You don’t have to be an author to know if you like a book or not, and to offer a critique of it.

And you don’t have to be an illustrator to know if you like a particular drawing or not, and to offer a critique of it.

Several times on this blog, I’ve drawn (get it?!) some fire for coming across as too harsh on a given artist or character or series or costume. Which is fine, that’s why they pay me the big bucks. But critique is a perfectly valid — in some ways, an invaluable — method of refining your own understanding of what you like and, more importantly, why you like it. Any art form can be appreciated (or not) at a gut level, and it’s perfectly fine to live your whole life experiencing it there and no further.

But for a subject you love, like me with comics, there’s so much more you can get out of it with a little time and effort. Which is why this week, I’m going to give YOU the chance to play critic.

I want you to go to Marvel’s site and check out the preview pages at the bottom for Rob Liefeld’s “Deadpool” issue 900. And then I want you to come back here and offer a genuine critique of the work. You don’t have to be mean, or glowing in your praise, or sycophantic, or snidely hip, or anything other than honest. I want you to look at the pages of what will surely be one of the best-selling issues of the year, and I want you to think about what you do and don’t like. Maybe you’ll focus on the panel layouts, or the overall page design. Maybe you’ll focus on the costumes or the environment, or the dialog, or the way the action flows.

Whatever it is you choose to comment on, give it some thought and give me your reaction to it. You all know my opinion of his overall “oeuvre” at this point, so there’s no surprises there, but I don’t want this to just be a bash-fest. The point is for you to take something that generates strong reactions in the viewer (which Deadpool 900 certainly should!) and to examine why you react to it the way you do. To articulate what it is you do and do not like.

Criticism gets a bad rap, because it’s awfully easy to slip from knowledgeable commentary for the purpose of enlightening your own understanding to schoolyard heckling. But it’s an important part of how we understand art, and I think it’s very much worth pursuing.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Which, given that it’s Rob Liefeld we’re talking about, is pretty much the only kind we’re going to get.

He makes it all the worse when he uses such titans of the craft as Frank Miller, and his iconic “Ronin”. But, never one to pass on a Level Five Suck Challenge, Rob went for it.

Frank Miller, “Ronin” number 1, page 32-33 (1983)

Rob Liefeld, “New Mutants” number 100, page 27-28 (1991):

Let’s pass on Shatterstar’s ridiculous outfit and prehensile pony tail and just focus on the layout, because I think this is a great example of how very small changes can have a very large impact. Take a look at the rear figure’s left hand in Miller’s panel, and note how its pinky overlaps Ronin’s shoulder. We’ve talked about the importance of overlapping lines before, and once again Liefeld demonstrates that he has no understanding of the technique at all.

By choosing to line his figure’s fingers parallel to Shatterstar’s shoulder blade instead of across it, he loses that sense of imminent, looming menace that Miller achieves. In “Ronin” you have a slavering demon killed just as he’s about to completely enclose the warrior in a crushing grip. In “New Mutants” you have a guy in a funny helmet about to give a sword-wielding wrestler a backrub.

That’s a lot of weight for one pinky to handle.

There’s more to it than that, of course. Look at how Miller’s colorist has made the fingers yellow and the face red, to reinforce that layered effect, while Liefeld has red gloves right next to a red helmet, making them blend in together even more, flattening the composition further.

Miller’s also much better with shading. Moving from lower left to upper right, the Ronin figure has his chest and abdomen in shadow, the front of his shoulder in light, the demon hand shadow, the lighted demon hand, the shadowed demon chest, the lighted demon shoulder, and then the darker background. You go dark-light-dark-light-dark-light-dark, stepping the viewer through layer after layer of shapes overlapping and reinforcing each other.

Compare that to Liefeld’s haphazard and nonsensical line work, which looks like someone let his four year old loose with a Bic pen. There’s no rhyme or reason to the placement of light and shadow, so instead of Miller’s carefully thought-out and mutually reinforcing use of line, shadow, and form, you get a big pile of disjointed and badly designed monkey feces.

Suffice it to say, the actual drawing (as opposed to the design) also blows. In the original, Ronin is using a katana, which has a hilt you can grip from any angle, making the hand placement logical. Shatterstar, on the other hand, is using a cutlass, which means he’s having to grip the actual blade in order to shove it through his enemy’s guts. Even assuming the first few inches are dull on the cutting side, that’s still not a great idea; you’d think his off hand would be on the pommel for the added thrust. But hey, Miller didn’t draw it that way, so what’s an artist to do?

Also, I find it incomprehensible that a) Shatterstar has a sword with two blades on it because WTF, this ain’t a Schick razor, and b) neither one of them line up with the actual hilt! Dude’s got two freaking blades on that thing and still he can’t line them up! I guess Liefeld was too busy that day to reach for the straightedge, despite all the time he saved letting Miller do the layout for him twelve years earlier.

I also wonder why this guy is stuffed with sawdust, judging from its explosion from the exit wound, but I don’t want to kick a guy when he’s down.

The last thing I want to point out is Liefeld’s decision to use an onomontoPOWia for the blade exiting the target. As best as I can tell it’s “SHVTHOOM”, which is just flat out stupid. On what freaking planet does a slab of metal slicing through a meaty physical body make a noise that has anything like “THOOM” in it? But worse than the content of the sound effect is its mere presence. Whereas in Miller’s layout you have a grim spectacle in classic samurai silence, a moment of extreme violence captured soundlessly and classically so the visual dominates the stage and you’re left in this great suspended moment, Liefeld stomps in like a dinosaur in combat boots and has to SHVTHOOM all over everything. It’s oafish, clumsy, cluttered, and completely unnecessary to include a sound effect there, and having to lazily jam it into that bizarre trapezoidal shape because oh no, page border! just makes it all worse.

If you’re going to swipe another, much greater artist’s work, at least do it the honor of treating it with respect and skill. Rob Liefeld has neither, and that is yet another reason why I hate his art.

(Edited to add: Actually that first image is from James Frey’s “Nomad” mini-series, here’s Steranko’s original original:)

Let’s start with the background, because Rob has taken a lot of flak over the years for his complete incompetence when it comes to setting (and rightfully so, I hasten to add). It’s doubly ironic, then, that he fumbles his chance to mimic that exact same technique from Steranko Frey — note how in the original all you have is a white gradient with yellow-highlighted action lines radiating out from Cap’s tremendous assault. You’d think Rob would be salivating at the opportunity to skip having to draw annoying background details and yet, he blows it by going the opposite way.

Frey’s and Sterenko’s lack of background lets the figures hold center stage, and their lines help accentuate the action, enhancing it by making it seem like Cap has exploded right into the middle of these guys. Contrast that with Liefeld’s plain blue line-free (for once) plane and the difference is striking.

First of all you’ve got blue, a calming color, instead of the original angry yellow. You’re trading BLAM! for HOHUM.

The absence of lines also lessens the impact of Cap’s body, removing that sense of explosion and dynamism and instead giving the impression he’s just floating serenely along on a pretty blue-sky day. Perhaps Baron Zemo (being played here by The Great Pumpkin) will even pick him some daisies.

Next let’s take a look at the arrangement of the figures surrounding our hero. Steranko and Frey have one guy getting a shield to the gut while his gun fires across Cap’s torso, making you feel like he’s really in a scrum here. Liefeld moves that figure completely behind the shield and makes him vertical, to the point where you can’t even tell if he’s getting hit or he’s just background clutter.

The other Steranko and Frey figures are all hunched over or flung into the air or grasping their heads in agony — clearly Cap has jacked these thugs UP son! Liefeld, meanwhile, has only one guy actually getting hit and the other background figures leaning in as if ready to jump on our boy. That’s much less aggressive and assertive, making you wonder if Cap’s really in control here or just passing through.

And don’t even get me started on what the hell is wrong with Cap’s crotch; I can only assume he put on Bucky’s g-string by mistake and his sausage thighs are thus slowly getting squeezed mercilessly.

Finally, I want to end with another puzzling example of Rob breaking from his usual mode and having it fall flat on him.

We all know he hates to draw feet and usually leaves them out whenever remotely plausible (or even not so plausible). And yet while Steranko Frey cuts Cap’s boot off with the panel border, Liefeld draws it in, striking a thug in the face.

What I don’t understand is, why?

First of all it’s not a very good foot, looking like something ripped off a stubby-toed dwarf and slapped onto the end of Cap’s ankle, but let’s set that aside for the moment. Visually the effect of this design decision is that it appears as if Cap’s flinging himself into the panel border and stopping there cold. The panel is a visual barrier, and when you further complicate that with a figure getting smashed into it, you end up with a guy looking like he’s just drop-kicked a wall.

In Steranko Frey’s original, Cap’s foot breaks the panel border, leading the viewer to think the action has carried all the way through and is continuing beyond where we can see. You get a very dynamic feeling, with the forced perspective of Captain America flinging himself with great force from the background, through the foreground, and on out to the side to continue the rampage, dudes flying willy-nilly all over the place and exploding lines and yellow explosions and guns and POOM! and dizZAM that rocks!

With Liefeld you’ve got Spastic Man having a seizure and kicking a wall, full stop, action over, those guys in the funny hat are about to kick his ass.

This is the opposite effect from last week, where the figure’s foot was stuck in the top of the frame. The difference is largely because Steranko has all the action zooming from left to right, and the foot breaking the panel border carries that on through. “My Face Is Being Eaten By A Starfish Man”, by contrast, had his foot jammed into the top while all the action was from top-right to bottom-left, so he looked like he was literally hung up and blowing in the wind. This layout is all about a guy jumping into and through a gang of opponents; jamming his foot into the border instead of breaking it stops the action when what is needed is to allow it to continue.

It’s the difference between copying a layout and understanding it. It’s the difference between mastering your tools and being a slave to them. It’s the difference between a true artist and a hack.

And it’s yet another reason why I hate Rob Liefeld’s art.

I don’t have a problem with him lifting the design from Byrne, but I do think this is a great example of his deficiencies as an artist. Let me run down the reasons for you.

The most obvious is the feet, which Liefeld has simply lopped off with a panel border. The problem with doing that is that it reduces the effectiveness of the layout; Byrne’s Human Torch seems to really be flying freely, whereas Liefeld’s “My Face Is Being Eaten By a Starfish” Man seems to literally be trapped by the page itself. Visually a comic book panel has power, able to not only frame the action but affect it. When your eye hits his feet cut off at the ankles intersecting that frame, your brain translates that into “trapped”. And that’s directly at odds with what this entire illustration is supposed to convey — freedom, flight, movement, dynamism. Byrne’s character looks like he’s flying into the panel, while Liefeld’s looks like he’s hanging from it.

The other problems are harder to see in color, and since the artists can’t control that, I’ve desaturated them for you so you can more easily see what I am talking about:

Look at the linework in the figures’ legs. Byrne has all the lines traveling parallel to the figure’s legs, whereas Liefeld has them cross-hatched. Partly that’s on the inker, of course, but you see the same thing in his pencils, so I think it’s probably safe to say this is something Liefeld intended. But look at what a difference it makes — visually Byrne’s lines enhance the movement of the figure, all flowing in the same direction, while Liefeld’s are completely at odds with everything else going on. The result is that your eye comes to a jarring halt there, and you have to mentally sort out the dissonance. It’s a little thing that makes a big difference.

You also see a similar dynamic at work in the background. Liefeld takes a lot of flak for his complete lack of skill at drawing anything remotely resembling a scene. But here you see why that’s important. Byrne isn’t exactly laying out the mosaic of the Taj Majal here, but the figures and the rock lines all help reinforce the flow of action. Even the angle of the background lines in Byrne’s drawing is steeper than Liefeld’s, and that matters because the steep angle reinforces the idea that this is fast, frenetic action taking place. The closer lines are to horizontal the more your brain thinks “horizon”, which we translate as flat, placid, still, and serene. Not emotions you want to invoke when you’re drawing a fire-flinging character zipping around blasting bad guys.

Finally, I want to point out the arrangement of the figures within the panel. Notice how Byrne’s Torch has his head overlapping the shoulder of the background figure at the bottom left of the panel while his rump overlaps the other guy in the upper right. That again reinforces the idea of depth, showing you that Johnny Storm is flying above the other guys. That overlapping is an important tool in the illustrator’s kit.

Which, naturally, means it’s nowhere to be found in the Liefeld panel. Look at the missed opportunity with the starfish mask touching the outline of the background character’s shoulder, but not overlapping it. The effect is much, much weaker when your lines do that — touching lines set up a tension as your mind tries to sort out which object is on top of which. Byrne drives the point home like a thunderbolt, while Liefeld’s pussyfooting around leaves the whole composition on shaky ground.

Yes, these are all fairly minor points, but the thing is, they matter! Liefeld leaves us with a much, much weaker comic book panel than Byrne’s, because all those little things add up. That’s what being a really good comic book artist is all about — knowing your craft and making use of every weapon in your arsenal to make the most effective illustrations and pages you possibly can. Liefeld, due to either laziness, haste, or incompetence — or all three — badly misses the mark even when he has the shortcut of looking at a better artist’s layout to start with.

Rob Liefeld can’t even steal right, and that’s reason number twelve why I hate his art.

This one has it all, folks, in a much subtler way than you might expect. We’ll take it from the top.

First of all, props to Rob for using cross-hatching in the background. It’s still an amorphous blob just taking up space, but at least he — or more likely, the inker — used an actual artistic technique for the rendering. Still, the use of something, anything, to take up space in the background instead of an actual scene is a big Rob Liefeld staple. This one has the advantage of a random shape and random lines that add nothing to the composition except a vague feeling that this gentleman is about to be eaten by an amoeba.

Which explains why he has an enormous sword bared and ready, up to and including the serrated edges on the top of the blade. I’m trying to figure out why you would want a sword with the rippy bits up there, and I am coming up blank. If you wanted to saw with it you’d have to either do it underhanded or the knuckle guard would get in the way. Of course a nonsensical melee weapon is also a Rob Liefeld staple so we welcome it nonetheless.

But why obsess over a sword when you’ve got grenades! Because just one weapon is never enough for Rob Liefeld, we thankfully have at least seven, hanging from a bandoleer that’s skin-tight across the chest but miraculously loose under the shoulder blade exactly where he needed something to take up space. How lucky! Or course it’s possible those grenades are not part of the other ones, and instead represent some sort of clever underarm explosive device. Because who needs deodorant when you’ve got C4, amirightfellahs?!

Somehow I’ve gotten this far without talking about the head, which is just chock-full of awesomeness. You’ve got the face frame of hair, including longer hair on the cheeks than you’d find on Rapunzel’s noggin. I’m a fairly hirsute fellow and no way in hell I can grow whiskers like that, but I reckon that’s why I write software instead of launching high explosives from my pits.

But it’s the actual face that really nails this as an authentic Liefeldian production. This one has it all folks, the skin pulled taut to the skull, the tooth-baring grin that couldn’t possibly fit on a face with actual jaws, the sullen mismatched eyes, the excessive lines, this is a veritable masterpiece of hack. Throw in the enormous noggin, cleverly concealed by the aforementioned mane of not-Wolverine hair and it just takes your breath away.

But wait, there’s more! Because when I say this drawing has the “whole package” of Liefeld hackery, I mean that literally. I rarely give this advice outside a FedEx delivery station, but check out that guy’s package. Either he’s going Mr. Greenjeans on us with the hiked-up waist line or you could fit his entire alien-like head in that space. And the cross-lines! Good lord, what’s going on in there?! “Yes, is this Marvel HQ? I think I found where Wolverine is hiding …” Maybe that’s why he looks so constipated; there’s nothing like a rabid super-hero with metal claws trying to escape from your pants to make you glad you’re armed to the teeth.

And that, my friends, is reason number 11 why I hate Rob Liefeld’s art.

My theory is that when this guy got his nose smashed in, it forced his nipples to pop out of his armor. Or, it’s really really cold. Or, he’s into that kind of “play” and couldn’t resist leaving little booby-portholes in his otherwise impregnable defense. Or Rob Liefeld couldn’t design his way out of a paper bag.

My theory, and darkest nightmare, is some combination of the last two.

I suppose, however, that if your evil armorer was so lazy he just poked some eye holes in the nearest battle-axe for your “helmet”, forgetting pesky details like a space for your nose or ears, you’ve got bigger problems than an inappropriate level of sexual discretion.

If so, you’d have company in Shatterstar, whose outfitter pawned off an old wrestling head protector as “state of the art meta-human cranial protection”:

He paid a bundle for it, too, which explains why he had to slum it with Cable’s eye-makeup guy. “Glowing is so IN right now!” he gushed.

But let’s be honest, it’s not like Rob Liefeld has all that many arrows in his costume design quiver; had he put together HeroMachine, there would only be twelve items in it, and eight of them would be thigh pouches.

(All images and characters ©Rob Liefeld and Marvel Comics.)

The beauty of the cover layout is that you can easily avoid the little niggling details that bedevil you as an artist, such as anatomical bits you can’t really draw. Which Liefeld has managed to screw up by actually including feet. In his defense, however, it’s really hard to illustrate a scene were a dozen super-powered individuals watch in horror as one of their members takes a power-dump right in front of them without including a foot or two.

It’s hard for me to figure out any other explanation for what this cover is supposed to portray; all I can come up with is perhaps this team consists of a collection of metahuman proctologists, and we’ve interrupted an exam? What’s worse is, judging by the look on the brickish fellow’s face in the upper right quadrant, the exam results are not going to be good news for our hero.

While we’re looking at that guy, notice the lovely spread of phlegmings he’s sporting. I always try to figure out if the clingy ropes of spittle festooning these wide-gaping maws spell something, like an alphabet soup of mucous in some kind of disgusting homage to Hirschfeld hiding his name in his drawings. I think in this case it’s “RAR”, which is possibly Liefeld crying out for help by saying “REPENTANT ARTIST RAVAGER” or “RESIST AVENGER REHASHES”. Or maybe it’s like a double-layered dose of screaming savagery as, denied the right to make word balloons out of inchoate screams of rage, he’s managed to embed a mighty RAAAAAARRRR! in his figure’s mouth anyway. Fight the good fight, Rob, don’t let The Man keep you down!

Of course you’re also given a number of other Liefeld staples here, unfettered by the bonds of a panel. You’ve got plenty of room, for instance, to dwell lovingly on the wicker shoulder pads; the impossibly-held sword hilts; the aforementioned ab-clenching power-squat stance; the background figure with no nose in the full face mask (seriously, how does that guy breathe?!); the spray-paint-on-boobs “t-shirt”; the lack of any sort of background setting other than a generic “space stars”; and random full figures floating about in the foreground. What the hell is that girl doing squatting there? Why is she so very tiny? And what is she standing on that makes a squat necessary?

The classic bad Rob Liefeld cover, of course, is the infamous “Floating Body Parts” Captain America joint, which I will urge you to not look at, even though I am putting it next. Look away and save yourself, I beg you!

Again you have the power-dump-squat, although this time the main figure appears to be pooping out random body parts, like the weird disembodied hand or the skull-less face, which seems oddly chipper given the alimentary odyssey it’s just been through. Indeed, the power of this intestinal expulsion is so mighty it appears to have bent Cap’s unbreakable shield, forming it into a bizarrely foreshortened and distended bowl. But the worst is how the massive strain is clearly about to make his entire upper chest explode into a mass of hemorrhaged veins. No wonder Nick Fury looks so depressed; you would too if you had to appear on a Rob Liefeld cover.

And anything that makes Colonel Fury sad gives me reason number nine that I hate Rob Liefeld’s art.

(Top image ©Rob Liefeld; bottom image © Marvel Comics.)

Witness the following one-panel, “Far Side”-style “humor” panels Liefeld produced in 2001. Be warned:

Not For The Weak.

Ponder for a moment the profound un-funniness of this cartoon. No, really — would you find this good even in middle school? Because that’s about the last time in my life I can imagine that joke being amusing.

Then there’s the art.

Why is Captain Overcompensation tilted sideways in his chair when he’s supposed to be leaning back? He’s going to fall over on his left side in a moment, which sadly will be too late to rescue this tragically lame foray into Humorland. Seriously, his left and right feet (bonus points for drawing the feet at all, of course) are not both on that desk.

And why is the shrink staring not at her appalling, boorish client who has, in a disturbing psychoreactive fit, spray-painted his enormous schlong with white latex, but rather directly out at the viewer? And why is she grinning in skull-like pleasure instead of recoiling in horror?

Finally, however much Latex Penis Guy is paying her, it’s too much, because she hasn’t taken a single note, despite the large pen, pencil, and pink sex toy on her desk.

What therapist wears a shirt and skirt like that? One who buys stainless steel counseling couches, that’s who.

This is a great example of how adding incredibly stupid jokes to bad art actually makes the art worse. It’s the magic of comics, kids!

Why is our therapist staring at her client’s ankle?
Why did our therapist buy a couch that’s ten sizes too large for any normal human, and yet ten sizes too small for her size-changing patient?
Why does our therapist own an office with eighty-foot-tall ceilings?
How has Mr. Everest managed to warp space-time in such a way that the bookshelves are getting sucked into an alternate perspective dimension?

Why is our counselor one of the undead, sitting there in the throes of advanced rigor mortis, somehow throwing her voice without opening her mouth? Or was she perhaps frozen there by Frosty the Lame-o.
Why has she wrapped all of her furniture and artwork in cellophane? Is she secretly my grandmother?

Again, what professional wears an outfit like that? Did she just stumble out of bed?
Has Thing Rip-Off Guy literally taken off his “rocks” and dropped them on the floor, thus explaining the look of horror on her face?
Why is his mouth on the side of his face?

The only force in the universe that can compete with the suckiness of Liefeld’s art is the suckiness of his writing. Add “humor” to the mix and you’ve managed to tear the space-time continuum itself, pulling the entire universe into an alternate reality where work like this makes millions of dollars and sets an entire beloved industry back to elementary school-level garbage.

And that is reason number eight I hate Rob Liefeld’s art.

(Images and characters © Ripley, Inc. and Rob Liefeld.)

We all know by now that he can’t draw feet. So when it comes to drawing women’s feet, well, it’s like a perfect storm of suckage:

When all of your reference photos come from magazine pages you have to open sideways, perforce all of your models will be in high heels. Which is a problem when you suddenly have to draw women who are shoeless, because then everyone looks like they’re standing on their tiptoes. Assuming you bothered to draw their toes. Go ahead and wish for the Moon while you’re at it, kid. I particularly love the back foot of the woman at the back of the panel. It’s like he got that far and just gave up. “Screw it, throw a squiggly lump in there, who the hell ever looks at their feet anyway?” Awesome.

Moving up the body, you quickly realize that the rest of the leg is no better. Combine that with the laziness factor we’ve discussed before, and if you make millions of dollars turning out page after turgid page of comics illustration, you come up with a brilliant solution: Just draw one leg instead of two!

Look at the woman in purple and count her lower extremities. Remove your shoes and socks if that helps and please, show your work.

Continuing upwards, we come to the worst problem area of all, the waist. I have to wonder if Rob Liefeld studied anatomy at the Marquis de Sade School of Art and Torture, because the female body just doesn’t work the way he thinks it does if the woman in question is still alive:

Seriously, what the hell? That woman’s torso has been severed, crushed in a vise, and then reattached at a Pythagoreanly impossible angle. Which is an insult not just to me, who hardly counts, but to Pythagoras, and you don’t want to mess with that dude. He invented the hypotenuse, Jack, that crap will mess you up! My only theory is that this thong-abusing leather-busted woman with a deranged attachment to pouch belts is some bastard child of The Wasp, inheriting both her waist and (sadly) her fashion sense.

But the problems, sadly, don’t stop with the waist. Oh no. Once you get past that, you’ve got your torsos to deal with. If you can’t simply pinch them off, and your reference photo for the torso is from a different angle from your butt-shot photo, just rip off her top half and slap it on any old way because hey, we’ve got product to produce here, chumps, we don’t have time for your fancy-schmancy ivory tower liberal notions of vectors and muscles and crap:

I don’t blame her for going “Unh”, you would too if you were getting torn in two.

Finally I’ve selected one illustration that I think pretty much sums up Reason Number Seven. Mind you, this is not some carefully cherry-picked and cropped image I took from early in his career, before the millions of dollars and the smoldering wreckage of the comics industry were part of his past. Oh no, this is a cover drawing, which you would think would be right in Liefeld’s wheelhouse, seeing as how you don’t have to mess with backgrounds or perspective or any of that annoying crap. Just pure, undiluted drawitude here, people, and see what you get:

Look at that Tom Strong rip-off woman floating in front there. Start with her pointed toeless foot (because naturally the other one’s hidden), past the elongated tubular legs and thighs, past the shapeless curve of a hip, past the truly bizarre belly bowl, over the purely made-up “musculature” of the abdomen, over the obnoxiously large breasts, and their magic super-cling shirt fabric, and say it with me:

“This is reason number seven I hate Rob Liefeld’s artwork.”

But if you’re Rob Liefeld, you just draw each figure as if it were in a stand-along pinup and say to hell with making them relate, as you can see here:

Start at the top, and mentally draw a line from the point of Goth Girl’s gun muzzle to the to the couple. For this exercise you’ll have to pretend that the hand is holding the gun, instead of how it’s drawn here. Because if that hand were actually holding that gun, the muzzle would be pointed way off into the sky.

But I digress.

Drawing that imaginary line, clearly she’s not going to be shooting those two people, which makes you wonder why a) they’re cowering in fear, since they’re in absolutely no danger and b) why he’s copping a feel in a supposedly life-threatening situation. “Oh my god, she’s going to shoot one of us! I better feel Becky up while I’ve got the chance!!” Still, none of the four figures here look as if they were drawn together, they all look like they exist in their own separate little world.

So we move to the next panel down, where Robin has chucked a Batarang (Robinrang?) through her hand. Robin, of course, doesn’t look like he actually threw the weapon, because he’s suddenly five feet in the air and laid out horizontally, both arms straight out in front. Typically when throwing a boomerang-like contrivance, you’d end up with one arm across the body and the other behind you. But then again, you wouldn’t be magically levitating, either. Thus the Robin figure in panel two isn’t really related to the Robin figure in panel one, since the action matches neither his former position nor the current result. You also have to wonder how his Robinrang made it through the gun handle to slice her palm, since her hand was facing away from him.

Moving on, suddenly we’ve got pinups of two other sets of figures presumably duking it out elsewhere on the rooftop. Look how long Cyborg’s thighs have to be stretched to make his shoulders come up to where the woman’s hands are. For this layout to work she’d have to be about four feet tall and he’d have to have the femurs of a giraffe. It’s honestly like they were each drawn separately, then fudged to fit in the same panel.

Which is at least better than the second to last scene, where Wonder Girl appears to be flinging the large screaming fellow by holding his kneecap in one hand and his right testicle in the other. I guess I’d scream too in that situation. She looks like she’s about ten feet behind the guy she’s supposedly holding; I know he’s way bigger than she is, but her positioning just isn’t right relative to where he is. You wouldn’t hold someone that way to throw them, and it looks really awkward. Furthermore you presume she’s flying but the way her foot overlays the rooftop makes it look like she’s just slipped off it, which is weird given how small the Cyborg-frying duo is in the background.

Finally you’re left with Goth Girl delivering a flying kick to Robin on top of the largest water tower I’ve ever seen. How did they get there? What happened after Robin threw the Robinrang and hovered? Wouldn’t they have been right next to each other in melee combat after that jump, in which case how did she get far enough away to leap at him? Or in the intervening two panels did we miss a whole bunch of back-and-forth fisticuffs?

You never get the sense that all of this action is taking place in the same place between the panels, and you never get the sense that the actors are all sharing the same space within the panels. Good comics clearly establish a setting, and then lets their characters inhabit it. This page fails at both ends of that essential task, with no one having any relation to either their setting or each other.

And that’s reason number six I hate Rob Liefeld’s art.