I Hate Rob Liefeld. But Probably Not For the Reasons You'd Expect

I once loved a girl who, it turned out, didn’t love me back. So I hate Rob Liefeld.

Let’s backtrack.

The year was 1996, and I had spent a thrilling summer in wild, crazy, head-over-heels love with a young woman whose name we shall not utter here. She was the first great love of my life. If you subscribe to Chaz Palminteri’s speech in A Bronx Tale, she was definitely one of the Three Great Ones for me.

Sonny: Let me tell you somethin' right now. You're only allowed three great women in your lifetime. They come along like the great fighters, every ten years. Rocky Marciano. Sugar Ray Robinson. Joe Louis. Sometimes you get 'em all at once. Me? I had my three when I was 16. That happens. What are you gonna do? That's the way it goes, you know? Tell you right now. See this girl? Maybe this girl, she put wind in your sails. Maybe she's your first great one.  

After the summer was over, we had a huge tearful departure, and the promises of visiting each other as often as possible. I was going back to school at UCONN. She was headed back to Buffalo, NY. Despite all of the warnings we had heard about long distance relationships, we had no doubt that we would be the exceptions to the rule. That we would make it work.

I actually thought I might marry her.

At the same time, the comic book world is being rocked (I may be a bit hyperbolic here) by the aftermath of Marvel Comics’ “Onslaught” crossover. In a nutshell, a big bad guy named Onslaught, a psychic entity ripped from the merged souls of Professor X and Magneto, ran roughshod over the Marvel Universe for most of the summer. He was only defeated when the combined forces of the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, and the Hulk sacrificed their lives to banish him.

This epic was followed by “Heroes Reborn”, an alternate world relaunch of our heroes under the guidance of superstar artists Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld. Wizard Magazine was going absolutely apeshit over the news. It was a very big deal.

Now we turn to our hero (I mean me. I’m the hero.) as he takes the train from Hartford to Buffalo (something like an 8 hour trip, by the way) to see his lady love. She met me at the train station and we had a wonderful evening getting caught up. The next day she showed me all over Buffalo, and introduced me to all her friends. We met one of her professors, who remarked on what a handsome couple we were. We had a delicious dinner, and a romantic walk. We came home to her room and crawled into bed. Twenty minutes later she rolled over and told me she was breaking up with me.

It was brutal. I cannot oversell how bad it really was. She couldn't have taken me more by surprise or hurt me more if she had shot me in the gut.

So having just had my heart yanked out of my chest, and having a non-refundable, non-exchangeable ticket back to Hartford on a train that didn’t leave for two days, I found myself trapped in a strange city with very little cash, and the company of my now ex-girlfriend. It was definitely in the top five worst weekends of my life.

In retrospect, I know I should have just grabbed my bag and left, but I didn’t have any place to go. Though, again, in hindsight anything would have been better. Sleeping on a bench at the train station would have been better.

So what do you do when you’re trapped in your ex-girlfriend’s apartment? If you’re me, you grab the stash of comics you brought with you to read on the train back. Among those comics? Rob Liefeld’s Captain America #1.

I only had maybe a half a dozen comics with me.  And I read them over and over and over again. I read that issue of Captain America about 30 times. It was either that or go play Uno with my now ex-girlfriend and her roommates. By the time I was actually able to get on a train and go home, I was wrapped in a depression so thorough and all-encompassing that it was practically Shakespearian in its depth of tragedy. Also, I wanted to kill Rob Liefeld with a fireplace poker.

Poor Rob. He didn’t do anything wrong. I was a really big fan of his up until that point. I had collected all of his New Mutants and X-Force issues when he was with Marvel. And when he co-founded Image Comics, I was right there at the ground floor. I thought that Youngblood was the latest in French cool.

But after what was essentially a long weekend of aversion therapy, I now associated Rob Liefeld’s art with one of the worst times in my life. And I never bought another one of his comics again. You could have achieved the same thing by giving me an electric shock every time I looked at a page of Brigade.

Cut to this Wednesday.

Jenny stops at the comic book store on the way home and grabs this week’s comics. Among our normal pull, she picks up a handful of DC Comics’ “New 52” so that we can check them out. One of the ones she brought home was Hawk and Dove #1.  

Drawn by… guess who?

I looked at the book and looked at Jenny. “Really?” I asked.

“Yes, really,” she said, indignant. “I wanted to check it out.”

She then went into the next room where I can hear her messing with her phone. It turns out she is online trying to figure out why I am being such a dick about her taste in comics.

Thirty seconds later, I heard her gasp.

“Oh SHIT! Liefeld drew that one? I am SO SORRY!”

It’s okay, Jenny. It’s not your fault. And it’s not Rob’s fault either. He didn’t mean to break my heart.

Hugs and kisses,

(The)Travis