Rob Liefeld Teases David Finch Youngblood Cover

Rob Liefeld‘s Youngblood will get a pretty major aesthetic makeover when the series returns in 2017, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be occasion to see a somewhat more traditional take on the superhero team.

Such will be the case, apparently, when Batman artist David Finch turns in a variant cover for an upcoming issue of the series. Liefeld posted a sampling of the cover to Instagram…

“It made me cry. I did not expect it,” Liefeld told ComicBook.com. “I’m telling you, I opened it and I was speechless. You talk about somebody who stepped up to the plate and knocked out a homerun with ease. He made the team look SO good. I mean, you’ll see why, I was humbled when we release the cover. I’m an old man now and I got teary-eyed.”

Writing the book with Liefeld (and, really, taking point on the day-to-day from the sound of it) is Chad Bowers, who currently co-writes X-Men ’92 with Chris Sims and Deadpool with Sims and Liefeld. The art will come from Jim Towe, who landed the gig by redesigning Youngblood for fun and tagging Liefeld on social media.

The series will also reintroduce and reinvent Badrock, who will get a change in his power set in the first issue. Liefeld said that there will be an official solicitation shortly, once they have three issues in the can so that Image can solicit the book and avoid lateness.

It’s a truism in comics that nobody loves comic books more than Rob Liefeld — something else you can see on display in this interview — but what’s really unusual here is how self-depreciating he’s being. Liefeld is a controversial figure, but he’s often left in the position of defending himself and his art from attacks, especially online, so it might be a welcome surprise for some fans to see him cackling to himself when he says things like “I didn’t draw it — that’s why it’s good!”

ComicBook.com reached out to Liefeld, who provided us with some character designs from the upcoming series. You can check them out in the attached image gallery. Don’t be surprised if he and Towe share abit more on Twitter, as the creative team is all pretty excited about the announcement.

Expect more details on Youngblood 2017 as it draws closer. In the meantime, everyone from fans to the press are talking about how Rob Liefeld made a young artist’s dream come true, and Liefeld is praising the heck out of the art we haven’t seen yet.