If you've ever wanted to see the entirety of culture in the early 1990s captured in 35 seconds, then you could do a lot worse than to watch the famous Levi's Button Fly Jeans commercial starring Rob Liefeld, directed by Spike Lee. It's a testament to the overwhelming popularity of comics in general and Liefeld in particular during that era, but more than that, it's a snapshot of the time in pop culture.

Now, cartoonist Ed Piskor has recreated it in the form of a comic strip, depicting Rob Liefeld in the style of Rob Liefeld, and it is one of the most amazing things I have ever seen.

 

Brain Rot: The Infamous Rob Liefeld Levis Commercial by Ed Piskor
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If you don't remember the '90s (which, I'm sorry to say, you will be doomed to repeat), the idea behind this series of commercials was to promote the jeans through short interviews with people who were doing cool things, and in 1991, there was nobody cooler than the Rob. This was at the height of his popularity at Marvel, just after X-Force had debuted with sales topping five million copies. Of course, what people didn't realize at the time were that those five million copies were averaging out to about five copies each for speculators who were ruining comics forever banking on a "hot collector's item," but on the other hand, they included trading cards.

 

 

So yeah. Spike Lee doing a commercial for jeans that was actually about Rob Liefeld, in which he left in the Rob's (pretty fantastic) confusion about how to properly sell it in the last moment.

For the full comic, head over to Boingboing, and hopefully this will be the first of a series of historical comics events produced by Piskor. Once he gets through The Hip-Hop Family Tree, he could even bridge the gap between them by explaining what the heck is going on in this picture of The Rob meeting Eazy E:

 

Eazy-E (left) with Rob Liefeld (right)
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I have a lot of questions about it that can only be answered in a multi-volume illustrated biography of The Rob. Seriously, Ed Piskor: Clear your shelf for every Eisner before you start drawing that one.

UPDATE: In a moment that has justified comments section, Piskor himself has clarified a point:

"Chris, I did make a comic about Rob meeting Eazy. This Spike Lee commercial is a part of it. [...] It's's coming out with the HHFT slipcase set this holiday season."

If it wasn't already, The Hip Hop Family Tree has just become one of the most important historical documents of our time.

 

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