Rob Liefeld joins three ongoing series
Can DC honestly not understand that Rob Liefeld’s contribution to Hawk and Dove was the worst thing about it and – I have no doubt – one of the primary reasons it didn’t sell particularly well?
Their next step after canning the low-selling Hawk and Dove – GIVE LIEFELD THREE OTHER TITLES TO F@#$ UP!!!
Every so often I can look at a single Liefeld drawing and find something slightly appealing about it (I didn’t mind him on Deadpool Corps just from a historical perspective), but he is an AWFUL visual storyteller.
And as bad and lazy as a visual storyteller he is, he’s an even worse writer – from Youngblood (cough Teen Titans cough) to Agent America (ahem … no further comment necessary) his work is first and foremost derivative and unoriginal. Let’s not even discuss the obvious links between Deadpool/Wade Wilson and Deathstroke/Slade Wilson (especially in the beginning before Deadpool’s character was developed in a way that differentiated him significantly from the DC villain).
Once again, DC are making decisions that make the New 52 feel less like a “bold, new direction for the future of comics” and more like Image Comics circa 1992.
read/RANT! 
I’ve thought this one over a bit. First, aren’t all three of those comics sitting pretty low and have a current chance of getting cut? If so, maybe DC actually WANTS them to fail so they can bring in a few more new titles or something.
P.S. Why is the blade for Deathstroke’s sword coming out from the side of the hilt?
DC want all of their titles to sell like Justice League. Like any other company, they are motivated by profits.
It just seems to me that they don’t really know how to go about doing that. Of course, I’m no expert, but it just seems obvious to me that decisions like the above are a 180 on the right direction.
I don’t know … maybe there is a huge, silent Liefeld fan following out there. If that was true, though, why weren’t they buying Hawk and Dove?
Back in the 90s at least, didn’t his stuff actually sell lots of issues typically? Perhaps DC is stuck (like it sometimes seems they really are) back in 90s outlooks expecting stuff he gets put on to do really well, while ignoring Hawk/Dove as a complete fluke?
Part of my thinking for that previous post though was that DC may have at least figured those titles wouldn’t hit those huge numbers they wanted no matter how hard they try now, and so want to force them under for an excuse to bring in what they think(hope) will get those sales going.
“Maybe DC actually WANTS them to fail so they can bring in a few more new titles or something”: I thought exactly the same thing. If things are fixed this way, that would be a real shame: Hawkman would be an unsignificant loss, but Grifter and Deathstroke have been good so far. We can only hope that Liefeld will follow the path of previous writers, instead of changing two similar narrative styles that, at least from an artistic point of view, are working very well. When a series does not sell, a good publisher calls a good writer to raise it, and a bad one chooses a jerk to close it as fast as possible: that is, DC Comics should have made a bigger effort for its poorly selling series.
It’s actually interesting, but someone has pointed out that it’s not 90s image that DC is beginning to resemble, but 90s Marvel. Lobdell on 3 books, Liefeld on 3 books, Howard Mackie returning to write for DC, etc…. I forget which DC higher-up it is, but one of the major editors was apparently working at Marvel during the 90s and he has apparently been pushing to employ a lot of his old team.
Liefeld writing three titles. Rob Liefeld is writing as many titles as Geoff Johns. More than Grant Morrison or Gail Simone. Who are actual, professional writers.
I don’t get it.
Dude can draw like nobody’s business, you have bad taste.