I Love Jim Shooter.

First: Happy anniversary to me! It has been one year since my first post here at I Love Rob Liefeld. It's been a fun year, and I want to thank everybody for reading and commenting.

In honor of that first post, in which I explained why I love Rob Liefeld, let's once again turn back the clock to those banner days of the early nineties.

Let's talk about why I love Jim Shooter.

Jim Shooter writes comic books and was once the editor-in-chief at Marvel. Not unlike Rob Liefeld, many people do not hold a very high opinion of him. In his case, it seems that people don't like him because of his overbearing managerial and editorial style.

But I love Jim Shooter. And here is why: for several years he was the editor-in-chief and a driving creative force of the Valiant Comics superhero universe.

In 1992, just as I was getting into comic books, Valiant published a "crossover event" called Unity, which saw every Valiant superhero fighting in a massive battle to save the universe.

I purchased all 18 issues of Unity in one shot from my local comic book shop. (The Dream Factory, R.I.P.) I can't remember what moved me to buy it, since I hadn't read any Valiant comics before that. It might have been on a friend's recommendation, or possibly due to a positive review in Wizard Magazine, which was a big booster of Valiant at the time.

In any event, Unity blew me away. It was my first introduction to the idea of a "shared" superhero universe, where events in one comic can have effects in another, where characters from one book meet and interact with characters from another, and where all of the books work together to build a complete world. There is something fascinating about reading a comic and knowing that the story is at that moment becoming part of the history of that universe, something that can influence later stories. You get to witness the birth of new heroes and villains, see them rise from lowly beginnings as minor characters to blossom as vital and important pieces of the universe. All of the books set in the universe ultimately end up telling small parts of what becomes one giant story, the story of that universe. Crossover events are the high points of that universe's story, in which everything comes together, the stakes are raised, and big, important things happen.

(Side note: one of the things that gets me psyched about Marvel's recent movies is that they are successfully starting to build a shared universe on the screen. I wonder if people who don't read comics will get the same jolt of excitement when, after seeing the individual exploits of Iron Man, the Hulk, Captain America, and Thor, an Avengers movie comes out in which all of the heroes appear together to fight some huge threat. I have to admit that I can't wait for that moment.)

If a shared superhero universe is executed well, it can be an awesome thing to behold. For me, Valiant's universe clicked like that. I loved the characters, the stories, and the interactions between the different books. I immediately began to purchase every Valiant comic that came out, and hunt down the issues that had been published before Unity. (Which was no easy thing, as they had relatively small print runs and demand from readers and collectors quickly began to skyrocket.)

During those first few years, Valiant's superhero universe was a well-oiled machine, and I attribute much of its success to the editorial direction and control of Jim Shooter. Unfortunately, Shooter was eventually booted from the company, and in the mid-90s Valiant over-expanded and diluted its line by publishing more and more mediocre titles, and I lost interest.

Since then, I've never really been able to recapture that magical feeling you can get when you know everything that is going on in a shared superhero universe. Marvel and DC's universes are too big, with too many characters and with histories that are dense and convoluted. I don't have the time, money, or desire to know what is going on in every book from either company.

But for several years in the early 90s, I was lucky enough to read the story of the Valiant universe, and it was great. And that is why I love Jim Shooter.

The Hulk Does Not Lie

My three-year-old son received a great Spider-man Valentine's Day card from my mom/his grandmother, complete with a Spider-man temporary tattoo. When I thanked my mom for sending him the card, she mentioned that she had wanted to get him an Incredible Hulk tattoo, because of a drawing that I did when I was little.

Before I tell you about the drawing, though, I need to give you some more information about my drawings as a young kid. When I got past the "random scribbles" stage of my drawing and progressed to drawing representations of people, I would draw people without bodies, so that their arms and legs came straight out of their heads. I could be wrong, but I don't think that this is unusual.

I, however, made the interesting artistic decision to draw foreheads on my people. To do so, I would draw a large oval-shaped mass on their faces. I don't know why I chose to do this; possibly I just knew that the forehead was a part of the face, and so it should be in my pictures of people. I have never seen this in drawings made by any other child.

So my mom told me today that I once drew a picture of the Hulk in this manner, complete with forehead. That's pretty cool, I think, but the real capper is what I wrote underneath the Hulk.

Sadly, the original drawing has been lost, but I've re-created it here based on my mom's description:

That's right. He's "The Credible Hulk." You stick that guy on the witness stand, and the jury will totally believe him.

It Begins Here.

Welcome to my comic book blog, I Love Rob Liefeld.

Yes, you read that correctly. I Love Rob Liefeld.

For those of you who do not know, Rob Liefeld is a comic book artist who was incredibly popular in the early- to mid-nineteen-nineties. Among other accomplishments, he created Cable for Marvel Comics before co-founding his own comic book company, Image, which grew to rival Marvel and DC, the top two comics companies, during the comic book boom in the nineties. He is well-known for an exaggerated art style that emphasizes muscle size and weapons at the expense of proper anatomy, and commonly is criticized for being unable to draw feet.

Many comic book fans hate Rob Liefeld. They hate his drawing, his personality, and his presence at the epicenter of the nineties comic book boom and bust. If you read his Wikipedia entry, you'll find an entire section devoted to "Criticism," with its own sub-sections of "Art style," "Lateness," "Accusations of plagiarism and disputes of credit," and "Personal acrimony related to departure from Image comics."

But, as I stated above, I love Rob Liefeld.

Here is why: he got me into comics.

This is the cover for Youngblood #1, Rob Liefeld's first creation for Image. It stars a team of super-heroes employed by the United States government. They fight people.

(Go ahead and click on the image to see a bigger version. Note the huge shoulder pads, the big gun, the well-placed round mound blocking your view of the characters' feet. All hallmarks of the now-loathed Liefeld style.)

Youngblood #1 was published in April of 1992, when I was fourteen years old and in high school. Notice the ugly gold border? That was added for the second printing of the book, because the book sold out of its first printing. Like everything being published by Image at that time, this book was hot stuff when it came out.

Prior to this, I wasn't really interested in comics. I had a few old ones lying around that I liked, but comics hadn't really grabbed me yet.

Then, at the recommendation of a friend of mine who was into comics, I bought Youngblood #1 and my eyes were opened.

The first issue introduces the team, and they immediately jump into action fighting a group of evil villains.

Relatively quickly, this happens:

(click to enlarge and get a better view of the face-smashing)

When I saw that, I thought it was AWESOME. The energy, the power, the thrill of super-heroes beating the snot out of super-villains. I loved it. (Remember, I was fourteen at the time.)

I loved the whole issue. I couldn't wait to read more. I started buying other Image books. I started buying books from the other companies: Marvel, DC, and another new company called Valiant.

I was in.

Comics engulfed me. Every week at the local comic book store, I would spend every dollar that I earned from my minimum-wage video rental store job. I pored over the pages for hours, reading and re-reading, putting each comic in a bag to preserve it for more reading later. I would copy images from the books. I would talk about comics with my friends. I bought and read as many comics as I could get my hands on. I loved comics.

And I have Rob Liefeld to thank for that. So that is why I love Rob Liefeld.