Mega Post part 2! Classics and Comics cover final artwork

So last week I told you all about a cover I recently drew for an upcoming book from Oxford University Press called Classic and Comics. The idea was that I drew several pastiches of famous superhero covers with the superheroes replaced by Olympian deities. I showed several such sketches, as well as their inspirations, but we finally went with Action Comics #1, the first appearance of Superman.



And below here we have my quickie sharpie marker sketch for my take on the cover, with Supes replaced by his inspiration, Heracles, and the various assorted random thugs replaced by various assorted random superfolk.



After we all decide that this sketch was the way to go, I penciled the image on a piece of Bristol paper. It's now a bit tighter than the sketch, and a few elements of the composition, like Herc being bigger, have been tweaked.



From there I went into the inks. This was inked with pen nibs and brush. I work from pretty loose pencils, as I like to do most of the actual drawing in ink-- keeps it fresher for me. Once again, there are a few changes at this stage-- like, where did that loose tire go? Folks thought that tire was confusing, as the car being smashed by Herc still seems to have all its wheels. I will point out, however, that is a detail from the original cover. Maybe Superman had a sidekick from Krypton who was a tire and got cut from the final story?



Finally, after I inked it, wonder-intern Evan Petersen did some color flatfills (basically tracing out shapes) for the piece in Photoshop, and then I went in and did the final color. And we're done!



Notice that the final piece has a lot of extra color space around the edges-- that's bleed room for when they print it up. I also left plenty of room for type elements, which the good folks at Oxford University Press will be handling. Hope you all enjoyed this exhaustive look at how I work!

Mega Post! Classics and Comics cover tryouts!

So a few months back I was approached by the editors of a new book coming out from Oxford University Press called Classics and Comics about doing the cover. Classics and Comics will be an exploration of the influences, both subtle and less subtle, that classical literature and myth have had on comics, something that is pretty much the whole point of a series like Olympians.

We talked about a few cover design ideas, and I came up with the idea of paying homage to some classic comic book cover designs, but replacing the modern superheroes with their Olympian forebears. Here's a gallery of some of my sketches, as well as the images that inspired them. All of the original covers are, of course, trademark and copyright their respective owners.

First up we have the cover of Superman #1, which I was pretty excited for, as I'm both a huge Superman fan and the cover itself already has a fair amount of Grecian styling (the frame surrounding Supes, for instance).



I replaced Superman with Zeus for my cover idea, and Greeked up the city a bit beneath him. Looks like the oval frame surrounding Zeus is deflating, though-- must be all that electricity.



Up next, the immortal Jack Kirby's classic cover to Avengers # 4, the reintroduction of Captain America.



Here I replaced Cap and the Avengers with Athena leading an Olympian charge. If you look closely, you can see the pencil lines indicating where other cover elements would go. I'm kind of surprised looking at this now that I didn't put Poseidon in the little box that Namor the Sub-Mariner is in on the original cover. Lost opportunity.



Giant Size X-Men number one-- the issue that replaced the old order of X-Men with the new superstar team of Wolverine, Storm, Colossus and Nightcrawler (and , sniff! Poor Thunderbird). I actually have attempted to use this cover as a base before, for my kids book Ker-Splash!, though after the publisher's sales dept. were done with it, it doesn't resemble its inspiration all that much anymore..



In my version, the old guard X-Men have been replaced by pre-Olympian deities like Kronos, a Cyclops and a Hekatonchieres (note that X-Men leader Cyclops is in the same spot as the mythological Cyclops. I'm a geek!). The all-New X-Men have been replaced by the Olympians.



I threw this one in as a lark, because I wasn't entirely sure this cover was iconic enough. It's been "homaged" like, a zillion times in comics, but I'm not sure it's old enough, has had the time to permeate the non-comics world as much as the other, much older comics have. A couple of my studiomates suggested doing this cover though, so I gave it a shot.



That being said, Justice League was one of my favorite books of all time, and it was seriously fun to draw this shot. My first feedback from the editors seemed to favor this one as well, so I was pretty pumped to try it. Ultimately, we went with a different design, one that was undoubtedly the best for the project, so I can't complain. I may do a finish of this one day just for my own amusement. Like with the X-Men cover, I tried to match some of the superheroes personalities with the god's who replaced them in my sketches-- that's why gloomy Hades become Batman, and trickster Hermes replaces the jokester Blue Beetle.



Which brings us to Action Comics # 1, the comic that started the whole superhero shebang. Probably the most iconic image of them all, and the first appearance of Superman.



My take replaces Supes with Heracles, on of Siegel and Shuster's inspirations for their character. The running thugs have become generic superpeople, scattering before the awesome might of the Glory of Hera.



This was the cover that won. Tune back later for a step-by-step look at the creation of the final piece.