Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
::Today's soundtrack: The Birthday Massacre "Looking Glass" ::
Due to the sheer volume of large-ish images in this post, I'm giving you the option the open it in a new window for ease of reading. Just click HERE if you want to do so.
Regular visitors to this site will undoubtedly recall my utter loathing comic book "artist" and "creator" Rob Liefeld. I don't keep this a secret, after all, and in fact talk about it at length psychotically from time to time. I was mentioning this to some folks on a forum I am known to frequent, and another member replied that he gives Liefeld a break despite his many obvious short comings because he created the Marvel Comics character Deadpool. Yes, for those of you who did not know and who recently saw the Wolverine movie, the despicable Rob Liefeld created the beloved Deadpool. I know this, and still will never forgive Mr. Liefeld. Do you know why I knew it? Because dear friends, Deadpool made is first appearance in one of my old favourite comic titles The New Mutants. And when I think about the myriad reasons there are for disliking Rob, you know, his horrible anatomy, the inability to draw consistent backgrounds, the one dimensional characters, the awful, awful script writing, the number one reason will always be because he RUINED a great comic series and made it mind numbingly awful. He turned The New Mutants into one of the worst comics I have ever read. Yes, Liefeld created Deadpool within its pages, and I own that issue because I own the entire run for the sake of completeness, and I could probably sell New Mutants #98 for 50 USD simply because of Deadpool. I am here today to show you why this is wrong. This comic should not be worth 50 USD to anyone even though it is Deadpool's first appearance because this comic is TERRIBLE. Very, very bad. The art, the writing... the whole thing is piss-poor. I bring you a pictorial display to show you, the world, just how bloody awful this comic is with scans by your truly. Without further ado:
The New Mutants #98! And to quote Chris Sims: "Grab a copy and follow along!" You'll notice from the cover that not only does this issue boast the first appearance of the "lethal" Deadpool, but also "the mysterious Gideon" and "the dynamic Domino!" All three of which are boring characters, conveniently without and sort of background, and practically do nothing but take part in useless action sequences that don't do anything, not even advance the plot. Continue to scroll downwards for page 1, if you dare!
Above is the cover-promised introduction of The Mysterious Gideon. You can kind of tell when Rob Liefeld is actually putting forth some real effort in his drawing, and this is one of them. You can see how he actually tried with using some line thickness and some decent shadows around this guy's waistcoat-vest thing. But, yes despite the fact that Rob actually TRIED here, this drawing is still terrible. This pic is a good demonstration of an ongoing "theme" throughout this comic: guys with no eyes. Seriously, this book is All Squinting, All The Time!! Therefore, Gideon looks like a blind guy playing an invisible piano. And his pony-tail consistently defies the laws of gravity despite what the rest of his hair is doing (and this is unfortunately one of the few consistent things in this issue). Also, he's got one SERIOUS CAMEL-TOE for a dude! Do you dare continue to the next image??
Pages 2 and 3 are your typical Liefeld-brand Sideways Layout(tm). Groan... This spread offers another one of the ongoing themes in this comic and Liefeld's work in general: the overuse of stupid sound effects, particularly things that go "klik." Why "klik" is better than "click," I'll never know. Now, I want you to pay special attention to the green robots in the upper left panel. Look at how their feet are designed. You got that? What I like to call those "elephant feet," big, round, bulky feet. This is fine here. Design your robots however you like. HOWEVER on the next page:
NOW look at the robots. Human type feet! Look, Rob, we all know you cannot draw people feet to save your life and right on the previous page you gave yourself an "out" by giving the robots elephant feet! Why did you decide to change your mind and intentionally give them feet you cannot draw?! And, woah, Gideon's got some wicked butt clenching going on here. What's the matter, worried about how your butt juggles during a poorly scripted and utterly useless training sequence?
As you can see above (page 6), Gideon is still terrifyingly eye-less and his perma-squint. The blond guy in the last panel I can only ASSUME is Gideon's secretary. What, you don't make your secretary wear a skin-tight silver unitard with a big metal collar? Looks like the secretary guy is self conscious about his butt, too. Gentlemen, clench your cheeks! And what's with the stalagmite on the floor, there? It's a metal training room, where he fought metal robots... I guess the debris from metal robots is pointed rocks. Who knew!
Okay, finally, page 8 and 9 yields some Cable action! Oh wait, blech! Look at this double page spread. It is just awful. That's another thing about Liefeld: he has no idea how to properly layout panels on a page! No wonder nothing useful happens in this issue! He's wasting 2 whole pages on 3 panels for no reason! And hey look, it's another training session!! How original! And speaking of original, another green, elephant-footed robot! Looks like Cable gets his robots from the same supplier as Gideon.
Oh, man check out the veritable barrage of stupid sound effects on this page! THOOM, Vip Vip Vip, VRMMMM, Clik kik (????) Chik Chuk... Baaaaarf! Wait, that last one was me. Oh, no, Cable, not training sequence SG-2J3!! Manoman, look how the walls in the Danger Room are nothing more than a series of random rectangles... and yet this was proven too difficult to replicate in the last 2 panels. Gotta love that silly cross-hatched background in panel 3!! Another one of Rob's idiotic background substitutes! Hey, where did Cable's glove go in the last panel?
Aaaaaaand some more lame sound effects. Hey, look at Cable in panel 2. Look at those boots. If you scroll back up to the 3 panel double page spread, you can clearly see his knees. He is wearing totally different boots here! I am willing to accept that he might have taken off his glove and put it back on off-panel, but I seriously doubt he had time to change his shoes!! This leads me to believe that this odd pose for Cable with the out of place knee high boots is a swipe. This means he copied a pose from another comic book artist, something he has been notorious for doing, and still wasn't good enough at it to change the goddamn boots. And yes, We now return to ALL SQUINT THEATER in 3 of the 4 last panels. In the second to last panel with the pull-back view of them standing... why are they both thrusting their pelvises at each other? Sam Guthrie is hot for teacher!
Okay, look at the size of that office. The only furniture in it is a desk and chair. That's it! And the desk has nothing on it! No computer, no pens or pencils, no intercom or phone... what does Emmanuel DaCosta a multi-millionaire CEO do in his office all day?? In panel 1, what sort of backdrop is that?? A red curtain and... some mesh screens....? Shit, I don't know. Also, Rob was determined to put in the sound effect of the evil coffee-giving-lady walking away, but didn't bother on her approaching the desk. Panel 1, she's across the room, and panel 2 she's at the desk. I suppose she took off her heels to walk to the desk and put them back on to walk away with a "clik clik clik" of course.
Look at that coffee cup. The bottom of it is perfectly round thusly rendering it impossible to set it on a flat surface without tipping over. Look in Senor DaCosta's mouth, especially in the second panel up there. How many teeth does that guy have?? Okay, so this guy drinks poison or something, dies in his chair and falls to the floor.... across the room? In the last panel what sort of angle are we getting where he is that scale to his desk when he died like right next to it, supposedly? Maybe he was going for some sort of extreme telescoping lens effect or something?
The above page makes my brain want to eat itself. This page is simply so awful. The layout. The horrifically faulty perspective, Rictor (the guy in green) and his squintiness, Boom-Boom (the girl in pink) and he total lack of nasal passages.... Aaaargh! Look at that close up of Rictor's face. He is supposed to be a teenager. The rule of thumb when drawing comic book characters is that the more lines you put on a face, the older people will perceive them to be. Judging by this panel, I'd put Rictor at 45 years of age. Check out that middle panel in the bottom row. Look at Rictor's pose. When have you even been in a discussion so heated that you posed like that??
Okay, the three panels above, this is the start of this scene. You can tell by the establishing "the library. 2:51pm" at the start. What is happening here? Cable is just... standing there. He's not reading a book (speaking of which... look at the fucking SIZE of those books! They're all gigantic when you use Cable as a means of scale). He doesn't have his hand on a book... he's just... there. And them a silly sound effect does him in! But from where? What happened? Did the bookshelf explode? Did someone shoot at him through the bookshelf? If you think this gets resolve on the next page....
...you'd be wrong but OMFG it's DEADPOOL so who the hell cares! Now, see, what I took to be a small, localized explosion on the last page designed to take out one, specific target was actually large enough to demolish the entire library but not actually injure Cable at all. Huh. Neat how that works. It appears as though the rubble from exploded books and bookshelves is ALSO stalagmite-esque, much like that of metal robots. Also neat. So, yes, dear friends, this is the much anticipated first appearance of Deadpool right here, and once again, we can see that in the top panel Liefeld took a little extra care in drawing him. Too bad he doesn't stick to it. In the next 5 pages with Deadpool, there is a game I like to play called "the disappearing, reappearing swords on Deadpool's back." This also extends to the collar around his neck and the weird capsule encrusted armband. If we have a panel of Deadpool and he actually has all three items, then it's a bloody miracle, especially considering Liefeld himself designed the character, you'd think he'd know how to draw him consistently!!
Let's examine that first, vertical panel, shall we? First off, I thought Deadpool was wearing his swords strapped to his BACK, but it appears instead he has them attached to his butt cheeks, judging by the way he is tilted forward like that. Hey look, Cable is wearing studded punk rock style wrist bands on his right arm in this panel and NO WHERE ELSE in the entire book even in this same scene! Okay, now Deadpool pulls a gun on cable and in the cut away between panels 2 and 4 HE SWITCHES HANDS with it. Is he just that confident? "Yanno, I think I'll shoot you with my non-dominant hand for a change, Cable!" Oops, Deadpool's swords are gone in the last panel!
Quick... which one of Cable's arms is the metal one? His right or his left? Give up? So did Rob Liefeld!
Hey Deadpool's armband is back but his swords are still missing! Everybody see how Cable just took a knife to the leg, there? That's actually a pretty bad place to get stabbed as major blood vessels run through there. Why throwing a knife makes a "fwiip" sound, however... Also, look at Cable's leg in the second panel, the one on the ground with the knife in it, which is now jutting out at an odd angle. That leg makes no anatomical sense whatsoever!! The foot is twisted 180 degrees from the knee for crying out loud!
In this panel Rob remembered the collar thing and drew 1/2 of a sword on Deadpool's back. Okay, what? I can understand forgetting them entirely, but drawing one and not the other and only HALF of one at that? Why didn't he draw the sword handle?? It's just laziness!!
And that is how Deadpool was introduced as a mercenary and taken down in 5 pages by the terrible dialogue of Domino in her illustrious first appearance. Yep, Deadpool's swords are gone again.
Okay, this is the very next panel to the last page with Domino. Just in case you can't read the word balloons, on the last page Cable asks, "How have you been, Domino?" To which she replies, "I've been around. And back again, it seems. How's this new babysitting business of yours going?" Then on the next page, after they tie up Deadpool and tidy up some of the smoldering debris, Cable says " Could be better, could be worse" as though literally no time had passed in between the panels even though clearly some things happened in the cut away. Say, Cable, how's that leg wound to a major artery you took 30 minutes ago doing? Oh, hey, it looks just fine now... almost as though you weren't stabbed at all! Now then, Deadpool and Cable in this panel appear to be on almost the same plane of existence... everyone else on the other hand... What are the other four characters standing on?? Am I to believe that the floor tilts upwards at a sharp angle or something? If he wanted everyone in the shot, heck, he has a staircase right there! Why didn't he use that? Instead Cannonball, Sunspot, Boom-Boom and Domino (where did Rictor go??) are all sort of floating in midair! Also, Boom-Boom is missing her lower legs and feet. Nice highwaisted pants there, Cable! Is that how you keep your gut in? And, just so we're clear, everyone (except Cable) has only just met Domino and yet Cannonball and Sunspot are wearing the same style pants as she is with the white crotch area! Before the next party they ought to discuss this things first to avoid embarrassing situations like these.
Let me put this panel into context. Recently in The New Mutants, a member died, another got left behind in a foreign country and one is in Asgard, so the member roster is dwindling, so here Cable goes over some files with Domino looking for some old members to bring back into the fold. Now I want to point out that Cable saying "I've already taken steps to remedy that" means that over the course of the next 2 issues we're going to get introduced to 3 new characters (Feral, Shatterstar, and Warpath (who is tied with Apache Chief for most racist sounding Native American codename, by the way)), each worse than the last, in order to make them more "gritty" and "bad ass" and turn them into the dreaded X-Force. If I could assassinate Cable, this panel right here would be my justification.
For those of you who have been wondering, trapdoors to secret under ground bunkers go "shunk" when opened. In panel 2 I want to make a word balloon that says "Braaaaaaiiiiins" for it. I would like to point out that this whole page takes place only a couple of minutes after the last scene which had Cable and Domino at a computer. You'd think there would be some sort of alarm or warning system to tell them, while seated at this advanced computer system, that the hatch has been opened and left that way! Now onto the bottom 2 panels. The furniture and perspective make absolutely NO SENSE. In the far away shot of Boom-Boom in bed (apparently NUDE by the way) it looks as though she has two dressers, one tall with a lamp on it and one short right next to it. It also looks like the tall dresser is turned in such a way that the drawers are pressed right up against the other dresser, making it impossible to access the drawers of the tall dresser. However, in the last panel we see the note over an alarm clock and in front of a lamp on a bed side table. Since I don't see any other furniture in previous panel other than the bed and two dressers, this leads me to believe that the tallest dresser is actually supposed to be a short bedside table (REALLY short since it looks like her mattress is on the floor and not up on rails), since the only other way to get this angle if it were a tall dresser would be from the upper corner of the room and looking down which we aren't.
It's okay, kids, this is the last page. Don't shoot yourselves. You can handle one more! Wow, Sunspot sure grinds his teeth when he sleeps! I bet he gets migraines because of it! And oh, it's the return of Gideon! AND his magical, mystical ponytail which at first is billowing over his left shoulder and in the next panel changes direction and it blowing over his right, and yet the rest of his hair is sitting quietly about his neck. Is it really windy in there or not at all? Gideon's hair defies you and your pathetic physics! And just to be perfectly clear, Cable who is a guy that is all about how life is war and these teenagers need to prepare as soldiers and be ready for war and all that... Gideon is the THIRD person to break into their secret underground bunker TODAY. Too bad no like alarms or anything went off when Rictor carelessly left that hatch open! Why would they bother with that? Oh yeah because a mercenary broke in earlier?? In the words of Deadpool: "Naaaaah!!"
And THAT gentle reader is the comic book which contains the first appearance of Deadpool and why it should not be worth 50 USD to anyone, ever. This comic ought to be in the 25 cent bins... you know the ones where the comics aren't even bagged or boarded and in "as in" condition. Because Rob Liefeld, that's why.
William the Bloody (hate club treasurer)
PS- With a nod and a wink and a tip o' the hat to THIS GUY.
