From: dgaxiola@athena.mit.edu (David G Gaxiola)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics
Subject: Re: Youngblood
Date: 17 Apr 92 16:40:08 GMT
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

In article <poole.703521843@eugene>, poole@convex.com (Ricky Poole) writes:
|> 
|> Having this stupid collector mentality that I have I bought it because
|> of the "firsts" aspects of the thing and planned to buy it from day
|> one. Additionally I was curious as to how much Liefield could or would
|> improve given the time and freedom he had with the book.
|> 
|> I was very disappointed and not surprised. Here's why.
|> 
.
.  <reasons why deleted for space>
.
|> 
|> My question is what is it about this guy (Liefield) that makes him so
|> popular and that would attract a company to hype him so much?
|> 
|> Given the time, effort, money and hype put into this book why didn't
|> Liefield do a better job? Surely and increase in his efforts and time
|> spent on the book could have rectified some of the problems with the
|> comic. I had read somewhere that "Youngblood" is really something
|> Liefield had done before his work at Marvel or DC. If so, why publish
|> such an early effort without a better reworking of it?
|> 
|> Sometimes he draws a good poster panel. Sometimes his action and poses
|> display a high energy look. I think with some real constuctive
|> feedback and some real art training he could be a good comic book artist.
|> 
|> Other observations out there?
|> 
|> Regards,
|> 
|> Rick

I'd think that alot just has to do with the mentality of today's world.  I would
guess a lot of kids out there just go for that kind of big muscle, underdeveloped
brain comic book.  The idea of super muscle bound heroes repeating the same kind
of lines over and over must appeal to them.  Of course I figure that a lot of
issues will be sold for the same "first-issue" reason as I did.  If it was just
any other comic by a lesser known artist, I would've probably passed it up.  Of
course I'll be more descriminating in the future, simply because I don't have the
money to spend on tired retreads of plots by other writers.

As I see it, the worst thing about the issue was the plot.  Minimal dialog, I can
handle, but blatant character introductions of one line introductions made
by each character was too much.  -- "Vogue" making some comment about how others
can wait for her, the psyco-pathic killer, the "combat" orientation of "Combat" 
the group and so forth...-- Furthermore, having an attack against some Middle East
leader has been so overworked the past several months... I think he could've come
up with some more interesting location and something other than big heroes fight
big enemies as the Away Team plot.  The Home Team plot might have promise with a
assassination sub-plot on "Shaft" but only time will tell.

Well, we'll see how the other Marvel break-aways are when Spawn comes out...



					--David


+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
    David G. Gaxiola           |       oo     Smile and don't panic,
    dgaxiola@athena.mit.edu    |      \__/    even when you go where
                               |              angels fear to tread.
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