Cover me softly
There was a period of my life when I would be asked to do variant covers for comic books. This period of my life is seemingly now over. But some of the covers were fun and I had forgotten about them.
Below is one of my favourite covers I've ever done. It was for a 2017 "loot crate" variant of some kind. The comics were printed but the company went bust, making this a very very rare cover. I sold a few of my comps but when exposed to the grisly personalities of the R&M collectors who wanted them, grew enraged, and cut the remainder half with my guillotine. The artwork was reused for a different comic. The loot box ones I cut up, I have seen sold online for upwards of $500. No regrets.
Anyway, it's R-Type, yeah?
In 2018, Boom had me sit and sign next to Kiwi Smith, who wrote "Legally Blonde" among other gilded properties. Brewing up for star names! Kiwi wrote a comic series for Boom called 'Misfit City' and thanks to my good manners, I was asked to do a cover for it. I can't remember a lot about the series, but it was spooky. I think I was drawing the cover off the basis of some character designs, a synopsis, and a few pages of script. So I had no sense of the characters at all and had seen a maximum of two drawings of each of them. This is not unusual, but I did feel a bit out at sea.
Here's a cover that for some reason Marvel let me do for Squirrel Girl in 2017. While drawing this I learned that the Squirrel Girl logo was designed by Mike Allred, because his name was on the logo's filename. Incredible insights.
There are more covers lurking in my back pages, covers for things I don't know anything about, but that I did my best with regardless. I did a cover for a Regular Show comic by KC Green.
This is the last one I did, in 2021, before the phone stopped ringing (perhaps I had said that I thought variant covers were "unnecessary" one time too many) and I was proud that in my last gasp, I did a Transformers cover, as the first comic I ever drew was a Transformers comic (I drew it on the backs of old Kleenex boxes).
I think the connecting theme of all these covers is that I was outside my comfort zone, but I tried. At worst, I fell down, got up, and finished fourth.
Comments (11)
That Rick and Morty is incredible
Looking at your Squirrel Girl cover I feel like you would have fit well into that brief marvel era where they were doing some more off-model books like Squirrel Girl (or Kate Leth's Hellcat, Charles Soule's She Hulk, or even Chelsea Cain's Mockingbird). It's sad that didn't last longer as they don't seem to do that anymore and I think it would have been cool to have a John Allison run in there.
I enjoyed those books too (particularly Charles Soule and Javier Pulido on She-Hulk), but by the time I was being asked to write at Marvel, the experiment was over and they seemed to be doubling down on appealing to hardcore fans.
Squirrel Girl looks great in your style! I'm trying to name the Defeated Foes, but my knowledge of obscure Marvel villains is woefully lacking and I think the only one I can pinpoint with certainty is Taskmaster.
I see Moleman; Doreen's less-ethical clone, Aileen; the guy who could make smaller copies of himself; a couple probable Skrulls; and I guess the guy who was composed of bees — all of whom made appearances during Ryan North's writing run. I'm kicking myself for not recognizing the others, because I *loved* USG while it lasted.
Always interesting to see you officially tackle other properties
That’s a mean Rodimus Prime.
I actually really dig that Transformers cover. I remember really enjoying the autobots (or was that "autobots" :winkwinknudgenudge:, it's been a few years since I looked) showing up in Scary Go Round
Regular Show guy skipped one too many leg days. Looks like Chipmonk Girl is most bitter of them all.
Who else remembers that Blogspot blog, Covered? Where artists would make their own version of classic comic covers? it was great. Here’s the remains: http://coveredblog.blogspot.com/?m=1
I'd completely forgotten this - great! Thanks for the link.