Rob Liefeld shoots on Alan Moore

ztoical

Has everyone alreayd seen this? Fysh tell me you've seen this.

Fysh

Ahahahahaha! That may be the greatest thing I've ever read : hack supreme Rob Liefeld turns around and says Alan Moore is only in it for the money.

It's particularly funny in light of his later comment : "And he comes out and he lets everybody know now 'I’m going to crap all over the adaptations you do,' he’s shown no loyalty to his fellow artists like Dave Gibbons or David Lloyd. He knows that by coming out and crapping on the movie, he’s gonna keep a certain percentage of the fan base away."

So according to Rob, Moore is only in it for the money - except when he's backstabbing his co-workers and denying them money by expressing his lack of satisfaction with adaptations of his work.

Ah, the unintended hilarity of everything Liefeld says. This is on a par with that interview he did about a year ago where he tried to claim his co-workers had nicknamed him "the King" because they thought he was on a par with Kirby. Laugh? I nearly started...

Wacker

I can't open the link. Would you be so kind as to paste it in?

ztoical

Wacker wrote: »

I can't open the link. Would you be so kind as to paste it in?

This could be an entire other article, sell this to Wizard magazine, 'Rob Liefeld goes after Alan Moore'” -- Rob Liefeld, during our interview for this week's cover. Since I don't work for Wizard, and this particular tangent didn't make it into the paper, you're gonna get it here, because it's just too good not to share: the “controversial” artist talking some smack on one of comicdom's most acclaimed writers, creator of Watchmen and V for Vendetta among many others...

“Alan Moore – he just did his own thing. We just stayed out of his way. He had written a miniseries for us called Badrock/Violator...at the time, Alan was doing purposefully campy, over-the-top kinda stuff. We loved the few stories he had done for Superman, and I’m not stupid so we just got out of the way [writing Liefeld's SUPREME] and let him roll.”

“We didn’t get the right artist for him until about ten issues in, then the second year, they put together a great run. That 24 issues was as well –received a comic as you’re gonna find, I still meet people who are like, wow, that was great, but we had no input. That was Alan. And to me, honestly, that was Alan’s last great stuff. Because when Awesome, my main investor went belly up --my investor had a video game company, a recording company, andf a comic book company, and overnight, they were all gone -- and Alan, I think had really dug what he was doing with us, because by then he’d expanded it from Supreme to Youngblood, to Glory...I still have all his original proposals, they’re a riot, dude. He’s definitely taking archetypes and doing the Alan Moore version...I called him up one time and said, 'Hey Alan, how about we do a Teen Titans style book,' and he went quiet and he goes 'That’s what Youngblood is.' I thought that was our Avengers-type book.”

“But then he took that formula and just kinda did that same thing, I mean, Tom Strong is Supreme, it’s flattering that he found his groove back with us and started winning awards back with us because people forget, he’d fallen off the map, you can’t really find a great Alan Moore book from ’90 to like ’96, when he did Supreme, even the stuff he did for Todd [McFarlane] was derided like he was asleep at the wheel, like he didn’t care because it was campy, whereas with Supreme he gave it that Silver Age with a twist, and nobody was doing that. And again, what he did for Supreme was ripped off for the next five years by all the other writers. He’s always been a trendsetter.”

“If you’ve done business with Alan, you have a different opinion of Alan. He markets himself as a poet, but he’s just a ruthless businessman, like everybody else, he kept wanting to more work because he just wanted to get paid. Jeph Loeb, he can tell you.”

“You worship at the altar of Alan, and then you go, oh, he’s just another guy that’s looking to get paid, and that’s why he’d do 3-4 books a month for us. Literally, he’d send three scripts through the copy machine”

“He’s brilliant, but to me I think he’s been revealed as someone who’s spiraled wildly out of control. Like, he had a falling out with Wildstorm, you know, he’s having another falling out with DC, he won’t work for Marvel. At some point you put yourself on line and go, well, gee, Alan, is it everyone else, or is it you?”

“Alan just wants to get paid more money, that’s it. Sorry Alan. I got my body of work out of Alan Moore, he doesn’t intimidate me, I don’t put him on a pedestal like Jack Kirby and Frank Miller,. He’s just a guy who wants to get paid, and he cuts deals for himself that he doesn’t like down the line, and then he gets whiny and cries about it...Hey man, he worked for me for two years, I was quiet for like ten years. And then I watched him burn every other bridge, and I go “Hmm.” Although we didn’t have a falling out with him. He just stopped working with us, because he now wanted to invest in his new universe with Wildstorm comics, and again, like I said, OOPS! That went up in flames. He gives 'temperamental artist' a new meaning.”

“And he comes out and he lets everybody know now 'I’m going to crap all over the adaptations you do,' he’s shown no loyalty to his fellow artists like Dave Gibbons or David Lloyd. He knows that by coming out and crapping on the movie, he’s gonna keep a certain percentage of the fan base away. He’s an interesting cat, someone should do a documentary, I’m waiting for the CRUMB version of Alan Moore.”

“He once called us up to tell us that he had just been in the dream realm and talking to Socrates and Shakespeare, and to Moses, dead serious, and that they talked for what seemed to be months, but when he woke up, only an evening had passed, and he came up with these great ideas. And I’m tellin’ ya, I think it’s shtick, dude. I think it’s all shtick. I’m gonna start saying that stuff. Cuz you know what? It makes you instantly interesting. Like 'O yeah, last night I was hanging out with Socrates. Came to me in a dream. We played poker . We dropped acid.' That’s the kinda stuff Alan would say all the time, and he’d say 'Oh, I’ve been practicing dark magic.'”

Liefeld goes on to describe a comic book pitched to him by Moore that he still owns the rights to, entitled War Child. Written shortly after Moore saw Pulp Fiction for the first time, it's a knights-of-the-round-table concept set in a Tarantino-esque inner city gangland setting.

“I have him on tape for 4 hours just talking about it; it’s my most cherished possession”

“You haven’t lived until you’ve heard Alan describe the heroes – this is in the near future – getting trapped in an amusement park in Compton, where one of the rides you go on is a drive-by shooting.”

“A couple of the artists I gave it to handed it back. The first ten pages is some of the most difficult, visually, it’s hard to crack. We’ll probably publish it in script form. I can’t crack this, life’s too short.”

“There’s standing atop a building, looking in through the window at a certain angle, while the person is sitting doing their hair looking at themselves in the mirror...and the panel descriptions, you go, how do I shoot this? I could shoot it with a camera, but like all the storyboards? It’s just very difficult.”

“He’s a genius, a showman, a shrewd businessman, and a whiner. I have no intention of working with him again.”

ztoical

it took my ages to read the whole thing cus I kept having to reread some sections and go WTF? and others I just couldn't stop laughing

the last line “He’s a genius, a showman, a shrewd businessman, and a whiner. I have no intention of working with him again.” - thats just a fantastic statement to make, well done Rob.

ztoical

Fysh wrote: »

This is on a par with that interview he did about a year ago where he tried to claim his co-workers had nicknamed him "the King" because they thought he was on a par with Kirby. Laugh? I nearly started...

Dang I missed that quote, is that interveiw online somewhere?

Fysh

I've been looking for it for a while, because I'm almost certain that there's at least one interview in a magazine where he mentioned it himself. In the meantime, though, here's a reason why I'll be steering clear of Robert Kirkman's output for the rest of my days.

I'd actually read this before and forgotten about it (or repressed the memory? WHO KNOWS?!), but Jesus - for someone ELSE to make the comparison between Liefeld and Kirby and claim to be serious at the time...the mind just boggles...

Edited to add:

Damnit, found the scans_daily post that had the original interview/profile page, but whoever was hosting the image has taken it down. Curses. As you can see from that entry, though, it was pretty much a case of Liefeld saying "Yeah, pretty much everyone* thinks I'm like, the spiritual heir to Jack Kirby".

*Nobody actually thinks this.

Edited again to add:

Hmmm....according to this comment, Liefeld may not in fact be so vain as to claim he's the new Jack Kirby. But with an anonymous comment, how can you be sure? Investigations continue.

Earthhorse

Much as I wouldn't trust Liefield's version of events I still found this pretty funny.

Rob Liefield wrote:

'O yeah, last night I was hanging out with Socrates. Came to me in a dream. We played poker. We dropped acid.'

the Shades

I know Liefield is about as turstworthy as a syren in a typhoon BUT I can actually see a grain of truth in what he says about Moore. It's certainly true that Moore has done little 'awesome' work since the 80s and well... it is true that he's eventually spurned everyone he's worked with. Probably just me though I was never seduced by the Moore magic, guess Morrison and Gaiman just set the bar too high.

Fysh

Yes, but Murra, you're one of those soon-to-be-burned-at-the-stake people who thinks LoEG was just a JSA clone. :P

Accusations of Moore's output being a bit rubbish in the mid-90s would sound less hollow coming from someone whose career wasn't built almost entirely on sh*te 90's comics. This is the guy who popularised those inexplicable "belts on biceps so you can have more pouches", and he's not escaping that little fiasco so easily.

bitterstevil

There's an irony to the whole in-it-for-the-money, crapping-on-the-movies thing when you consider Alan Moore letting all the royalties go to his artists instead. He does seem to have a colourful history of conflict with his employers though, and generally he's a bit OTT