Rob Liefeld deadlines [no flaming, please, just a simple answer)

After seeing it many times, on different sites (This wiki included), I couldn't find information about his outside work of comic books. Bear with me:

I always wondered what did he do in the meantime when he was not writing/drawing?

I'm an amateur comic artist, but it's mostly a hobby and a passion nowadays, but I can't draw 24/7 due it's not my career, and I'm focusing in my actual career, and looking for a job.

But people (him, in this case) who actually got paid for what he did back in the day. Why he didn't deliver? I can understand not having the same input as a mangaka (seriously, that's amazing), or Boichi. But at least, roughly, 30-50 penciled/inked pages per month it's perfectly possible.

Anyone knows what he did? was he wasting time or anytthing?

Technically, he was supposed to have executive duties in Extreme/Awesome/whatever his editorial line was named at any given point, around that time. ISTR he wasn't that bad with deadlines when he was another hired hand in Marvel.

More of an excuse than Joe Madureira's, who just kept on boasting on how he prefered to spend all day playing videogames.

Most successful mangaka are helped by the fact they gather teams of slav— assistants to help them with the heavy work load. Then again, Liefeld was often accused of doing the same thing with uncredited ghost artists.

edited 15th Feb '16 1:34:29 PM by NapoleonDeCheese

You're probably not going to get much information outside of speculation. I know some creators, like Bendis for example, have work outside of comics. Bendis is also a college professor.

I see, for what i could gather too, some artists need other jobs, because it's actually a low paying job in some cases.

I actually laughed at the "slaves" joke, that's actually true, having others who can help you, it's a great thing. I worked as an inker and letterer. And I was thanked because while it was not much, I could have help a bit.

About Liefeld apparently being an executive helps too, and I understand the tight schedule. If this is true, of course.

Also, Madureira did that? My my, that's sad. The last "new" thing I've seen from him was a fanart, a few years ago, of the new Simon Belmont, the one from Castlevania Mirror Of Fate.

Well, with that said, thanks for answering guys

edited 15th Feb '16 1:42:00 PM by RebelionRoja

It's not entirely on-topic, but to elaborate a bit more on the mangaka thing (because it's relevant to my interests):

Yes, the vast majority of mangaka have assistants who take on a lot of the workload (mostly the background and screen tone). The mangaka usually writes/plans out the composition of the chapters, draws and inks the characters, and anything else gets done by assistants.

It is pretty much only because of this arrangement that manga like Vagabond, the series penned by the aforementioned Boichi (like SunKenRock), Blade of the Immortal, Oyasumi Punpun can maintain such a consistently high level of artistic quality; the mangaka simply wouldn't have time to create those lavishly detailed pages otherwise, nor is it likely that people like Samura or Inoue would have such prodigious figure drawing skill if they had to focus on getting better at backgrounds as well (not that they wouldn't eventually be able to draw them, but it's all about specialization).

edited 15th Feb '16 2:00:34 PM by wehrmacht

You're welcome.

Most artists for western comic books can only do so much art before a deadline hits and they don't have enough for the next issue (this is especially true for artists who are their own inkers). Remember: it's 30 days for pencils, inks, and colors (which is why manga goes faster, since most of it is in black and white). That's why most comics have "fill-in artists," artists that do an issue or two and then the regular artist returns, having used the time to build up more pages.

Or books use two artists - the current All-New, All-Different Avengers has two artists (Adam Kubert and Mahmud Asrar), as does the current Ms. Marvel (Adrian Alphona and Takeshi Miyazawa). They will usually trade off between story arcs.

For indie comics that only have one artist, they will usually take a month or two break so that the artist can make sure they have all the artwork done - that's what Saga does and Pretty Deadly just came back from a long hiatus. The Wicked + The Divine actually did something unusual - they had a story arc that had a different artist each issue, while the main artist (Jamie McKelvie) worked on all the art for the next story arc, so that it would all be able to come out on time.

edited 15th Feb '16 1:57:53 PM by alliterator

Jack Kirby often get's props because he could churn out five pages a day. What people forget is, those pages, while well constructed, often looked it. When he had the time, Kirby's work looked like Steve Rude's. When he didn't, well...

Funny you should say that, Steve Rude has been my favourite "mainstream"/genre artist for many, many years and I would say is the only real conceivable heir to Kirby's legacy. He's certainly a better artist than Kirby ever was...just not as fast....!

Oh, definitely. It's been said, for instance, that Mark Shultz is Wally Wood on a particularly good day of a particularly good week. I'd say Rude is Kirby on a particularly good day of a particularly good week. On one level, I hate to make these kinds of comparisons, because the current artists generally aren't operating under the same kind of deadline pressure the older ones were. Still, Wood frequently sabotaged himself, and Kirby actually wanted to churn out as many pages as possible (possibly for financial reasons, possibly just because he wanted to keep busy)