Background and career
Robert Liefeld (; born October 3, 1967) is an American comic book creator. He co-created the character Cable with writer Louise Simonson and the character Deadpool with writer Fabian Nicieza. In the early 1990s, Liefeld gained popularity due to his work on Marvel Comics' The New Mutants and later X-Force. In 1992, he and several other popular Marvel illustrators left the company to found Image Comics, which started a wave of comic books owned by their creators rather than by publishers. The first book published by Image Comics was Liefeld's Youngblood #1. Liefeld has been called one of the most controversial figures in the comic industry for his drawing skills, business practices, and controversial comments. In October 2025, Liefeld said that he had perhaps five years left before his retirement, and that the Youngblood series he was writing and drawing for a debut that November would likely be his last comics work, citing his age and his eyesight.
Rob Liefeld was born on October 3, 1967, in Fullerton, California, the younger child of a Baptist minister and a part-time secretary. He and his sister, seven years his senior, grew up in Anaheim, California. Liefeld's love of comics began as a child, which led early on to his decision to be a professional artist, a practice that began with his tracing artwork from comic books. As a high school student, he took basic fundamental art courses, and attended comic book conventions at the nearby Disneyland Hotel, where he met creators such as George Pérez, John Romita Jr., Jim Shooter, Bob Layton, Mike Zeck, and Marv Wolfman. Liefeld cites Pérez, along with John Byrne and Frank Miller, as major influences. He has also noted how the influence of Arthur Adams is visible in his art.
After graduating from high school, Liefeld took life drawing classes at a local junior college, working odd jobs for about a year, including as a pizza delivery man and construction worker, while practicing his artwork, samples of which he sent to small comics publishers, as he was too intimidated to send them to the "Big Two" companies of Marvel Comics and DC Comics.
Among the editors he sent art samples around 1985 to Gary Carlson of Megaton Comics. Carlson was working on Megaton #4, and was looking for replacements for artists who had moved on to bigger projects. Liefeld's submission packet consisted mostly of pinups of DC Comics characters like the Teen Titans and Legion of Super Heroes, as well as some sketches of Megaton characters. Although Carlson thought Liefeld's depictions of his characters was not sufficiently accurate, and exhibited what Carlson characterized as "some goofy anatomy", he found Liefeld's storytelling to be clear, and his rendering style evocative of the influence of artist George Pérez. Although Carlson liked Liefeld's work overall, he felt the young artist was not ready for professional work. Weeks later he received another set of samples that were an improvement, and later still, a four-page Berserker story (not to be confused with the Marvel or Top Cow characters of the same name), along with pinups of the Megaton characters Ultragirl and Ultraman. Carlson used one of the pinups as the inside front cover to Megaton #5, and Liefeld's Ultragirl pinup in the company's Who's Who–type reference book Megaton Explosion #1 (June 1987). The book also featured an entry for Liefeld's own creation, a team of superheroes called Youngblood, the very first appearance of that team in print. Carlson and his colleague Chris Ecker later met with the teenaged Liefeld, who at that point had not yet obtained his driver's license, at the Ramada O'Hare Hotel, which was then the location of the Chicago ComiCon. Impressed with the artist's enthusiasm and the new art samples he showed them, Carlson gave Liefeld a test script in order to judge his ability to draw a page-to-page comics story. Although Carlson was impressed with Liefeld's layouts, the story was eventually drawn by Gary Thomas by the time it saw print in Megaton #7. Two months later Liefeld drew the team in an advertisement in Megaton #8 (August 1987), which indicated that it would next appear in Megaton Special #1, by Liefeld and writer Hank Kanalz, with a cover by artist Jerry Ordway. However, Megaton Comics went out of business before that issue could be printed.
Learning from a friend that there was going to be a large number of editors in attendance at a comic book convention in San Francisco, Liefeld and his friend drove several hours to that city, where they stayed with his aunt and uncle. At the convention, he showed editors his samples and offered a package, which consisted of 10 pages of sequential art featuring his own characters. Editor Dick Giordano, to whom Liefeld showed his samples at the DC booth, requested that Liefeld send him more samples. Although Liefeld was apprehensive about approaching the Marvel booth, he did so at his friend's urging, and as a result, editor Mark Gruenwald offered Liefeld a job illustrating an eight-page Avengers backup story featuring the Black Panther, much to the 19-year-old artist's surprise. Though the published story was ultimately illustrated by another artist, Liefeld was later given character design work by the publisher. His first published story was a DC Comics Bonus Book insert in Warlord #131 (September 1988). Editor Robert Greenberger recalled that Liefeld "was discovered by my office-mate, Jonathan Peterson, who was scrambling to find something for him to do. I had the Warlord Bonus Book slot coming up, so to keep Rob from finding work at our rival, I tapped him for that." Next came the five-issue miniseries Hawk and Dove for DC Comics, the first issue of which was published with an October 1988 cover date. It was this work that first garnered Liefeld visibility among readers of mainstream comics. That same year, Liefeld drew Secret Origins #28. Liefeld's layouts for Hawk and Dove #5, which took place in a chaos dimension, were oriented sideways so that a reader would have to turn the comic book at a right angle to read them. Because this was done without prior editorial approval, editor Mike Carlin cut and pasted the panels into the proper order, and Karl Kesel lightboxed them onto DC comics paper to ink them. The letters column of Hawk and Dove #5 mentions that Liefeld "showed something new to an editor who thought he'd seen everything." Liefeld explained this was how the dimension had been portrayed the only other time it had been shown. Kesel disputed this, stating that this was the first time that dimension had been shown, as he and Barbara Kesel created for that very story, but a 2007 article in Comic Book Resources quoted artist Erik Larsen as saying that he depicted the Chaos Dimension in that matter in Doom Patrol #14, which had been published three months prior, and that Liefeld was adhering to that established look of the location. Shortly thereafter, Liefeld began doing work for Marvel Comics as well, his first assignment for them being The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #23. In 1989, Liefeld became the penciller for the Marvel series The New Mutants, starting with issue #86. He is generally credited for turning this lowest-selling title of the X-Men franchise into a financial success, which underlined the increased popularity and clout that his stint on the title had earned him. With The New Mutants #98, Liefeld assumed full creative control over the series, penciling, inking and plotting, with Fabian Nicieza writing dialogue. The New Mutants series ended with issue 100, and was replaced with a revamped version of the team called X-Force, whose 1991 debut issue sold four million copies, setting an industry-wide record later broken by Chris Claremont and Jim Lee's X-Men (vol. 2) #1. The sales numbers were propelled by 1990s direct market sales strategies: five variant edition trading cards were polybagged with X-Force #1 to encourage sales of multiple copies to single collectors, while X-Men #1 was sold with five variant covers. As of 2013, X-Force #1 remains the second highest-selling comic book in history. In mid-1990, Levi's began producing a series of TV commercials directed by Spike Lee for their 501 button fly jeans, which included an onscreen 800 number that viewers who worked in unique jobs could call in order to appear in the company's commercials. After calling the number and leaving a message describing himself and his career, Liefeld appeared in one of the commercials, in which Lee interviews Liefeld about his career and his creation, X-Force. Liefeld was subsequently interviewed by Stan Lee in the second episode of the 1991 documentary series The Comic Book Greats, in which he discussed how he broke into the industry, demonstrated his drawing technique, and talked about his Levi's commercial.
Liefeld's relationship with Marvel began to break down in 1991 when he announced plans in a black-and-white advertisement in the Comics Buyer's Guide to publish an original title with competitor Malibu Comics. The exact title is unknown, but according to journalist Michael Dean, it was something to the effect of The X-Cutioners, a title whose similarity to Marvel's X-Men family of titles evoked the ire of Marvel editor Bob Harras, who threatened to fire Liefeld if he used that title.
