True Grit

 

A few of the pages in the Venom-Deadpool WHAT IF? story I drew where inked on blueline, for whatever reason, so I had the original penciled pages still lying around.  I had played around one day and started inking one of them for shits and giggles and then set it aside.

Fast Forward a couple years and a collector contacted me, asking if this particular page was available.  I explained to him the situation and that if he was still interested, I would finish inking it.  He was, so it provided a fun motivation to jump back on it.

I found a scan of the published page out there on the interwebs.  I've posted my B&W inked page above for comparison with what appeared in the comic, for those of you interested in such things.

The colors overwhelm some of the inker's lines (not necessarily the colorist, but probably rather whoever scanned this page), but there should still be enough to illustrate how I usually have a little "grittier" approach to inking my own work vs. how someone else might approach it. 

Unfortunately, I don't know who actually inked the page for the published book.

All characters property of Marvel Entertainment, yadda, yadda...

Digitally Yours.

I see Marvel has some of the books I've worked on available in digital format now.  Pretty cool.

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Catching Up (continued)

More of the same.

Oh, one of my favorite bits: Panel above with all the villains and heroes booing in the audience. Professor X looking at Blackbolt.

Catching Up

Time for some posting!

Here are some random pages from a series of 6-page backups. "What If Venom Possessed Deadpool?" The story was sheer lunacy. Rick Remender's scripts had me grinning and snickering, wondering where he comes up with some of this stuff.

Various anecdotes/observations:
I would've liked to have had a little more time to spend on it, but such was not to be. The whole thing was going to be tight anyhow and I had a death in the family to deal with around the middle of the project. My editors were of course very understanding and while I was prepared to have to give up part of the project, they gave me leeway to do what I had to do. (I actually had two deaths before the project was complete, but I was already too stressed out to even figure out how to tell anybody when the second came along. It was near the end of the gig, so I just grit my teeth.)

By the end we were up against Marvel's big move to their new offices, which I think probably necessitated the various inkers on the last parts of the final product. I can't even imagine the logistics of editors trying to pack up and move their offices and still get their books to press. Gh.

There was a scene of Thor in a bathroom stall that got ixnayed and I had to re-draw panels to patch over. I've included one of the old panels here. I thought it was pretty funny and while irreverent, it was rather innocuous. I chuckled as I was presented with the conundrum of "How does a hero deal with his cape in the bathroom?"

All four installments were eventually collected in one book. I saw it in a bookstore recently and glanced through and noticed something about a panel that was odd. After staring for an inordinate amount of time, I realized a severed head had been erased. HA! Not sure why the change. At first I thought maybe the head thing must've been too much, but I just read a little story in the new Heroic Age tpb, where a couple villains are jostling around a severed head for a couple pages, so now I don't know.

Enough of my rambling. For your viewing pleasure, Watchers from an alternate reality, jeri curls and moustaches, and M.O.D.O.K. welded to Galactus' ass. Hoo-ah!

NOTE: Purchase print or digital version from Marvel.com.