The Big Head

A bit of unfinished business from last year: the cover art to R.E.B.E.L.S. #19. My final cover for the series.

I'd written up a lengthy blog post about it at the time, but in a spectacular techtard moment, deleted the whole thing irretrievably.

It was just too much.

I'm a fragile-spirited creative-type, I couldn't go back after that, and so it languished among my drafts. This tragic event also may or may not have contributed to the 6 month blogging hiatus. I'm not saying it did, but re-read the above carefully, and draw your own conclusions.

I'm dusting it off today though, as I've just gotten news that I'm among the 2011 Joe Shuster Award nominees. The Shusters are Canada's own comic creator awards, and I'm pretty chuffed to be recognized by them this year. More info about them and what they do here.

But wait, what has that got to do with...?

This cover is among the pieces I'm nominated for, and the only piece on their list not yet on the blog. Oh, and also? Getting the nom has given me one.

So, enough jibber-jab, this is my attempt to (sorta) re-create the post you would have read, if I didn't have fat Hungarian sausage-fingers. Ahem. This cover was different from all the others before (and since,) in that pencil never touched paper.

I did my rough digitally as per usual, but worked it a little further and blocked in some shadows.

And after an embarrassing photo-shoot in the studio bathroom, in the dark, lit only by the LED on my bike lock key, I had my reference ready to go. (Please see future Photo-ref Wednesday posts...)

And so I proceeded to skip the pencil stage entirely to lay in the blacks, straight onto the bristol (with a brush!)

And then proceed to lay in grey tones

In successive layers from dark to light

With Copic cool grey markers.

Maybe not as intricate as the original would have been, but there you have it kids!

Hawk Brains

I humbly offer up the next two R.E.B.E.L.S. covers for your perusal and (one hopes) enjoyment. These would be for #17 and #18, respectively, one featuring hawks and one featuring brain(iac)s.

I guess the argument could be made that every issue of R.E.B.E.L.S. features Brainiacs, but this one features 3 (count 'em 3!) generations of 'em.

The Thing about the Cover to R.E.B.E.L.S. 16 is...

...it's actually 3 covers.

Stay with me. It started off like this (this is what you saw if you checked out the appropriate issue of PREVIEWS):

Also, unbeknownst to you, before I started as the regular cover artist on R.E.B.E.L.S. I was commissioned to create this inventory cover:
It was kind of a test, but it never got used. (Personally, I thought it would have made a handsome cover for the first trade collection, but no one asked me because I'm not running the company yet.)

What on Maltus does this have to do with the cover to 16, you ask?
Well, at the 11th hour, approval came down from on high to put the two newest members of the R.E.B.E.L.S., who join in #16, on the cover. What's the big deal about these two?



They're Green Lanterns. And these days, the Green in Green Lanterns stands for greenbacks, or cash money, as the kids say. Also, notice the poster they're bursting through? My clever editor came up with a great way to make use of that inventory cover (the team line-up has changed enough that it's not really usable as-is) and save me a few grey hairs on the tight turnaround in the process.

Almost Forgot One

This, my friends, the cover art to R.E.B.E.L.S. #14 marks the last comic image of mine with starfish anywhere in it. Yes 14. Which comes before 15. I know, I know... see the title.

Those of you playing the Kalman-Starfish drinking game over these last few months have been getting pretty pickled, I know, especially since we counted stars of any kind for at least one month during my Captain America story.

Speaking of which, I never did post any pages from that Cap story, did I?

See how I did that? I am ninja, hear me roar. The story was called In Memoriam and ran as a back-up in Captain America #600.
In other Mighty Marvel News, I finally have script in-hand for my Mystery One-shot. The cover is done and approved, huzzah! and should be appearing in the next Previews, at which time I can finally fling back the curtain, and reveal who the star is.
Wait, star...?

Guess who's a R.E.B.E.L. now?

Above is the cover art to R.E.B.E.L.S. #15. It's notable for a couple of reasons. First off I tried a new (to me anyway) technique here. After drawing Starfire the usual way, in blue pencil and pen on bristol, and scanning the line art, which looked like this:

I printed it out again, smaller, on some nice paper and laid down the skin tones using a brush and inkwash, which looked like this:

Yeah, I flipped it at this point, thinking it worked better, but was asked to flip it back for final. Which is what you see up top, digital colors and hand painted tones married together, huzzah.

Secondly, this cover features *wait for it* the return of a signature! Or, if you're a purist about such things, the return of a name. Aren't you glad you read all the way to the bottom for that tid-bit...?

More Coverage

Thought I'd offer a peak at my next two R.E.B.E.L.S. covers. Looking at these here (along with the covers to R.E.B.E.L.S. #10 and Annual #1) I'm detecting a pattern. I seem to somehow have become Giant-Face-Guy.

How did this happen? I have a couple theories but I won't bore you with them. I do, however, pledge the following: a moratorium on enormous visages for the next few months. You heard it here first, True-believer!

Blackest Night R.E.B.E.L.L.I.O.N.

I've been so nose-to-grindstone, that one of these puppies has even come out before I got around to posting about it. Issues #10 and #11 of R.E.B.E.L.S. cross over into nerdgasm-of-the-year, Blackest Night and are extra large-sized at 30 pages each. If #10 is any indication, they also feature Andy Clarke doing some of his best work yet, and that's saying something because he is a beast. They also feature a Yellow Lantern Sinestro-Dox design by Yours Truly.

Some New Covers

In the throes of a nasty deadline crunch, so this is going to be a terse post with a bland title. Behold the cover art for R.E.B.E.L.s annual: STARRO the Conqueror, and for #9. I'm doing a 9 page chapter in the annual featuring the secret origin of STARRO!

A Peek Behind the Colors

While on the Deviantart page of the monumentally talented David Williams, I realised something. I really like looking at line art. Dave's posted the final lineart alongside every finished cover he's done (Click the link if you're curious, this is my blog...)

Sure a finished colored piece is great, but there's just something about black & white, so I'm taking a page from Dave's book and catching you up on my last bunch of covers in lineart versions.

Maybe, like me, you'll realise you like looking at lineart too.
As an added bonus, here's the lineart for my as-yet-unseen cover for STARRO: Unleashed. Color version to follow once solicitation imagery is released...

Some Props

A nice little piece about me and my R.E.B.E.L.s covers went up today over at the DCU Blog (thanks guys!) Since they've done so, I'm going to go ahead and also post my cover for R.E.B.E.L.s #8.

Glub!

Will Vril Dox meet his end in the murky waters of Gil'Dishpan? And what is this ominous, uniquely shaped shadow looming over him? Find out all that and more in R.E.B.E.L.S #7.

Bad Blogger

Yeah I'll cop.

New York Travelogue? Sorry. Kind of past it's sell-by date now though, no? Why don't we just move forward and forget all those broken promises that hurt you so?

One of the good things that happened in New York was landing the regular cover gig on DC's new sci-fi series R.E.B.E.L.s. It's kind of a Legion-ish thing, but set in the present. Perhaps you remember L.E.G.I.O.N. '89 from back in the day...?

No? How old were you again?

Anyway, here are the covers to #5 (NOT drawn by Ed Benes, as erroneously reported by Diamond... hissssssss...) and #6, out in June & July respectively.