For the Liefeld lovers: He’s not the greatest comic artist in the world, okay? But he was a helluva innovator and his stuff is fun. When the history of the modern comic era is written, he’ll warrant several pages of examination.

For the Liefeld haters: The majority of comic artists ape the current, popular style. The current, popular style tends to be…boring. Comics were never meant to be boring.

The idea of using Obama in Youngblood is perfectly valid as the book is about a government sponsored superteam.

As to Free Agent… Fighting American was licensed after Rob had announced Agent America and I think a little before the lawsuit was brought about by Marvel. Free Agent is a re-activated Die Hard, who was always portrayed as a WWII hero with a shield and an analogue for Captain America, but not quite as Patriotic but he was a Cap analogue. This was established in Youngblood Strikefile and a SUpreme annual focusing on the Allies: Diehard, SuperPatriot, GLory & Supreme. Diehard wasn’t a robot but was a cyborg who had had so much replaced that he was more machine than man but I also got that he was heavily cloned & recycled etc.

Marat is an awesome artist who did start as a Rob clone, because he was Rob’s assistant! He had to draw like Rob. Later on (Brigade vol. 2) he had his own style and if you need an action scene he is one of the best artists in the biz on action. Brigade vol. 2 had some of the most intense action sequences of any book in that era or any era.

you guys are like the comic snobs at my LCS, always going on & on about “there’s no backgrounds in this comic” or “there’s no backgrounds in that comic”. funny thing though, even when they are reading their favorite comic by their favorite artist, I’ve never once heard any of the following come out of their mouths:

– look at that tight looking telephone!
– wow! awesome windows!
– sharp looking tires!
– bad-ass trees!

I bet none of you guys have ever said those sentences either.

So, I applaud Liefeld’s bold, un-PC stance in this comic.

Thank you.

Actually, no. It’s called “He wrote the story for the Charleston characters — then was told he couldn’t use them — so he created ‘stand in’ characters instead.”

“Marat Mychels, who has *never* been anything more than a sub-par Liefeld clone”

That’s unfounded as well. His early work certainly had Rob and Jim Lee influences, but his recent work (over the last DECADE if you still want to call that recent) has shown outstanding professional growth and creation of a style all his own . . . any early influences (like ALL artists have) have been lost and his lines are definitely lines of his own . . .

And how did the terrorist–who was stabbed completely through the neck from behind–still alive long enough to turn around, back away and shoot five bullets?

I took design classes in college and while they did teach us how to use white space, they did not teach us to use it all of the time. I also took writing classes, and one of the foundations of the story is SETTING. Now where are they fighting on pg 2? In front of a green screen?

This almost made me pee my pants in laughter. Ummm . . . no one would rip off that crap version of US Agent. Free Agent’s been around for a bit, although hasn’t appeared much. I’d suggest reading the character before passing judgment. By the same token, you could say that all of the characters in Watchmen were “weak ass characters” who were “blatant rip offs of” Charleston characters. But they weren’t were they . . . .

Really? Because Free Agent’s character design is almost exactly like the Force Works US Agent. Link below
http://media.photobucket.com/image/us%20agent/lorresalnac/us_agent.jpg
Free Agent’s been around for a while, huh? Like one appearance in ’04…yeah, he’s pretty established, isn’t he?
As for the Watchmen characters. They were supposed to be references to already established archetypes. It’s called SATIRE.