Liefeld frustrates me because he makes bizarre decisions. Alright, he gets booted/quits from Image, and goes out on his own to start the unbelievably-stupidly-named Awesome Entertainment, populated with all of his Image characters. To clear up all the overlapping continuity with the other Image companies, he wisely and incredibly hires THE Alan Moore as his chief writer.
Moore proves his brilliance again by taken one of the most poorly written and planned out comic worlds and actually makes it work. He does a big ol' crossover mini-series that ties everything together, and then becomes the head writer on the two flagship titles: "Supreme" and "Youngblood".
And lo and behold, they're awesome. Especially "Supreme". Moore does it like a whole Superman parody/parable, and a reflection of the history of comics. Things are great for a year or so, Awesome iis getting hype and great reviews. But Liefeld runs out of money. He basically has enough scratch to keep ONE title going. So what does he do? Does he collapse everything into one title and keep Moore on? NO. Liefeld gives Moore the boot, and keeps the title that HE (Liefeld) was doing the art and writing chores on. Naturally, it folds after a few more months.
In terms of running his company, Lee is like the much smarter anti-Liefeld. And again, it involves Alan Moore.
Lee's Wildstorm was probably the most off-schedule of the Image companies outside of Liefeld's. And most of the titles LOOKED great, had great ideas, but ended up being really flat and dull.
So around '99, he hires Warren Ellis to write "Stormwatch". "'Watch" was always a great idea: a group of superheros that work for the UN, but it was always poorly handled. Ellis packs it full of moral ambiguity, ethical conflict and politcal intrigue. In my opinion, it became THE best superhero team comic of the 90's. It gets the hype, but doesn't sell too terribly well. Lee needs to cut titles, and unfortunately "'Watch" is one of them. But here's where Lee gets smart.
Ellis doesn't want the series to end. He was basically going to cap it off himself and end the series when it was time. Lee likes this idea and offers a compromise: Dark Horse Comics had called wanting to do yet another Aliens (Like the movies) crossover. Lee offers it to Ellis as the last Stormwatch story. Ellis jumps on it, and actually takes what would have been just another lame cash-in, and actually uses the mini-series to kill off most of the characters he had shaped into such a great time. Awesome capper. Ellis then stays with Wildstorm long enough to create the Stormwatch sequel "The Authority" (What if superheroes finally decided to do whatever they wanted to save the world and become celebrities at the same time) and Planetary (Tits 'n tights meets "X-Files").
So at about the same time, Lee basically offers to sell his imprint to DC, and stay on as editor and like a Stan Lee-type figure. All of the characters he created will become DC property, but anything created by other creators for Wildstorm before and after the sale still remain the creators' property, if they wish. Just before the sale, Lee starts another imprint within Wildstorm called "ABC Comics", which was basically 4, 5 titles written by Alan Moore. ABC makes Wildstorm hot again, DC bites, and Lee's company (Which includes as imprints ABC, Homage (With the awesome "Astro City", and Cliffhanger!) stays afloat.
So what was the point of all this? Lee...smart. And really gives a lot of talent a chance to do what they want. Liefeld...not so smart. Only really thinks of himself, and wouldn't know a good thing if it bit him in the sac.
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VP #2 for the Coalition of Angry Micks, and the best goddamn American ever.
"You can tell some lies about the good times you've had/But I've kissed your mother twice and now I'm working on your dad..."