Archie Comics has named a replacement for Rob Liefeld for the scripting of The Mighty Crusaders: The Shield series, which has also been turned into a one-shot instead of a miniseries following Liefeld's departure.
David Gallaher (Only Living Girl, High Moon) will now be scripting the issue over Liefeld's finished pages. Jack Morelli will remain the letterer on the comic book.
Liefeld notably left the project after a retail variant cover for the series was released that spoiled a major plot twist from the series. As Liefeld noted at the time, "When the key plot point/element is revealed on a retail variant cover - it’s probably time to exit the stage on this one.... like seriously?" Liefeld later updated the post to reveal what Archie Comics had told him after finding out about the cover's release, "UPDATE - Archie informed me they did not grant permission for this to be posted and shared, much less tagged to my page. Anyway, it would have been great, but this was kind of the back breaker. Really dumb. It was fun while it lasted... on to the next!"
Liefeld has complained before about retail variant covers, as he feels that comic book companies are having to turn to retail variants more and more for needed cash influxes on series and in turn, those retailers are trying to stand out from each other by having big things happen on their variant covers (like being able to say "First appearance of Character X") even if, like here, it spoils a plot twist.
In a later post, Liefeld noted that a similar situation had occurred at IDW on his recent Snake-Eyes miniseries, but he was able to squelch that one, "About 9 months back, while I was drawing the 2nd issue of my Snake Eyes: Deadgame mini series for IDW, my editor called me up, John Barber, love the guy, he says 'Hey, we have a couple retailers who are asking us if they can use any of the New characters or story reveals on the retail variants they are crafting, I know the answer is likely “no” but I figured I’d ask anyways.' I said, I hadn’t introduced these characters yet and I damn well don’t want them premiering outside of my introducing them in the story. He said, 'Yup, that’s what I thought, just wanted to check' and it wasn’t an issue."
With Liefeld off of the project, the miniseries was no longer going to happen, but since Liefeld had already done the art for the first issue, Archie brought in Gallaher to come up with a script for what will now be a one-shot comic book.
Source: Archie Comics