The punchline is Rob Liefeld

Odradek

So I read this book once, where a kid wants to be a comic artist when he grows up, and he's invented numerous superheroes who he draws comics about. And the kid's father doesn't really get it, like, he's not abusive or anything, he just doesn't get it. Also the kid is a decent artist for his age, but he just can't figure out hands, just can't draw them well, or make them look decent.

 Anyway the kid has an uncle on his mother's side who lives in New York and makes Broadway musicals, who he really likes and looks up to.

So the uncle makes a broadway musical about a robot in a sort of Pygmalion plot, and the kid goes to see it, and loves the whole experience, but it gets savaged by a theater critic, and it closes quickly.

So a whole bunch of other stuff happens in the kid's life featuring several emotional lows and a few emotional highs, and then the uncle comes to stay with them for a while. He's kind of a wreck now, and he got a big uncontrollable dog who he named after the theater critic who savaged the play. And the kid starts working on something day and night, and then he goes to talk to his uncle about his failure, and how he shouldn't give up. And the uncle basically says that he has given up, and that the kid doesn't understand the adult world. So the kid walks away sadly, but gives his uncle a sheet of paper with a drawing on it. And the uncle looks at it, and starts crying and laughing at the same time, and he runs through the house singing a line from his musical "Thank you, thank you, thank you/for this precious, precious gift" and we see on the last page that the drawing was a wonderfully detailed portrait of a human hand.

Calica

i remember hearing that rob liefeld was well-liked by marvel/dc/whoever editorial because he was really good at meeting deadlines