Let’s be clear: Despite having originally ‘drawn’–we’ll get back to that in a moment–Deadpool Rob Liefeld is often treated as some sort of Deadpool authority and gets credit for creating the character, which leaves out entirely that he did so with Fabian Nicieza.

And truth be told I am not particularly fond of Nicieza as a writer (he did a run on Marvel Comics’ New Warriors that was simplistic to the point of being infantile on top of being borderline offensive) but to imply that Leifeld created Deadpool all by his lonesome is wrong.

And I emphasized ‘drawn’ deliberately because Liefeld’s art was less based on any sort of recognizable human anatomy than human anatomy via a Salvador Dali filter.

And it would be different if Liefeld were making some sort of ironic statement about the pliability, the changeableness of the human form.

But, nope, that’s just the way he drew people.

I recall hearing that Adolf Hitler got a lot of grief over how bad his paintings were, yet looking at how Liefield has literally built a career out of drawing badly, maybe Hitler deserves another look.

Here are two paintings by Hitler.

                                 Tree at a track, 1911

This is a pretty nice painting that shows a grasp of artistic technique as well as perspective.  It’s not quite my cup of tea (and I wonder if the actual painting is this dark or in need of a cleaning) but it’s not bad.

         Mother Mary with the Holy Child Jesus Christ, 1913

A Eurocentric treatment of the Virgin Mary and the Christ child.  It’s not a terrible–or even bad–painting.  The anatomy of both figures feels right (though Mary’s right hand is a bit iffy) and the face of the child is a bit too knowing–though that’s likely a choice of the artist than any deficit on heir part.

The layout of the picture is fine, as is the grasp of color as well as shadow and light.

Now here’s some work from Rob Liefeld.

Now granted, we’re talking about comic books as opposed to fine art but that doesn’t change that Liefeld  has, at best, a tenuous grasp of human anatomy.  For instance, look at Warchild’s MASSIVE chest!

And speaking of his chest, it looks like he’s thrusting it forward–which is odd because his arms appear to be on the same plane (which is frankly not possible with human anatomy).

And by the way, where’s his midsection?  His groin literally leads into the upper part of his abdomen.

And here’s why that’s worth mentioning.  Your abdomen is where your large and small intestines are (never mind your ribcage, among other structures and organs) so if you don’t have the space to hold them there’s no way you’re going to be as physically massive as this dude is because your intestines are important for processing nutrients as well as waste products.

Check out that lady’s lower back!  Her upper body is literally thrust so far forward that it’s literally broken (never mind not aligning with her buttocks and legs).

And how tall is Badrock anyway?  Because she’s either standing on a small hillock or mound or he’s somewhere in the ballpark of 15-20 feet tall (you can’t see his knees in the picture, yet you can see virtually all of her).

So yeah, I guess I’m just a bit salty that one of the worst artists in comic history is having a career renaissance of a sort.