Rob Liefeld And Careers

Rob Liefeld burst into comics working on some major Marvel projects in the late 80's/early 90's. He then transformed himself into an artist/entrepreneur as a founding member of Image comics, then still later he worked on more mega projects at Marvel like "Heroes Reborn." (As a side note, I remember seeing samples from Liefeld when we were looking for an artist for my first Dark Horse comic, "The American." They were pretty good!) Over the years Liefeld has gathered many fans and just as many haters, and in an interesting column he talks about weathering the storm...

http://robliefeldcreations.com/?p=2906

My own personal credo/philosophy re: the ebb and flow of "career" comes from a story I heard about producer Larry Gordon, whose was involved in the Timecop movie and television series (along with a few little movies like Die Hard and Predator). Gordon produced the Olivia Newton John starring movie Xanadu, which turned out to be a gigantic critical and box-office flop. At the time, Gordon would have lunch every day in the 20th Century Fox commissary. The Monday after Xanadu's collapse, at a time when no one would have blamed Gordon if he decided to hunker down in his office for a day or two, he marched into the commissary as usual. When someone asked Gordon for a comment about the Xanadu debacle, he had a one word response: "NEXT!"

Which is really all you can do. If you're lucky enough to have a career writing/producing film and television, you're (fingers-crossed) gonna have some winners and you're probably going to have some losers. Nobody sits down and actively tries to figure out how to write the world's biggest stinker, but sometimes it happens. And when it does, all you can do is try to learn from your mistakes and then forge ahead...