What makes death matter (to immoral idiots)

Today is a better day than most to remember how odious Marvel comics were in the early 1990s.  Why so?  Because of the cavalier attitude Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane, et al. took not only to the history of the characters they inherited, but to humanity in general.  Consider the X-Force and Spiderman crossover from 1991, in which the ridiculous Liefeld creation "Cable" and the ridiculously re-purposed McFarlane Spiderman fight some Scottish terroist and the Juggernaut in the streets of New York City.  Did I write "streets"?  Because I meant backgroundless-space-Liefeld-is-too-lazy-to-draw:

That yellow back there?  It's all that remains of a building the Juggernaut just dropped on Spiderman:

What building would that be?

Can't quite tell there.  Is there maybe an establishing shot that makes it clear?  There is:

That's correct: the Juggernaut killing tens of thousand of civilians (none of whom rate important enough to appear in either comic) is the fruit of Liefeld and McFarlane's 1991 collaboration.  That Liefeld notoriously declines to even draw any background, that is, that he cares so little for where his mayhem occurs and chose to take out a Twin Tower anyway says more than I can about his apathetic morality.  Lest you think him representative of comics (or tights-and-fights comics) at large, rewind comics history back to 1985, back to when Chris Claremount and John Romita, Jr. were at the height of their creative powers.  Do their characters fight in a vacuum?

They do not.  Do their characters witness the deaths of thousands of civilians and saunter off once the villain-of-the-month has been dispatched?

They do not.  It's almost as if back in 1985 people and story matter more than explosions and disposably "cool" new characters.  Saccharine as the post-September 11th comics were, they did at least signal a return to a perspective in which human death actually mattered. 

Sadly, for mainstream comics, that was quite a big deal.

Comments

[Adam Kaiserman]

An interesting contextualizing, SEK. I'm surprised you didn't mention the 9-11 issue of Amazing Spider-Man though.

[SEK]

Truth be told, it's because I haven't read it. I'm much more conversant with pre-1996 Marvel than I am with anything recent. I should remedy that, I know, but once I went Fantagraphical, it became difficult to read (much less re-read) the works of the Image crew.

[Anderson]

I see that Liefeld didn't even know, or care, what the towers were shaped like -- not rectangular prisms, but square ones. Something else Romita managed to notice, having at least one eye and perhaps two.

[Daragh McDowell]

I actually kinda liked Civil War...

[Jonathan]

How did Leifeld ever keep a job in the industry? The man can't draw! I mean he literally can't draw things like hands a feet and any actual piece of machinery.

[Jonathan]

Jesus Christ! I just noticed this: look at Juggernaut's mouth. I have 32 teeth in my mouth. This is pretty much the human maximum. Juggernaut has about sixty. And they're all the same.

[Dan Coyle]

Liefeld's books, when they bother to show up, sell at least 20-30K.

The 9/11 issue of Spider-man is okay... up to a point. Then JMS' "Screenwriting 101" kicks in and Spider-Man encounters a little boy hiding behind a car after the towers have fallen. He says is dad is a Paramedic, "And he told me to wait here, he was going to help people, It was just a few minutes ago, and, and..."

Cut to Spider-man and the kid seeing the father's body being pulled out of the wreckage. Next panel, Spider_man holds the kid back as he screams "DADDDDDEEEEEEE!!!!" Caption: "There are no words."

Actually, i Have quite a few..

[NickS]

Very selfishly, this makes me wonder if you will eventually write anything about Wandering Star.

[Josh]

Spider-Man. Claremont.