The Rob Liefeld Method Of Rebooting "Hard-Hitting" DC Super-heroes
Stage 1:- Introduce the lead character with a info-dump of a monologue
Those who've decided that Liefeld gives no thought at all to his work might care to look again at the first acts of these three titles. For here it's obvious that he's worked with some undoubted focus and precision to spell out exactly how it is that he wants Grifter, Hawkman and Deathstroke to be understood. Each character is given several pages to monologue out the fundamentals, as Liefeld sees it, of their character, backstory and purpose. Deathstroke is presented as a melancholic and traumatised super-criminal, and that's hammered home through the use of a bleak, wind-swept cemetery as a stage-set. Hawkman's dual identity as academic and superhero is outlined firstly through the sight of him reading in an antique-filled room, and then with a double-sided money-shot of him flapping his wings far above New York City. Finally, in the only one of the three where's there's any other characters beyond the lead on show, Grifter's established as a happy-go-lucky super-marksman through a James Bond-homaging scene involving the shooting dead of snowboarding bad guys in the Swiss Alps. .
Although each of these sequences is inspired by a Rob Liefeld plot, only Deathstroke is the product of his work alone. Hawkman's co-scripted by Mark Poulton, drawn by Joe Bennett and inked by Art Thibert, while on Grifter, the dialogue is by Frank Tieri while pencils and inks are by Scott Clark and Dave Beatty. Regardless of the alumni involved, the strength of these opening panels lies in the determined statement of intent that each embodies. Yet that in itself is a remarkably blunt tool. In each case, the visuals are often little more than decorative, since they have nothing of a story to carry. Indeed, Liefeld's method through the entirety of each comic is to mostly tell and not show, which leaves a disconcerting disconnect between what we're being shown in the art and what the text tells us.The script informs us of how we're to think, while the art at best sits as nothing more than a static illustration. Remove the illustrations and little if anything would be lost bar the pleasures of the water-cooler excesses. Even in Grifter, where there is at least some action occurring, there's no details of the punch-up offered beyond the barest of introductions, and therefore no sense of jeopardy to move the reader. In short, and for all his determination to enticingly set the agenda for new readers, Liefeld's presented little but a series of vaguely illustrated, interest-free lectures. This is less noticeable when Bennett and Thibert are presenting a huge, intricately-rendered if ultimately pointless pin-up of Hawkman taking to the air, but it's true all the same for every book involved. This isn't comics so much as exposition slapped onto eye-catching pictures, and in that, the work often seems as much the descendant of the styles of the pre-Kirby Golden Age as much as it obviously reflects a particularly early-90s sensibility.
Yet the info-dumps are fascinating in ways which I suspect the writers involved never intended. Liefeld's script for Deathstroke #9, for example, clearly wants the reader to take pity upon the poor one eyed widower they're presented with. But Liefeld doesn't quite seem to grasp that that should be impossible for all but the empathetically stunted. After all, who could read the following and not want to see Slade Wilson at the very least condemned to a Psych Ward for the rest of his days;
"I've tried to fill the gaping wound of her loss with blood and money. I've destroyed countless lives while trying to provide a distration from my pain."
These are clearly the thoughts of a man who should never be presented as any kind of heroic lead, and yet that's exactly what Liefeld is doing. Unless the "superstar" is embarked on some improbably complex and long term mission to challenge the stereotype of the hero as grim'n'gritty mass murderer, then what we've here is the usual post-Image and distasteful glorification of the extremes of machismo matched with lawlessness. "I'm barely hanging on", Deathstroke is made to tell us, as if his own misery and not the fate of those "countless lives" is what we ought to be concerned about. His assistant worries, Liefeld tells us, that Deathstroke is "racing towards ruin", which shows that Peabody, as well as the writer, has no idea of what ruin actually constitutes. In the context of the little that Liefeld's told us, Deathstroke has long since passed "ruin" and now rests irredeemably in the ranks of those damned to the seventh if not the ninth circle of hell. Of course, Deathstroke being such a sympathetically woeful and yet admirably manly creature, Liefeld's art doesn't actually show us anything of grief or indeed ruin. Instead, what we get appears to be the result of an attempt to approximate what a nine year old child might draw on the back of a textbook if asked to suggest a butch man standing in a graveyard on a gloomy evening. Liefeld's capacity to pick up a cheque without doing the slightest piece of research reflects either a crippling workload or a puzzling absence of shame, just as his tendency to worship the very idea of the brute and mass-murderer either reflects a dead heart or an askew mind.
Elsewhere, Tieri's words as added to Liefeld's plot for Grifter reflect a similar problem with ethical issues. Once again, we're presented with the model for the idea of the superhero as laudable killing machine, and it's a type which Tieri chooses to positively represent without the slightest trace of irony. Perhaps neither Liefeld or Tieri have ever read Alan Moore's smart-minded run on WildCats in the mid-90s, when he worked to show how pernicious it is to present any race of opponents as being wholeheartedly evil and unquestionably deserving of the very worst of fates. For here, Grifter's monologue is nothing but line after line describing how the Daemonites he's killing are so disgusting and so evil that he can't help but slaughter them. "One thing I do like about em, though - they die Ok" he states at the end of his act one spiel, and the reader is clearly supposed to exalt in the killing of these faceless, personality-less aliens. It is, to say the least, understandable that Grifter loathes them for the killing of his brother. Yet the sentences in which he explains that he despises their appearance and even the way they stink "of vomit mixed of fear" makes for uncomfortable reading for anyone not swallowed up with the joy of seeing faceless minions blown away by rough-edged and handsome hardnuts with a penchant for exterminating their opponents.
That Grifter is then later apparently revealed to be a savoir chosen by some fate to rescue us all from the extra-terrestial only helps to make the whole business seem entirely distasteful.
But in both Grifter and Deathstroke, Liefeld does succeed in doing something which a great many other comics schlock-meisters fail to do nearly as well. In presenting his heroes as tragically oppressed and his villains as entirely without human, let alone redeemable, qualities, he legitimises the reader who simply wants to see violence and brutality dished out. This may not be a laudable achievement, but it is an effective one. No matter how light on logic his method is, its result is balefully effective. Deathstroke the brute is given to the reader as their point of view of character, and from the off, it's his suffering and not the consequences of his actions which dominate the text. Grifter is similarly given to us as our man in the story, and the pleasure that he takes in eradicating the Other can be ours because there's not a hint of us, it seems, in his opponents.These are undeniably stupid comics, and yet two of them do cunningly work from the off to allow the audience to sidestep any moral qualms they might have about simply enjoying the sight of an endless parade of violence and killing.
Effective then, if despicable.
Yet push the ethics to one side, and perhaps the most exquisitely, and most embarrassingly, awful aspects of the craft on show in these titles are the lines which co-scripters Liefeld and Poulton give to Hawkman in his book's first act. The problem here is that the writers are attempting to adopt the tone and content of one of the world's smartest men, and that, it seems, is entirely beyond them. It's not just that they keep giving Carter Hall daft things to say, though having such a genius later declare that "Hawks are not hunted!" shows such an ignorance of the matter that it's hard not to laugh out laugh. (Note for Hawkman writers: Hawks are hunted by a variety of predators in a variety of situations, with the most excruciatingly obvious example being, yes, human beings.) In fact, it's both deeply worrying and profoundly surprising that no-one at DC picked up upon this sequence of ill-informed and ill-phrased text captions before they came to print. For example, the opening lines of Hawkman's monologue reads as follows;
" History tells us a great many things. From history we learn how civilisations were built, the people who ruled them and the reasons for their collapse."
If there's a theme being established here, it's not plain in this particular issue. What is obvious is how clunky and arbitrary the statement is. Any one of the clauses in that second sentence could be changed to refer to anything which might be learnt from "history" without altering the meaning of what follows, which illustrates how this is waffle rather than informing text. Those sentences are only there, we must assume, because Liefeld and Poulton think that this is how intelligent people express themselves, although I'd wager there's not been a history graduate for a great many decades who'd nail their colours to such a definition of their discipline. Replace "how civilisations were built" with "how jam is made" and "the people who ruled them" with "the evolution of underpants" and nothing in the story changes except that the portentous tone is somewhat undercut. But then, there's a constant rush of noise whenever one of these Carter-is-clever statements appears. Consider the following cascade of information;
"As an archaeologist, professor of history, and the world foremost expert on linguistics, there are few in my field who can carry a resume equal to mine."
The reader faced with this isn't suddenly overwhelmed with admiration for the man's surprising capabilities. Instead, there's a deep suspicion inspired that Hall's a career bullshitter. Why would anyone that capable start by defining himself according to an academic discipline, before changing gear to refer to an organisational rank, before rolling on to a boast about his superiority to all other linguists? Since when did the weight of a man's resume as here expressed stand as a marker of his worth? For not only does this genius seem to struggle to keep the subject of his thoughts consistent, but he's an appallingly arrogant son-of-a-hawk too. He doesn't seem to grasp the very basics of the subjects he's a supposed master of. His preoccupation, he informs us, is " ...piecing together the riddles of these ancient civilisations", which is apparently not only his "job", but his "passion" too. A shame, then, that's he's so thick he doesn't notice that what he's saying is nonsense. Oh, we know something of what he, or rather his scripters, mean, but this man is a super-intellectual, and such brilliant individuals would certainly know that "riddles" can't be pieced together. The solutions to them might possibly be open to such an endeavour, but to piece together riddles is a quite ridiculous concept. How could riddles be stitched together, unless Carter is engaged upon some form of cut-up-inspired arts project?
And if the solution to these riddles is unknown, and it must be, because they're still mysterious riddles, then how can Carter be so sure that any stitching together will be possible anyway?
Not so much a scientist and scholar then, but a vainglorious clown.
But then Liefeld's technique of storytelling has always been to provide hints of a story rather than a story itself, and to use that suggestion of a narrative and sense and coherence to hang a measure of attention-distracting spectacle upon. Or should we concede that Hall is so incredibly intelligent that even the way he uses everyday English is beyond the likes of our own understanding? Yet Hawkman does, I fear, seem to continually struggle when he comes to using the most simple of academic concepts. The Nth metal, for example, from which his costume and ability to fly come from, "can't be analysed, but only experienced", he declares. It's the most shockingly ignorant of a whole string of obviously daft-headed comments. After all, there isn't anything with a physical form which can't be analysed, though there might be things which can't as yet be understood. If the control of the Nth metal is something which comes with practise and the right attitude, then that process could certainly be analysed using the age old steps of, yes, the scientific method. (Carter suggests that's there's a process similar to instinct which allows him to control the metal, and I'm sure that Mr Poulton and Mr Liefeld are well aware that instinct has been analysed in the natural and social sciences for, oh, quite a few centuries now.)
(Dear me, but Hawkman appears to be have written by idiots pretending to be geniuses. It's a deeply embarrassing business, and to suggest that such is fine because the book is aimed at children and those with childish tastes is to insult such folks. There has never been a great author of children's books who didn't have a tremendous regard for their readers, and that means not bullshitting them with such a disregard for their intelligence. Editors Rachel Gluckstern and Rickey Purdin seem to have been unable to spot these none-too-few slip-ups. Perhaps things were exceptionally busy that day. They could have at least have replaced "analysed" with "understood" and avoided just the single example of stupidity.
Shame on you, DC Comics. This isn't even a question of taste, but a matter of basic professional competency. If your audience doesn't deserve sense, then what is it that DC is saying about the niche that Liefeld's books are aimed at?)
Even the few pages taken up by the first acts of these comics show a great deal of the appeal, as well as the inevitable flaws, in Liefeld's methods. He and his various collaborators have undoubtedly succeeded in delivering a clear, if often absurd, statement of who their lead characters are, of how they view the world, and of what their various missions might be. What we're given might not often make sense even its own terms, and the ethics of what we're shown are repeatedly dubious. But for those who don't want to have to concentrate to the slightest degree on what they're reading, Grifter and Deathstroke and Savage Hawkman will deliver a vigorous simulacra of a story that's comfortingly premasticated and entirely undemanding. The superpeople are here and the superbaddies are too. The protagonists are admirable even when they're complete shits, and the antagonists are apparently appalling even when they ought to engage our sympathy. Fused to that is a scattering of snares and enigmas which can tug the audience forward without ever asking them to invest a measure of thought into the process. Will poor anti-social Deathstroke ever find peace? How will Grifter fight his war against the characterless and wholly-despicable alien baddies? What riddles can be pieced together by Hawkman when he's not being savage, or even when he is?
These enigmas haul the attention from fight to exposition to fight without anything of careful plotting, on Liefeld's part, or concentration, on the reader's, ever being necessary. Combined with all the built-into-the-narrative excuses which permit the reader to leave any conscience they have behind as they descend into yet another indulgence of blood-letting, sexism, and angsty-whinging, and what the reader's being offered is the closest that superhero comics get to a consciousness-obliterating drug-binge. It may not be particularly pleasurable to all but the committed, but it certainly doesn't threaten to push away readers because it's got uppity ideas about the likes of morals and structure and seriously challenging meta. In that, this isn't just comics as an escape from the world, it's comics as an escape from the language of comics itself. It's the post-modern experience lightly sprinkled with traces of old-school storytelling, which leaves it capable of even serving as an example of traditional four-colour virtues without ever being anything of the sort.
And as such, it's worth recognising that something of what Liefeld is doing here is something which more respectable and admirable creators sometimes ignore; he's nailing down the experience that he's offering his audience from the start while fulfilling the fundamental desires of a significant degree of the audience. Come with me, these pages promise, and you won't have to think or feel in any way which disturbs you or challenges you. Instead, there'll be momentum and energy and glee and a love of the genre stripped of anything of substance that's arrived since the first appearance of Superman. It may be that there's a great deal to be learnt from Liefeld's methods, no matter how slapdash and stupid they are. It's seems obvious, for example, that there's something of his approach to be found in the work of Grant Morrison and particularly Mark Millar, although that's a topic for another day.
But if there is a valuable market for this work, then the challenge is surely to create comics which appeal to it without insulting either the head or the heart.
It was originally my intention to talk through all six of the stages I thought I saw in Liefeld's work on these three titles, but I fear that no-one would want, and no-one could certainly ever need, another 5 examples of the above. So, simply in the interest of full disclosure, and not in the belief that anyone would give a flying fox about the matter, there'll be a pause now in this piece while I try to work out how to boil down the notes I've got into one more hopefully worth-a-visit piece.
But tomorrow; A mystery mainstream superhero! Phonogram! Hector Umbra! And Robert Crumb! Together, for the first time, effendi!
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