HAs you can see this is a clear example of how anyone can think superficially and not understand the intentionality of work of the artist.
Let’s first hear what their points are about ROB!’s image and afterwards we will refute them.
>Oh, those pesky feet. Those pesky, tiny feet.
>First of all, Cable’s hips and thighs are comically wider than his upper body.
The detractor is complaining about two of the most common qualities in ROB!’s art. First, the tiny feet, second, hips that are bigger than the superior body. As any of our regular readers will know ROB! doesn’t let anything to chance and if these two caracteristics appear in such an evident manner is to transmit a message. Afterwards I will explain these reasons, but let’s finish before the analysis and view what conclusions our critic extracted from them.
>Secondly, he obviously drew that gun in after he drew the whole rest of Cable. Cable’s fist is sort of nebulously hovering outside of the area where I guess the hand would GO if that were an actual gun, but he isn’t actually holding it.
Now he complains about the disapearance of Cable’s hands. A complaint that would be legitimate if we didn’t blindly trust on ROB!’s artistic
skills.
>It’s just kind of tucked under his arm as though he were taking a gigantic newspaper to the john. And where’s his other hand for Christ’s sake?
I agree that the gun looks out of place and it seems to have been added after the picture was completed. I am not going to refute it but I will explain the powerfull reasons behind this strange decision.
>I think everyone needs to realize that Rob Liefeld was THE MOST POPULAR COMIC BOOK ARTIST IN THE WORLD at the time. His comics sold millions of copies. He starred in a Levi’s commercial that was ABOUT HIM. AND THIS IS WHAT HIS ART LOOKED LIKE. HE MADE MILLIONS AND MILLIONS OF DOLLARS FROM THIS YOU GUYS
In this last paragraph, as if their enmity against ROB! wasn’t clear enough, the critic in capital letters, simulating shouts of shock, he reproaches to ROB! his success. Jelousy is always bad company.
But let’s not get distracted of the goal of this post. Before explaining the tricks behind the Masterpiece let’s look at it again and analyze the action that is happening in it…
Cable is saying "Once we enter in the battlefield, you are on your own". And at his side, if the critic hadn’t viciously mutilated the Masterpiece, we would have seen the faces of his "soldiers". For those that haven’t had the benefit of reading the last arc of New Mutants and first of X-Force I will explain that they were full of simbolism, the New Mutants had always been a group of kids whose tutelage had gone from Xavier to Storm to Magneto in a erratic way
that made them some kind of eternal orphans.
It all changed with Cable’s appeareance, who took them under his care and started preparing them for the real world.
In a way, it could be said that Cable was the stability that they had ever had, simbolizing the first motherly figure for the New Mutants. This is the exact point that the people at Progressive Boing have missed because as any Art student could say the first figure found simbolizing motherhood is a tiny clay sculture called "Willendorf’s Venus"
.
Wide hips, small feet (some would say inexistent) and hands that dissapear…
Yes, I think it’s quite clear that anyone can see GENIOUS! and not understand it, but they are harming no one but themselves with their ignorance. It’s way worse when in their arrogance they think they can teach lessons to everyone.
Study art history, little boys. That way you will understand better ROB!’s work.
Some would argue that my thesis doesn’t explain the presence of the gun that had been added afterwards. But it’s safe to deduce that ROB!, in his eternal wisdom and knowing that his detractors would no doubt try to disgrace him, decided to corrupt the purity of his metaphor and introduce an element that guided the less iluminated.
The gun is used highlight Cable’s protective mother function over his offspring /soldiers. It tries to say that underneath that strong exterior Nathan Dayspring is only a mother worried over what could happen to his kids in the battlefield.
So that’s all, I hope that from now on, everytime you see an image of Cable holding a disproportionate machine gun you remember this humble explanaition and remember your own mother.
(Additional Comment by Ender.)
My most known scolars in Art Anthropology say that after a rigurous study of four years and a huge doctoral thesis he has concluded that Willendorf’s Venus and all look alike statuettes are really contraceptive methods
(Be here next week for this:
)