Deadpool Creator Rob Liefeld Launches Podcast

Deadpool creator and Image Comics co-founder Rob Liefeld launched a new podcast this week, in which he talks about comics -- and if the first full episode, out today and looking at iconic comic book creators of the '70s, is any indication, it will focus less on contemporary comics or even his own career and more on the folks in the form who helped shape his artistic tastes and style. In today's episode, Liefeld talks a good deal about artists like John Byrne and Neal Adams, who helped to shape the X-Men titles that got him interested in the characters long before he created X-Force.

The podcast, called Robservations With Rob Liefeld, is available on Spotify. You can check the episode (and subscribe to the show) here. You can find it on iTunes as well, and Liefeld is likely working to get it on all the usual podcasting hotspots.

One of the names that pops up a few times on the podcast is Dave Cockrum, who helped reshape the floundering X-Men franchise with Giant Size X-Men #1, which updated the team to have an international feel and a more visually interesting cast. A few years ago, after Cockrum passed away, Liefeld bought the rights to The Futurians, a creator-owned comic from Cockrum, so that he could revive the property, while giving the Cockrum family some money at the same time.

The Futurians was a short-lived but much-loved superhero property created by Cockrum in the '80s and periodically revisited all the way up through 2010, always with either Cockrum, or Clifford Meth, or both at the helm.

"My midlife crisis was being obsessed with my Bronze Age upbringing in comics and my belief that those were the best comics that were ever made," Liefeld told ComicBook.com at the time. "And I always wanted more of The Futurians."

Liefeld began his professional comics career in 1985, working at Megaton Comics for Gary Carlson. By 1988, he had found work at DC, and was key to the success of Hawk and Dove for the publisher. It wasn't long before he headed to Marvel, where he created Deadpool, Cable, and more in the pages of New Mutants and X-Force, but that, too, would be fairly short-lived as in 1992 he would join six other big-name artists in leaving the Big Two behind to start Image Comics, where he would create properties like Youngblood and Prophet, the latter of which is in development as a feature film written by Arrow co-creator Marc Guggenheim.