Marvel Comics has introduced readers to some of the most famous artists ever, including one Rob Liefeld. Rob is a creator with one of the weirdest legacies in the comic industry. He started out at DC and found his way over to the X-Men books, becoming penciler of New Mutants. He became a superstar, launched X-Force, and would become one of the founders of Image Comics. Liefeld is known for his wild creativity, but he’s also just as well-known for artistic shortcomings and his controversial takes on everything. He was the co-creator of both Cable and Deadpool, but they are just the tip of the iceberg of creators he birthed at Marvel.
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Liefeld created so many characters over his time drawing New Mutants and X-Force (he also did fill-in work on Uncanny X-Men as well, but didn’t really make any new characters there). While one can question how well-written they were, they always looked pretty cool at least. These ten Marvel mutants are the best created by Rob Liefeld who aren’t Cable or Deadpool, with several of them becoming legends.
10) Wildside
Liefeld created Stryfe (he’s not on this list because he’s terrible), his big bad villain, in New Mutants and would eventually debut his soldiers, the Mutant Libertation Front. This group had some cool characters, and Wildside was always one of the most fun of them. Liefeld liked to Wolverine-code characters, and Wildside was very much a Wolverine/Sabretooth clone. Like most Liefeld characters, he’s barely two-dimensional, but he was always a lot of fun when he showed up. He never really amounted to much, but the rule of cool buoyed him for years.
9) Forearm
Every Marvel team needs a heavy hitter, and the Mutant Liberation Front had Forearm. His mutation gave him four arms and superhuman strength and durability. Like many other MLF members, he doesn’t actually have much personality beyond evil guy, but he’s one of the select number of villains with four arms. He first debuted as shirtless giant, and Liefeld would later give him an actual costume. He was just a big mean guy who liked to punch people, and he fit Liefeld’s creative aesthetic perfectly.
8) Dragoness
Dragoness is yet another member of the Mutant Liberation Front, and is probably the coolest member of that team. Her mutant powers gave her bio-electric powers, allowing her to fire powerful energy blasts. Now, yeah, it doesn’t really make any sense that she was called “Dragoness”, but that did lead to her having an awesome costume. The scaled green bodysuit looked fantastic, set off brilliantly by her bionic wings. She’s a perfect example of Liefeld’s style over substance approach, but at least her style was pretty awesome.
7) Copycat
Copycat is a shapeshifter, and when she first appeared, she wasn’t in her normal form. She was posing as Domino, working against X-Force from the inside at the behest of Gideon. Eventually, the team would learn the truth and Domino would return. Copycat was Deadpool’s girlfriend for a long time, working with him during time as a mercenary and Wade Wilson’s early days as a hero. Her true identity was revealed in X-Force (Vol. 1) #11, and she’d go on to be used by many creators over the years.
6) Gideon
While Stryfe is usually the main villain that is associated with Liefeld, and served as his main villain during his time on X-Force, but there was another villain he was positioning as a big deal. Gideon was an External, a subgroup of mutants who were immortal, and he was all about manipulating things from behind the scenes. He set his sights on Sunspot, trying to use him to get access to the DaCosta fortune. He hired Deadpool to battle Cable and X-Force, giving him an important place in mutant history. The villain has mostly been ignored since Liefeld left Marvel the first time, but he was one of the better villains created by the artist.
5) Genesis
Cable is Liefeld’s most important creation, although he wouldn’t have as much to do with the character’s mysterious past being revealed. This is pretty common for Liefeld characters; he was good at coming up with characters that could be interesting, but never did the work himself. Genesis is perfect example of this. He’s Cable’s son Tyler from the future, and came back in time to make sure that Apocalypse controlled the world in the years to come. He posed as Mr. Tolliver, an arms dealer who worked with villain. The truth about Tolliver was revealed after Liefeld left Marvel, and he’d play a minor but important role in Wolverine’s feral years.
4) Tempo
The Mutant Liberation Front didn’t really have legs beyond Liefeld’s tenure at Marvel; they’re not the deepest villains, mostly meant to be cannon fodder. However, there was one with the potential to be something more and that was Tempo. Her powers allowed her to speed up or slow down time, and Liefeld gave her one of the simplest, and best, costumes he’s ever designed. She’d pop up numerous times over the years, most recently seen in Marauders (Vol. 2), and is a better character than she gets credit for.
3) Feral
Feral was basically Wolfsbane, who Liefeld wasn’t able to use because of her place in X-Factor in the 1991 X-Men reboot. Their personalities weren’t the same, with Feral being more of a wild character, but Liefeld seemingly wanted to draw a wolf girl. She was the Wolverine of the team, an animalistic berserker who gave readers some patented background-less Liefeld action scenes. She’s not a very deep character, and has ended up dead more than once over the years, but she’s always been a fun, but simple character.
2) Shatterstar
X-Force fielded the deadliest mutants of them all, and even among that number Shatterstar is one of the most formidable. He’s a perfect example of a Liefeld character; he was a violent man of mystery who loved to fight, with various hints dropped about him. The character would be greatly expanded upon by creators down the road, revealing that he was a warrior created in the Mojoverse and was both the son of and an ancestor of Longshot. His relationship with Rictor and pansexuality define him nowadays, but Liefeld made him into one of the greatest warriors in the mutant Marvel Universe.
1) Domino
While everyone loves Cable and Deadpool, an argument can be made that Domino is a better character than both of them. Liefeld’s version of the character was mostly Copycat, but laid the groundwork for who she would become. She was a remarkably simple character at first, a luck-powered mutant soldier who had worked with Cable for years, but she definitely made an impact on readers. She’s been a member of several incarnations of X-Force, and even had her own solo series. She’s one of the most underrated mutants ever created.
Who’s your favorite Liefeld-created mutant? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
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