Obi-Wanma

Yeah, his costume is basically Red Deathstroke with some Spider-Man. He will even admit as much, depending upon who asks him. His idea for the character was "Spider-Man with guns"

ytrez

I haven't heard Liefeld's argument for creator credit but, as far as comics goes, Joe Kelly wouldn't get any credit. By the time he wrote the series Deadpool was already established w/ appearances in other comics. No "creator-ship" for that. Maybe he's arguing that Nicieza shouldn't get credit since he was the writer on DP's 1st appearance. There's an argument for that too since the issue's credits say Rob did the plot and art and Nicieza did the script. I imagine Rob did all of the work he considers creating and Nicieza dropped in dialogue and captions.

I never read a Deapool comic I liked (and forgive me, because of that I gave up on the 2nd mini-series) so I don't really have skin in this game. From my perspective, Ryan Reynolds "made" Deadpool appealing to me. Without his take, I wouldn't care 1 iota about this character.

Obi-Wanma

If you like Reynolds take, you would have liked his first ongoing penned by Joe Kelly.

I know that doesn't give him creatorship, but Deadpool would not be the juggernaut that he is today without the groundwork laid by Joe Kelly. Rob Liefeld created a Merc in Red who cracks jokes.

Deadpool as a bad guy trying to do good? Joe Kelly

Deadpool with voices in his head talking to himself and breaking the 4th wall? Joe Kelly

Deadpool's relationship Weasel? Joe Kelly

Blind Al? Created by Joe Kelly

Ajax/"Francis"? Created by Joe Kelly

If Rob Liefield makes any money off of these movies, he should be sending a cut to Joe Kelly.

ytrez

Whew, those back issues are expensive. I found "Classic Deadpool" trades and they put Joe Kelly's issue number 1 in the first volume with all the crappy stuff I read & didn't like. Vol. 2 picks up w/ issue 2 through 8. I'll think about picking these up since Ed McGuinness drew them.

Joe Kelly should be getting credit (and compensation, I think) if they use characters he created. He won't get on screen credit for Deadpool but he should be getting something out of it.

Red Hood

My understanding is that Kelly has gotten the credit on-screen on the Deadpool films and some compensation too, but you don't see him front and center when they talk about the character on interviews or on TV. Liefeld is the one that had the cameo in the film and Kelly is just credited along with Nicieza and others.

Josh-da-man

Yes, with corporate comics, there are lot of creators and editors who contribute to characters over the years.

Take Wolverine, for example.

Roy Thomas tasked Len Wein with creating a Canadian character named "Wolverine." John Romita Sr designed the costume. Len Wein and Herb Trimpe wrote and drew his first appearance in The Incredible Hulk.

The character then appeared again in Giant-Sized X-Men #1, written by Wein and drawn by Dave Cockrum. Gil Kane did the cover illustration and drew Wolverine's cowl wrong. Dave Cockrum liked Kane's version better and used it in the story. Cockrum is also responsible for Wolverine's maskless appearance and unique hairstyle.

The character was further developed by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, at which point he became one of Marvel's top characters.

Red Hood

He's really petty

rocket1312

That's a pretty big accusation for Nicieza to make and it doesn't seem petty to me to react to it. Or is this old news that he's just digging up to garner sympathy in the Deadpool conversation?

Red Hood

It is old news but something that the people at Marvel felt that the Image guys did as a whole, not only Liefeld. Rob is trying to defend his position of being the only Deadpool creator by doing a smear campaign on Fabian, on the weekend that started Deadpool's 30th anniversary. It almost feels like Rob really though that he was going to be the center of attention and get sole credit for the success of Deadpool on the character's 30th anniversary, and now that he's not, he's throwing this temper tantrum online which is basically red meat to his sycophants and fire to his haters.

fujishig

I mean, he's welcome to his own opinion on why they did it plus sharing the situation that put the X-teams in. He doesn't come out and say that they had no right to do it (they absolutely did).

PhantomStranger

Almost all of Wolverine's popularity is due to the work done by Claremont/Cockrum/Byrne with a little help by Frank Miller.

Josh-da-man

I can understand why they might have felt that way. Maybe they did try to sabotage their Marvel titles. But it's hard to tell; the whole early days of Image Comics was a huge mess, where a whole new line of comics was being created and run by a bunch of artists who could barely meet deadlines, so it might have just looked that way from the Bullpen.

Can't disagree.
At this point, Liefeld is kind of a sideshow. I don't care about his work enough to hate him, and I have no interest in anything he might create in the future, but it's sort of interesting to sit back and see what he does next.

The Valeyard

I guess Rob subscribes to the Stan Lee school of thought: "I really think the guy who dreams the thing up created it."

rocket1312

I don't know. Did they have the right to purposely sabotage Marvel's line, regardless of how they may have felt they had been treated? That's seems a step too far to me. That's not too say it didn't happen. I have no idea. But either way it's still a pretty bold accusation, even if it's just an "opinion".

fujishig

I don't see it as particularly egregious, unless there's more to the story.

They had a contract with Marvel that was work for hire, they fulfilled it. They had every right to, for whatever reason, not commit. Now normally you don't do that in business because you don't want to burn bridges, but again Fabian is basically saying what he felt happened, how it affected his work, and how he felt betrayed. Does that make you or anyone else look on the Image guys differently? It doesn't to me.

And not that it makes it right but Liefeld has no problem burying people all the time.

rocket1312

If they were purposely and maliciously trying to sabotage Marvel's plans going forward, then yes, that does color my opinion of them.

fujishig

Again, they did what was prudent and didn't leak their intentions until the press release (or maybe a bit before). I think Marvel's stock dropped a bit the day of Image's announcement and it had maximum impact. I have no idea if they promised they would be on the books or what, but even if they did it on purpose to weaken what was going to be their competition, that's on Marvel for not having a backup plan (and for allegedly believing they could just replace them). I'm sure both sides have a story.

In any case it doesn't make Fabian's (nor Liefeld's) claim to creating Deadpool any less valid.

ytrez

In Rob's case, I think he has point. He was coming up with the New Mutants stories, came up with Deadpool, "wrote" and drew the issue with DP's 1st appearance, and handed the pages over to Nicieza to drop in dialogue. Can Nicieza's contribution really be considered "creating"?

In Stan's case, he told Steve Ditko to draw a comic of high schooler with spider powers and, I assume, gave him some plot points. Steve designed a character, brought it to life on the pages of the comic he drew, and turned in the pages for Stan to dialogue. Stan had an idea, Ditko gave it life. Without Ditko, Spider-Man doesn't exist as we know him. Ditko also "wrote" a lot of the subsequent ASM issues himself with little to no input from Stan without ever getting writing/story credit. So the comparison isn't apples to apples from my perspective.

I don't understand why Rob feels the need to defend his creatorship so aggressively (assuming he is). Is it being challenged in any significant way? Fans may think others deserve credit for making Deadpool a better character, and they do of course. But as Josh mentioned, other comics pros made Wolverine popular but you'll never hear any of them claiming they "created" the character.

fujishig

I haven't gone back and checked NM #98 or anything, but usually creatorship is credited on the debut of the character. If he agreed to share creator rights with Fabian way back when, I don't see why he'd complain about that now that Deadpool is way more popular.

ddrknghtrtns

Or in the case of Superman, you would have to give additional creator credits to Max / Dave Fleischer for giving him the power of flight and Wayne Boring for drawing him with a bulkier physique. Basically overtime a new artist or writer will come along and add something unique to a character's mythology.

IBJoel

My girlfriend is a photographer and just sent me a photo of a client she took and said, "Don't her hands remind you of that comic book artist who can't draw them?"

fujishig

Are the feet out of frame (or hidden behind rubble)?

IBJoel

Yes, they're under a gown

Red Hood

Just rewatched the Image Revolution doc to refresh my memory. According to the Image guys, they left Marvel on December 1991, but guys like Erik Larsen still had some issues to finish from his Spider-Man run, so he worked in the company till March of 1992. I know something must have happened that is not clear on the documentary about what was the end date for each talent at Marvel and that's what Fabian may be referencing. For example, it was pretty clear that issue 25 of Spider-Man was a filler issue, which was very rare at the time and only happened when there was a transition between artists at the last moment. It had previously happened with issue 17 of Spider-Man after McFarlane left the book and Marvel after his disagreement with how the comic code was being applied to his issue and how his panel of Shatterstar impaling Juggernaut in the eye was cut/re-worked. If Larsen had continued to do the book, issue 25 would have been a special edition book, double sized with a gimmick cover. Issue 26 became that instead.

Fabian being a writer and the workhorse of the company during that period, may have felt betrayed by the Image guys and how things were done. I know for a fact that there was animosity between Liefeld/McFarlane and the writers from that era due to who was getting credit for the success and Nicieza was part of that group that felt that Rob was getting all the credit instead of sharing it with the writers like him and Weezy Simonson. I know for a while too, McFarlane had issues on who created Venom as David Michelinie took credit for creating the idea back on Web of Spider-Man 18 and Todd said that it was his creation.

fujishig

Considering we're talking about this because Rob wants all the credit for Deadpool's creation, the writers probably had a point.