OC Weekly on Liefeld; Liefeld on Moore

Anyone who remembers the strange days of the early 1990s, when Image Comics both real and imaginary were items of value cherished and sought after by fans everywhere, will want to take a look at this Luke Thompson look-back with Rob Liefeld published in the OC Weekly.

Lots of interesting bits in there, like this one:

Jeph Loeb, an award-winning comic-book writer and screenwriter currently working as an executive producer on TV’s Heroes, admitted to Liefeld some years ago that he had hated his guts.

Liefeld recalls, “We were finally close enough where he could divulge to me, like, oh, he goes, ‘Rob, the success you and your buddies had threatened all of us; it ticked us off. And, you know, you guys made us all look like old men, and uh, you kind of were a harbinger of a new generation.’ And I mean, I definitely felt that at the time because we pulled a lot of young readers in with us. I saw kids—I guess I’d call ’em skateboard kids, and more ‘normal kids’—coming into the comic conventions. Without us, you don’t get to where the San Diego Comic-Con pop-culture explosion is now. We were sort of the bridge event for that.”

There's also a much-discussed sidebar in which Liefeld talks about working with Alan Moore and how the famous writer of Watchmen, From Hell and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is really just in it for the money (though if that's the case, it's not clear why Moore turns down the money associated with the adaptation of his work to film). From Liefeld:

“Alan just wants to get paid more money, that’s it. Sorry Alan. I got my body of work out of Alan Moore, he doesn’t intimidate me, I don’t put him on a pedestal like Jack Kirby and Frank Miller,. He’s just a guy who wants to get paid, and he cuts deals for himself that he doesn’t like down the line, and then he gets whiny and cries about it...Hey man, he worked for me for two years, I was quiet for like ten years. And then I watched him burn every other bridge, and I go “Hmm.” Although we didn’t have a falling out with him. He just stopped working with us, because he now wanted to invest in his new universe with Wildstorm comics, and again, like I said, OOPS! That went up in flames. He gives 'temperamental artist' a new meaning.”