Basement X

Liefeld announced via a series of tweets a few days ago that he is quitting DC Comics to "keep his sanity" Liefeld cited numerous last minute edits, rewrites, restrictions on what he could & couldn't write & editor pissing contests as the reasons for his departure.

Like him or hate him, this is becoming a trend at DC. The new 52 has been plagued by mismanagement, poor treatment of talent & overall frustration on the part of creators who, after having had enough, walked away very publicly after getting shafted. Ron Marz, George Perez, Chris Roberson (kinda), John Rozum, and now Liefeld.

They've even extended those reasons to being why creators have left certain books but stayed with the company, like Gail Simone leaving Firestorm. This is a particularly bad look into DC's behind the scenes. It also seems to add to the concept that this relaunch wasn't very well thought out if there are still last minute changes and restrictions a year into it. While that's a somewhat regular company practice I'm sure from time to time, it's being shoved to the forefront more for DC post-relaunch.

This is quite unfortunate, but I'm sure we've all thinking that the loss of Liefield frees up a title for a potentially better creator.

The editorial oversite seems to be huge at DC right now, and forcing many creators to quit.

Liefeld went nutso on Twitter, in a Charlie Sheen way.
Called Tom Breevort a fat ass, his editor a small dick and Scott Snyder a pretentious prick.
It was hilarious and shocking at the same time to see this unfold.

I just read some of the excerpts at CBR. While I did have respect for Liefeld calling out unfairness & difficult working conditions at DC, he crossed a line with all the personal attacks he lobbed at Snyder & Brevoort. Lot of that stuff was uncalled for, especially pasting a private message onto the public forum.

Barring something catastrophic (like all writers & artists dropping dead tomorrow, except for him), he's finished at both DC & Marvel

It's like I said on Twitter, calling out and saying there are major editorial problems is one thing. Going on a rant and badmouthing specific people, getting into Internet arguments, and yes mocking and belligerently attacking people who simply said they disagreed with what you did really goes too far. It shows an absolutely lack of professionalism in this business.

Personally, I think he should've responded to the people who disagreed with them by saying something along the lines of "That's fine if you think it's that way, but it wasn't from my experience/perspective/etc and if you weren't there you don't have the same information/understanding about what I dealt with." Instead, he called Brevoort a fatass who can't accomplish anything due to his weight and Snyder a prick for taking pride in his and his collaborator's work on a title saying they aren't important to the book at all. Personal attacks really dropped any credibility he had left for leaving that way.

In addition, I personally don't think announcing why you left a company via twitter like that is the way to go. Set up an exit interview via a comics news site and go about it like an adult, don't go Bashing on a social network site like nothing can happen to you. Hell, write a well thought out and personally edited blog if you want. But shooting from the mouth will just cause you problems.

Like I said, the whole thing just lacks a lot of professionalism to me.

Because I'm such a great guy, and an enormous gossip, here is conversation between Rob & the Universe in its (almost) entirety.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/08/25/ ... ous-prick/

Rob seems to have more than a little anger and its clearly not just directed towards editorial.

Snyder seems genuinely unsure as to who Liefeld is speaking about when Liefeld says "its Batman" and then gets further confused as to why Liefeld is acting so aggressive towards him when (in Snyder's mind) they have always supported each other.

Brevoort comes in later