vonnegution

Brett Ratner (Rush Hour, Rush Hour 2, X-Men: The Last Stand, and Red Dragon) is set to direct the upcoming comic book adaptation titled Youngblood, from the comic series originally "created" by Rob Liefeld. Never heard of Youngblood? Don't remember it well (or fondly)? Think it sounds familiar but, saw it on the comic shelves 10 years ago, but never bought it? Or, bought it solely because it was an Image property and then promptly ignored it? You are not alone.

Youngblood, as deciphered from old runes by Liefeld, should be utterly forgettable in the universe where comic geeks like myself reside. Except that it's not. It's remembered, quite accurately, because of how supremely awful it was as a series (albeit, a series that somehow spawned off-shoots like Team Youngblood, Youngblood Strikefile, and Young Youngblood-- or something). When I say "awful" I do not mean the archaic sense of the word, "full of awe." No, I mean, and let me abundantly clear, the series was horrible. It wasn't even awesomely awful. It was just, well, bad.

Liefeld, as an artist, never really had any talent as a storyteller, but when he worked for Marvel and had actual writers writing for him, this facet (or lack thereof) was less noticeable. He was great at drawing splash pages, and he precipitated the big guns with big muscles that nearly strangled comics in the 1990s the designed Cable, after all). Actually, in retrospect, even his splash pages aren't very good-- generally those are meant to serve uniquely economical storytelling purposes, but Liefeld mostly drew pinups meant to be hung on adolescent boys' walls. Still, he was popular, and more or less rightly so considering the era of his popularity. A Democrat was president, the economy was strong, America wasn't at war, and Friends was the most popular show on television. All of this meant that in the comics industry, deep, emblematic stories weren't as necessary (or, at least, as popular) as they were in the 1970s and 1980s, when the world seemed to be in a brutally constant state of flux. In those decades, like all artistic mediums in harsh times, comics strove to tell stories worth telling, some are still considered the greatest comic stories of all times-- The Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, The Dark Phoenix Saga.

Take, for instance, comics within this decade: writers returned to prominence, stories became more graphic and more realistic, characters like Professor Xavier that used to be infallible suddenly became more human, and Captain America was dead (for a while, anyway). But, in the 1990s, for all its fruits, gave us some of the worst comics in history and that was partially due to the fact that readers like myself chose flashy pictures over good storytelling (Hey, I was twelve!). There were, of course, a few standouts of modern comic gold-- Neil Gaiman's Sandman, Garth Ennis' Preacher, and Frank Miller's Sin City, and notice, with the exception of Miller, those are the writers' names, not the artists, and they arguably grew in popularity once they were collected into graphic novel form at the end of the decade and the beginning of the new-aughts.


But, by all accounts, pencilers ruled the day while Bill Clinton was President. So, Rob Liefeld, with Jim Lee, Todd MacFarlane, and the rest of Marvel's big stable of artists, formed their own company and called it Image. Which, probably needless to say, was a perfect choice for their company name. While Jim Lee didn't embarrass himself with WildC.A.T.S. and MacFarlane created a new comic icon in Spawn (even the great Alan Moore had a stint on Image's Supreme, and according to Wikipedia, Youngblood, too), Rob Liefeld singled himself out by "creating" a team of superheroes who were not-too-dissimilar from most of Marvel's all-stars, or at least resembled characters from the book he worked on, specifically the X-Men spin-off, X-Force. If you actually look at that Wikipedia entry, Liefeld even admits to copying his characters, however, he only cops to their characterizations from a never-produced Teen Titans spin-off, and not to their visual resemblance to some obvious Marvel heroes.

I don't mean to say that copying, or creating homages, to established characters is, in and of itself, a bad thing. Especially, if as in Watchmen (or Moore's newer series, Top 10), the creators are riffing on our modern archetypes to re-illuminate them or re-interpret them for a new age, or to tell a story that could never be told in their original source materials. But, Rob Liefeld did not do that. The story and characters he came up with were simply rote, one dimensional rip-offs of their Marvel/DC counterparts. I won't comment on his writing talents, except to say that I could have written more believable, and understandable dialogue. Even as a kid, I could see how terrible he was at creating character through speech and action. They were just stereotypes: the steely, passionate leader; the quiet, impassive killer; the token buxom, leggy, assy, ditzy females; the big, dumb but tough (and rocky!) strong guy. They're all there, but they never did anything but simply recite the lines they had already said before for a generation. As such, Liefeld's books had to grab readers' attention by
having one major female character pose nude (omg!) in an adult-magazine, though no naughty bits were ever revealed-- much to my boyhood chagrin. And there was one storyline where a villain turned all the male heroes into buxom, leggy, assy, and, yes, ditzy females. Suddenly finding team leader Shaft sexy was highly discombobulating, to say the least. So, eventually, I stopped picking these books up. As did most everyone else. I'm not even sure where those comics are now, as they aren't in my main collection. Probably, I threw them away.

All this is to say, Brett Ratner is the perfect choice to bring Rob Liefeld's "vision" to the big screen. Outside of Red Dragon, which I've never seen, but hear is "pretty okay," Ratner is the biggest hack I've ever seen. Oh, he's got some talent, definitely. Just being able to wrangle the crew for such big budget movies takes skill, and he isn't awful with creating vivid images. But, those images tend be hollow and without meaning. They're pretty, but I don't care about them. I don't even remember them. Just like Rob Liefeld. So, from where I stand, on a soap box on a mountaintop, this is the most simpatico joining of talents in the history of cinema. I can guarantee you that I'll be lined up, on opening day. At the gas station. To buy cigarettes and beer. To sit at home and watch The Dark Knight, Iron Man, and X2. Youngblood's opening day is going to be a good one. For me, anyway. I worry for those souls misguided enough to be in the theater. Don't say I didn't warn you.

As a final note, I feel I should clarify something. I don't mean to say that artists cannot be writers, or vice versa (though, much less often). I was simply trying to illustrate the fact that comics in the 90s, Marvel being the biggest culprit, did not produce, or cultivate, memorable stories from worthwhile writers. There were plenty of good writers, and good writer/artists, back then, and simply, Rob Liefeld was not among them. Apologies if anyone took offense earlier. It was not intended.

-Rob

Oh, and this just reaffirms my undying love for Bruce Campbell. Commenting on the possibilities of an Evil Dead 4 or an Evil Dead remake:

"[Y]ou're bound to disappoint, and that's why I think we hesitate the most. The way to ruin the other three movies is to make a really bad part four, one that just sucked."

It's too bad Sam Raimi didn't heed this advice on Spider-Man 3 or the probable Spider-Man 4 he seems close to helming.