Liefeld on Decompression

Rob Liefeld shares his take on "decompressed stories". Segura is gonna love this:

Hush was a return to Image styled comics, the comics that invigorated a generation of fans who wanted more bang for your comic dollar. Hush was fueled by the same big, splashy action that defined and characterized the early 90's Image comics.

Batman had never been depicted in such a bold, handsomely rendered, in your face style. The issue where Batman relentlessly pounds Joker's face into the pavement was pure 90's era-guilty pleasure. As a fan, it was pure adrenaline filled excitement, the kind of action that had been missing for years on the comic book landscape. There is a segment of the populace, the comic book "inteligencia" that believes such a splashy approach to comics is strictly low brow fare.

Critics derided Hush as dumb, shallow and vapid. What I could never understand was that when Jeph Loeb wrote the same style of story for Tim Sale in Batman: Long Halloween and Dark Victory, no one griped or complained. Those comics are chock full of splashy action images of Batman, Catwoman, Penguin and Poison Ivy. I used to tell Jeph how great it would be to draw those exact same pages, I was in awe of the stories Jeph gave Tim to draw. There was no doubt in my mind that once Jim joined the Bat party that Jeph, astute as he is to calibrating his stories to his artists strengths would push the limits even further with Jim. Jeph would press the pedal to the metal and laugh all the way to Arkham Asylum.