Marvel’s X-Men have a long history with many different writers and authors, but one particular artist is causing controversy even 25 years after his most outstanding work. Artist Rob Lifeld is well known in the comic book industry for his unique style, 90’s-style character design and penchant for aggressive marketing tactics, but he has also received his share of criticism. In New X-Men #116, the source of many of Lifeld’s insults (even from Stan Lee) is named: Lifeld’s inability to draw the lower body and legs.
Comics experienced a new surge in popularity in the late 80s and early 90s with the advent of Saturday morning television, the early days of the Internet and the boom of speculation. These three elements were joined by a fourth: a group of artists left Marvel and DC to found Image Comics, a new company where writers and artists owned the characters they developed, not the company. Artist Rob Lifeld was one of the founders, and Lifeld’s work on series such as Youngblood paved the way for Lifeld’s early success. He worked at Marvel both before and after Image (primarily creating the characters of Cable and Deadpool), but his art was sharply criticized by his contemporaries.
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In New X-Men #116, Jean Grey and the Monster are desperately searching for mutant survivors after a terrible catastrophe created by the Guardian. Aid workers punish the two, saying there is very little chance of finding survivors. “Trust me,” says Jean Grey. “I compensate for my unnaturally thin wrists and ankles with an extremely developed mind.” If someone is familiar with the works of Rob Lifeld, it’s hard not to see this as a criticism of the worst part of his work: his work on the body.
The style of the 90s required a massive torso, huge shoulders (and shoulder pads) and a very thin waist and legs (both women and men, aliens, androids and all kinds of characters). Rob Lifeld brought this trend to its logical conclusion by drawing legs in the form of incredibly small boxes, and he often hid them behind other objects so as not to draw them at all. Lifeld’s inability to draw legs did not stop his huge popularity among fans, but caused a lot of ridicule in the online communities of Marvel and DC fans.
Since then, Lifeld has returned to work on other Marvel books from time to time, but his style hasn’t completely changed after the 90s. His characters and pencil work still evoke associations with the “extreme” mentality of the Dark Era of comics, and Lifeld is perhaps better known for his past contributions to Deadpool than his current work. However, his various X-Men characters were quite popular at the time and still attract a crowd, even if Rob Lifeld can’t move.
