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Rob Liefeld Drew The First Ten Pages Of His New Deadpool Graphic Novel In Church

Published Wed, 05 Apr 2017 16:30:17 -0500

Emilie Badaboom wrote for Bleeding Cool from WonderCon.

By the title of the new graphic novel out later this year, you can surmise there is anything but bad blood between Liefeld and Marvel who joined together to publish a new Deadpool story. Liefeld livened up the crowd as the panel began; the last few fans squeezed into open seats wherever they could. Instead of focusing the panel specifically on only Bad Blood's story arc and new characters, Liefeld chose a more animated approach and gave the audience what they wanted: a brief history of how he created Deadpool and teaser photos from the comic.

Gaining steam as the audience laughed along at his high-energy antics, Liefeld's jokester personality discussed his love of Wolverine as a child and original distaste for the 'arm casters' and 'temple touchers' of the original X-Men crew. Mocking how boring they were compared to the weaponized Avengers, he incorporated weapons into his first hit Cable. Instead of focusing on the realistic guns other artists had and risking displeasure by gun experts, he created original outlandish guns that 'looked cool'. Once Cable became a success, he followed up with 3 characters hoping at least one would be a hit: Gideon, Domino, and Deadpool. Obviously, Gideon went 'the way of the dinosaurs' as Liefeld so poetically put it, and all focus has been on Deadpool and Domino since.

Deadpool, as has been discussed before, was heavily influenced by Boba Fett, Wolverine, and Spider-Man. Spider-Man's mask made drawing quick and simple compared to detailed facial expressions on Cable. Boba Fett, one of Liefeld's favorite characters from the Star Wars franchise, inspired Deadpool to be a mercenary. Wolverine was a direct influence even in the comics. Based loosely on the concept from the movie "Twins" with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito, Wolverine was 'all the positive attributes' from the Weapon X Project while Deadpool was all the negative crap.

Liefeld then segued into his role with Bad Blood. Mentioning doodling in church as a child and even as an adult, Liefeld had created the new character Thumper back in 2009 during a church service. A collection of randomized drawings, he held onto the idea of the character being influenced by Disney's innocent bunny from Bambi and pitched it to Marvel when approached to do an original graphic novel in 2015. The first 10 pages of the comic were all drawn during church.

Liefeld has never done a graphic novel before, and Marvel was excited to let him take full reign of the origin story and even bring his new 'obviously Disney-inspired' antagonist Thumper along. Liefeld treated the attendees to a few selection photos of the upcoming novel, including a few larger panels of Thumper as well as Cable and Domino. Although the story specifics were a little vague, you can see fighting between all 4 characters happen at some point during the story. Due to a mixup with emails and attachments, only a few of the 10 pages were available for early viewing.

Answering audience questions, Liefeld discussed his happiness with the Deadpool movie and displeasure with X-Men Origins: Wolverine. He also joked about how much Stan Lee loved being in a strip club for his scene in the movie as well as his tweet upsetting Russel Crowe over reading for Cable.

For more a more in-depth look into the Deadpool: Bad Blood graphic novel as well as more about Thumper's role in shaping Deadpool into the kickass 4th-wall breaking mercenary he is today, Deadpool: Bad Blood is available on May 17th.

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