Double-Suck-It!

Ian: Holy frig, do I have an axe to grind this week! It’s just been building and building and I can’t keep it in anymore! I double dog dare you to find a shittier artist than José Ladrönn. There, I said it. There’s no one in the business worse than Ladrönn. What a goddamn hack. It’s pretty rare that I dislike someone’s art SO MUCH that it actually makes me angry to look at it, but this guy…Jesus. How in the hell did he win the Eisner Award for “Best Painter” in 2006? Who was he up against? A donkey?

You know, it’s sad. I really wanted to love Richard Starkings’ Hip Flask but it was pretty apparent from the outset that the art was just not gonna be up to par. And do we even need to get into the last two year’s worth of godforsaken Green Arrow/Black Canary covers? I like Green Arrow and Black Canary as characters and I buy this title every month for my wife, but I can’t even open the book because the cover art puts me in a crab-ass mood right out of the gate. ESPECIALLY considering that he took over from the amazing Cliff Chiang. On his Wikipedia page it says that Ladrönn is influenced by Jack Kirby. This is nothing short of an insult to Jack Kirby, the entire comic book readership, industry, and pretty much everyone with eyeballs.

You know, there are so many artists – great artists! – who would give their left nut (not Nuv though, he has no nuts) to be in this business, and they’ll continue knocking at that door because Marvel and DC are busy paying idiots a lot of money to produce crap. Grrr!

José Ladrönn, eat a wang! The END.

Nuv: My favourite part is when you point out why exactly you hate him. Oh, wait. You don’t. Well-written. I think Ladrönn’s problem isn’t necessarily the actual line work. Whoever colours his shit lacks opposable thumbs and appears to work with pencil crayons or down-to-the-nub Kindergarten pastels. I do agree though, it looks like your face. Aka ‘shit.’

Ian: What the fu…?

Nuv: That said, with a glove-slap of your face, I accept your challenge. I have indeed found an artist that is a bigger nincompoop than Ladrönn. Take 12 paces, turn around and behold:

Rob Liefeld.

Instead of blathering on like my warm-up act, here is an excerpt of an actual conversation I had with Robert himself, just last week.

[Editor’s note: Conversation may or may not be actual. Carry on.]

<BEGIN PLAYBACK>

Rob: …and those stupid motherfuckers bought it! I technically drew the issues, I guess. But, c’mon. how could you not know I had paid a hooker with Spike Lee commercial money to move my arm with the pencil taped to it as I slept off the cocaine? It was obvious that I lost my genitals long ago in a button-fly accident, so what else would I be doing with a prosty? Golly!

Anyways, back to my pitch. I came up with this character who, despite what all the Clint Eastwood lines on his face may lead you to believe, is 19 years old, which you can tell because of his hip, feathered, Priestley haircut that stops well above his mutant non-ear that looks more like a belly button than an ear because I can’t draw ears or hair shaped around an ear.

So, he’s 19 and…[scanning room until he settles on Green Arrow action figure] shoots cool trick arrows and…oh yeah. I already did that…Well this is, like, deep and on many levels and stuff. Like I’m playing off [Editor's Note: ripping off] my own character that played off [Editor’s Note: see previous Editor’s Note] another character. But, like, current. [Editor's Note: in 1991] And my style. [Editor's Note: Style is probably the wrong word.]

The back story is he was genetically engineered…No! I got it! They can all be from from a weird sub-branch of humanity that has 208 abdominal muscles instead of your puny six, and torsos that only make up like 1/10 of their body length, and the rest is leg. Too long, too wide leg. Except the girls will have super-skinny legs and when they put their legs together (which will be rarely for the classy broads in my comics. Yeah! Puss-ay!!), it might look like one leg sometimes…Yeah, I have a weird mental block, where, once I hit a certain amount of limbs per issue, I can’t do any more. I’ll just stop mid-leg if I have to. But then, [in shittiest De Niro voice you can imagine] “there’s a flip side to that coin.” Heh. Umm..yeah. Coin. So, sometimes I haven’t hit the limb quota and I gotta just draw random floating hands and shit. It’ll be set in a near future where random objects pop-up conveniently so I don’t have to draw feet. You’re right, they don’t deserve to be called feet. ‘Triangle-leg-bottoms’…sorry. I’ll get back on track.

So, he’s gonna have giant shoulder pads, maybe one with spikes, and a gun the size of a car. Seriously. If I could do proportions, that’s what they would be, comparatively…What’s that? Oh. Right. He shoots arrows. Well…It’s a gun-bow! Like a..no, not like a crossbow. A gun-bow, I said. There’s a difference, ok?! So, he’s going to have one robot arm at least and one scar-eye and the other one glows because…well, I’ll think of something. So, he’ll be wearing tights, but over that will be the neck from a turtleneck sweater, and over that is a half-jacket. It’s like a tummy-shirt, or like a Rosie Perez coat. You know. Something a hardened Vietnam vet mercenary would wear. Oh yeah, I did say he’s 19, didn’t I? Don’t worry about it. No one will notice. [Editor's Note: True Dat.]

So, on top of the cute, Japanese girl coat/vest, there will be a million garter type-straps that lead nowhere and serve no purpose, and weird capsules attached to random places that defy physics, and he’ll wear little short matchy gloves and boots. And a belt with pouches. And another one around his thigh that would actually make it impossible to walk in reality, and camping supplies on his back with swords and a dildo-lookin’ jetpack, and he’s going to have a mini-skull in the middle of his forehead like a paki-dot (no offense, Nuv) and seven pig/pony-tails and 580 teeth (always grit in “I’m taking a shit” fashion) and he’s immortal and super-strong and can super-fuck-chicks…his name? Bo Narrow. Get it? Huh? And his alias will be Bone-Arrow! Ha. Whatchya think?

Nuv: Fuck off. [pulls out car-sized gun and blood-fuck-gun-kills a founding father of Image to death-hell.]

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Ian: Talk about wienerizing a dead horse! Have you ever gone on Google and typed in “Rob Liefeld” to see what the auto-complete comes up with? “Rob Liefeld worst drawings.” “Rob Liefeld 40 worst.” “Rob Liefeld plagiarism.” “Rob Liefeld can’t draw.” Nuv, your gin-soaked interweb ramblings have finally gone TOO FAR. You’re preaching to the choir! Of course Rob Liefeld is a dirty ol’ hack but you know what they say: Those who can do. Those who can’t found Image Comics.

Nuv: Yeah. This column is Double-Suck-It, but Jim ‘Mini-Liefeld’ Valentino would get the third Johnson, time permitting…

Ian: That goes for you too, Erik Larsen, ya hairy, gorilla-arm drawing dick! You’re a whole article unto yourself! Bo Narrow though…That’s some shit I’d buy! [Editor’s note: Double-True!]

Put two in the air…

– The Big Two

NEXT ISSUE: PUT ONE IN THE AIR. THE PHANTOM QUARTERBACK AND THE PHANTOM COLUMNIST. TUNE IN: SAME IAN-TIME NUV-TIME, SAME NUV-CHANNEL…