Deadpool Creator Rob Liefeld Eviscerates Mark Waid Over “Aging Out Of Comics” Facebook Rant
Long-time DC and Marvel writer, Mark Waid, made a multi-paragraph rant on aging out of the comics industry and what he perceives as the realities of the business.
He opens his tirade by stating his post is somehow advice “for beginners and aspiring creators,â but the rambling quickly devolves into backhanded attacks on his peers for the way theyâve handled the mainstream comic industry proverbially kicking them to the curb.
Waid is in a position of privilege as a person who owns his own publishing imprint and has continued to be thrown work from Marvel and DC, even though fans in recent years have been less-than-enthusiastic about his modern work as compared to what he had done on books like Kingdom Come or JLA.
RELATED: Mark Waid Accused of Abusive Behavior and Poor Business Practices by Former Business Partner
âAs in any industry, creative or otherwise,â Waid says, âthere is ageism in the comics industry; no matter your skill, no one gets to stay the new hot fan-favorite eternally, and thereâs a natural assumption among editors and fans, right or wrong, that no one can keep hitting homers forever.â
âThe creators who are most punished by this, to me, seem to be the ones whose styleâhowever lauded or commercial in the pastâhas become so locked and predictable that it doesnât seem as fresh and attractive to readers and editors as it once did.â
Waidâs assumption here is that talent, style and creativity are the major factors when determining work-for-hire at mainstream companies, though increasingly weâve seen artists like Greg Land, Mark Brooks, or Salvador Larroca, who have all been criticized for what fans perceive as tracing, continue to get top tier assignments even as they age.
Meanwhile, much-lauded artists like Patrick Olliffe (Spider-Girl) have flexed new styles in their current works such as his new book Edgeworld, and gotten little work from Marvel or DC in recent years.
The comic industry also has been criticized for hiring foreign artists from places like the Philippines because they will work at approximately a third of the page rate of an American artist. Even though these foreign artists often donât have the same level of detail or care for the characters, these companies continue to use them because they rely on their brand to sell books rather than quality. It has left a lot of artists without careers or ways to make income as Marvel and DC offer very little support for the artists they put on the grind for years through their careers.
Waid, in his talk about past commercial styles, seems to be passive-aggressively throwing shade at artists from his glory years in the industry, ones who are rightly upset with the way the industry has treated them. He continues in his rant by making up quotes from older artists such as âmy comics outsold the crap theyâre publishing nowâŚâ to which fan-favorite artist, Rob Liefeld appeared to notice that it was Waid taking pot shots at him.
Liefeld has been critical of Marvel and DCâs poor business practices regarding their talent. He had choice words for Waidâs ramblings, replying, âInteresting given the bitter source that wrote this. Notorious whiner. I mean, seriously.â
Waid seemed to have no self-awareness of his rants which look like theyâre passively targeting Liefeld among others, stating, âYou have something you want to say directly to me, Rob, just call or write,” he defiantly encouraged.
“You donât have to go behind my back and take cheap shots in public when, to the best of my memory, Iâve never done you that disservice,â he lambasted.
How a comment on Mark Waidâs wall is âbehind his backâ isnât elaborated upon, Waid seems to forget his own writing, which would be easy to apply to Liefeld, which was both indirect and a cheap shot in public.
Waidâs cheap shots donât end there, as his original rant targets fan-favorite artists of the ComicsGate movement, who in recent years have pointed out how the comic industry has another massive problemâthat of blacklisting over politics.
Itâs been proven many times as these artists have shown correspondences, talked about how they were abused after their professed support for Donald Trump, and also in how the industry only hires people who are vocal about extreme leftist politics, which was brought to mainstream Americaâs attention in the Federalist article, Forcing Political Correctness On Employees And Characters Is Killing Marvel Comics, back in 2017.
The embattled Marvel and DC writer attacks such confirmed blacklisting as âexcuses.â He continues, âI promise you that so long as youâre not publicly racist or hateful or dishonest or a poster child for the Me Too Movement, so long as you’re not actively toxic or unprofessional regardless of your political affiliationâin other words, so long as you act like a normal human beingâyour personal life and how you conduct it rarely, if ever, has any bearing on your hireability.â
Based on countless stories from people like Chuck Dixon, Ethan Van Sciver, Mike S. Miller, Aaron Lopresti, Graham Nolan, Shane Davis, Jon Malin, Mike Baron, and others, the evidence appears to contradict Waidâs claim. On the flip side, people like Waid have made rants calling critical YouTubers like Richard C. Meyer âwhite supremacist,â yet he still gets regular work from the industry.
Many of these artists have bypassed the gatekeeping of the industry by making their own comics and producing them to fan-acclaim on crowdfunding sites like IndieGoGo. Books like Mike S. Miller’s Shadow of the Conqueror, a team-up with YouTuber, Shadiversity, have made nearly $200,000 for a single book, numbers the mainstream industry can’t compete with.
There are very real problems in the comic book industry regarding ageism, political discrimination, and a lack of care for producing good stories by the current crop of writers and artists hired by Marvel and DC, and Waidâs dismissiveness of these real concerns as âexcusesâ comes across as extremely offensive both to the best of professionals like Rob Liefeld and to fans who want to see fun comics again.
It seems like industry insiders like Waid didnât get the message from Eric Julyâs Isom #1 making more than $3.5 million from fans starved for quality work like the industry used to have.
What do you make of Mark Waidâs ramblings and Rob Liefeldâs response? Leave a comment and let us know.
More About:Comic Books
Read this Next
