There’s a Deadpool movie coming out this week. Maybe you’ve heard of it? I can’t mention or even think of it now without getting “X Gon’ Give It To Ya” by DMX stuck in my head. It’s kind of a big deal, at least for a lot of superhero fans. Last Friday, in anticipation of the film’s release, The New York Times ran a profile and interview with Deadpool co-creator Rob Liefeld; the piece appeared in print the following Sunday. It details a bit of Liefeld’s background and his history in comics, talks about the conception of Deadpool, and speaks not only with Liefeld but with a few of his former collaborators.
Sounds pretty run of the mill, right? It largely is until you get towards the end:
He is prickly, though, about sharing creator credit on Deadpool with Fabian Nicieza, who wrote the script for the character’s first appearance, based on Mr. Liefeld’s story. As plotter, penciler and inker of The New Mutants at the time of Deadpool’s inception, Mr. Liefeld said he did “all the heavy lifting.”
“If a janitor scripted New Mutants 98, he’d be the co-creator — that’s how it works, buddy,” Mr. Liefeld said. “Deadpool does not exist in any way, shape or form without me.”
Mr. Liefeld added: “I wrote the stories. Like Jim Lee and others, I worked with a scripter who helped facilitate. I chose Fabian, and he got the benefit of the Rob Liefeld lottery ticket. Those are good coattails to ride.” Neither Mr. Nicieza nor his manager could be reached for comment.
The quotes from Liefeld in those paragraphs…upset some people. Twitter lit up with 140-character disgust, and other creators weighed in with their opinions. Liefeld himself called the article “a hit piece,” and Fabian Nicieza defended Liefeld, saying that parts of the article were “taken out of context”.
I do not know how those quotes could be out of context. He’s speaking in complete sentences. Sentences in which he says his co-creator on New Mutants, a professional writer, was interchangeable with someone who is not a professional writer. Looking at the way the original quotes are presented, one could take issue with the way that the interviewer characterizes how Liefeld is saying those things. What the interviewer calls “prickly” may not have been delivered or intended that way; Nevertheless, ignoring the interviewer’s commentary and looking just at the quotes themselves still does not paint Liefeld in a very flattering light.
Is that just Rob being Rob? In the ensuing hubbub, Liefeld has referred to himself as having “the Midas Touch when [he] came on New Mutants,” and reiterated the sentiment that he was a “lotto ticket,” and that he was the coattails that Nicieza rode upon. On the other hand, just a few tweets later he also says that he’s “done right by [his] collaborators.”
A really nice way to do right by your collaborators would be to not minimize their contributions in an interview. I was going to say ‘in a nationally published interview,’ but really you shouldn’t do it anywhere, on any scale. There are a lot of other ways to explain how the creative process went without sounding as condescending as Liefeld did toward Nicieza in that interview. Yes, Liefeld was a hot artist in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s. Yes, a thing that he helped to create has grown a life of its own and is now a character beloved by many. But he didn’t create Deadpool in a vacuum. After all, Deadpool is affectionately referred to as the ‘merc with a mouth,’ and it takes somebody to put the words in that mouth. It’s impossible to know how popular the character would have become had Nicieza not written him the way that he did in his early appearances (and that’s completely setting aside the contributions of Joe Madureira, Joe Kelly, Ed McGuinness, Daniel Way, and all the other creators who came after and ultimately elevated Deadpool to the level of popularity he’s enjoying today). As any dozens of other Rob Liefeld characters who were introduced and went absolutely nowhere will tell you, there’s only so far a character can get on a cool look. If Deadpool had gone nowhere, would Liefeld have taken all the credit for that, too? Or would that have been Nicieza’s fault?
This whole thing reminded me of a discussion that was happening between a bunch of different creators on Twitter a few months ago. It’s one that’s been going on in the comics world for a long time, but it surfaced in an ugly way back in December when Greg Capullo tweeted this:
Without the artist there is no comic. We are the most vital part of a comic. Without us you have a novel. https://t.co/Kyi8s6Ixv7
— Greg Capullo (@GregCapullo) December 6, 2015
That was in response to a common, legitimate grievance, this time voiced by artist Tony Daniel, about comics being attributed solely to their writers and not to the artists or other creators behind them. That is legitimately an important point that people have been talking about for quite some time. But it seemed to get drowned out in Capullo’s pronouncements of artists being “the most vital part” of the process.
It is stupid and pointless to value one part over another. Unless you’re doing everything yourself, comics are a team effort. And even if you’re doing everything yourself, you’re doing all of the parts – you’re the writer and the penciller at the bare minimum, but maybe you’re also the inker, the colorist, and the letterer. Or maybe, as in the case of Liefeld and Nicieza, you’re plotting the book and someone else is writing the dialogue. There’s no separating any of it. To do so is to ignore what makes comics great: the union of story and pictures.
There are so many variables that have to all go right at the same time for a comic to be a success – it takes talented creators, all doing good work, releasing at the right time, finding the right audience. Why not acknowledge and be thankful for the serendipity of all of the pieces falling together properly, instead of being a self-aggrandizing blowhard who doesn’t recognize that other people’s contributions matter? The former just seems more fulfilling to me.
Then again, I’m no Rob Liefeld.