until I attempted to write and draw a comic book and realized how long it would take to write the story AND draw all the pictures.

Anyway, back to the present. When I started reading Rob Liefeld’s run on New Mutants into X-Force, it felt like reconnecting with my childhood. Not only are these the comics I was reading as a pre-teen, this was the specific artistic style I grew up emulating: Thin, loose line work, bulging pecs and quads, perpetually gritted teeth, and hatching. So much hatching.

This style has become synonymous with the name Jim Lee, but in the early 90s it was the definitive superhero style, made popular by Todd McFarland, Rob Liefeld, Whilce Portacio, Marc Silvestri, Greg Capullo, and Adam and Andy Kubert. Even pencilers like Jim Valentino, who had worked for years in a more Silver Age, “classical illustrator” style, with thicker, flowing brushed lines and spot blacks, adopted this style for books like Shadowhawk.

Many of these pencilers were young and lacked formal training. They learned their craft by imitating other artists, and often developed peculiar habits around anatomy and architecture, but nowhere is this more obvious than with Rob Liefeld.

Liefeld is often mocked for “not drawing feet,” which is not entirely unfair. Liefeld did often hide his character’s feet behind random rubble, or clouds of fog, dust, or smoke (90s superhero comics were full of rubble and low clouds) and often substitute a tiny diamond-shape for a character’s foot. But he also drew feet quite often. With characters like Feral, who went barefoot and tended to jump around, he had little option.

Unfortunately, this did tend to put Liefeld’s shortcomings on display. Take these two panels, for example, in which Beast and Jubilee have put their feet on the wrong ankles.