How To Be A Douchebag At Comic-Con

Every so often an event occurs that cracks the internet in half. Not literally of course, but sometimes things happen that you thank the heavens that you were able to witness. For those that scour the comic book world, yesterday we were treated to one of those events.

Now I'm by no means a Rob Liefeld fan, and I've brought up my issues with his art on this blog before, but what happened at Chicago Comic-Con, hit a brand new level of douchery.

The site which housed the article detailing the events is down at the moment, but what happened is a group of comic fans discovered that Rob Liefeld, the love to hate/hate to love artist who has been at it since the 90's, was present at the con.

Their plan then went into motion, ringleader "Yellow Hat Guy" approached Liefeld's table and identified himself as a big Captain America fan, and then in something almost straight out of Clerks: The Animated Series, proceeded to ask for an apology for the Heroes Reborn event. Liefeld acknowledged the dweeb and dismissed him with a "get out of here" head nod.

Spurned by the creator of a series 13 years old, YHG tracked down a copy of "How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way", wrapped it in a bag, and once again swung by Liefleds table leaving it there for him before bolting.

It's what happened in the wake of this that got people talking. After the convention was over, YHG proceeded to blog about the event and post videos of how they PWNED Liefled online. What happened on video and the way the story was told on the blog differed and the video, and it was acknowleged by Rob on his Twitter. Soon after, a choir of comic fans and comic book creators, descended upon the blog leaving comments about the level of douchebaggedness achieved during this event:

Skottie Young: How small of a man are you? Grow up and have a little class.
Cameron Stewart: I’m a professional comic artist, and I attend conventions often. Most of the time the experience I have with fans is pleasant and courteous, but there’s usually one or two who are so clueless of how to interact with people in a respectful and polite manner that it spoils the otherwise fun day. So you don’t like Rob Liefeld, big deal. His work isn’t to my tastes either but I would never dream of trying to publicly humiliate him in person. He’s taken the time and expense to come to that show to ply his trade – just as you work at your job – and interact with the people who DO appreciate his work and presence. He’s not there for you to be snide and condescending and to be the recipient of your asinine, half-witted pranks. I’m sure you got a big kick out of it (I love how you describe yourself as shaking and sweaty because you “can’t process that much awesome” instead of it being because you’re cowardly and nervous), and you probably high-fived your friends and giggled all the way home to write your smug blog report, but what you did was classless and childish. I guarantee you that this blog post is making the rounds of the pro community (another pro artist forwarded it to me, and *not* because he thought it was a hilarious prank), and thanks to your readily-identifiable yellow hat, you’ve marked yourself as someone to avoid at cons. Well done.
Pia Guerra: I’m not a fan of his work but dude, that’s fucking douchebaggery.
Mark Allen Haverty: Whether you love or hate his work, time after time Rob Liefeld has shown himself to be an incredibly engaging and generous artist to his fans. You decided you wanted to be an douchebag and insult him in front of all of them. There’s no time to do it for next month’s Wizard, but if I ever decide to pull the Top Ten Writers list to make room for a Top Ten Fanboy Assholes list, I’ll be sure to put you at No. 1. No one should ever have to apologize for a piece of artwork someone else doesn’t like. Everyone should apologize for behaviour like yours.
Jimmie Robinson: As someone who does a book both loved and hated I can relate to Rob. And to be bloody honest the fact he doesn’t get upset over “fans” like this year-after-year speaks volumes about his character. But this goes beyond Rob, because in effect Mr.-Yellow-Hat-to-be-avoided is also disrespecting the opinions of others who DO like his work and his style. I’ve met and spoken with Rob a LOT. At the Image booth we hang out all the time. He is a nice person and he has a LOT of fans. He’s always busy doing commissions for the fans, art for charity auctions, reviewing portfolios and signing his books. Let him do his job, please. Joke or not, it’s not helping comics.
Ethan Van Sciver: Congratulations. We’re all sitting ducks for this kind of stupid behavior, putting work on hold for a few days to come and sign your comics and shake your hands instead of taking a nice family vacation. So if you’d like to be horribly, childishly rude to any of us, it isn’t hard, and most of us will sit and be polite so as not to disrupt the REAL comic fan’s enjoyment of the convention. Rob Liefeld has clearly perfected one art, at least, and that’s the art of suffering fools. Next time don’t you yourself be in the photographs. You look like a twat.

As I said before, I've never been a Liefeld fan, but I'd never be a dick to him. I like Cable and Deadpool and I read X-Force when I was growing up. I lump him in with Chris Claremont as creators whom I might not like so I don't buy their work, but I can recognize what they've done both in and for comics in the scope of things.

His art style might not be to my tastes, but you can't deny that he's got a following (hence him still getting work). Rob's also one of the founding members of Image Comics, and a strong proponent for creators rights. He does free sketches for fans at conventions, and donated all of the artwork from his two issues of Teen Titans to the Sam Loeb Foundation to be auctioned off in order to raise money.

He sounds like a pretty stand up guy to me, and that's where it comes to separating the creator from the creation and being just plain disrespectful.