MEMORY LANE #2
This week: Dr Strange, Carnage, Jubilee, Mystique, Vision, Scarlett Witch, Hulk and Invisible Woman
Yoooooooo,
We’re back with another week of process sketches, plus sketchbook pages and reference photos!
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This one's a bit longer — for the full experience (and to see the process art larger), be sure to open the post in a browser or the app.
Fantastic Four Road Trip #1
Release Date: December 2, 2020
Sometimes I have ideas that I have saved in my sketchbook for years. Sometimes they get made into fanart but a lot of the times they remain as a sketch. This idea of Invisible woman in place of the Visible Man Model Kit was one of them. I’ve had this idea written down for years and when asked to do this FF: Road Trip cover, the story fit perfectly with that idea. It was a horror story where the FF powers suddenly goes frantic and turns against them in horrifying ways. So yeah, bank your ideas.
Planet Hulk #1
Release Date: May 20, 2015
There’s something really fun about drawing the Hulk. He’s all green, bulky and massive which makes figuring out his anatomy challenging. When characters get that big, it’s easy for the poses to become stiff, so you have to put in the work to keep them dynamic.
The initial concept started with Hulk fist crashing down on Captain America. But in Planet Hulk, there are multiple Hulks, so I thought: why just one fist? A whole barrage of fists just worked. The image of multiple fists coming down on Captain America just worked.
I’m always coming up with different ideas and thinking about what kind of visuals could work on a cover. If an idea doesn’t get chosen for a particular issue, I often set it aside and save it for future covers — especially if I’m working on a full run of a series. When deadlines get tight and we need to turn in a cover quickly, it’s helpful to revisit and adapt those earlier concepts. For example, the third concept I created for Planet Hulk #1 ended up becoming the foundation for the cover of Planet Hulk #5, with some tweaks and modifications.
The Vision #7
Release Date: May 11, 2016
So this issue retells the romance between The Vision and Scarlet Witch and goes back to different events through time. I believe it revisited all of the Scarlet Witches in her different looks through their years together so I wanted to bring that all together in one cover. I added the 4 different looks of Scarlet to tell the memory lane element and I wanted her cape to be symbolic of their love mainly cuz red is symbolic to it. Her cape spread through the cover to visualize the Vision’s overwhelming feelings of love like he can’t escape it. To bring it home an extra element was added of the Vision allowing the Scarlets to phase into his heart.
I wish I had the chance to revisit that third thumbnail sketch. There was something really charming about the way the cape formed the shape of a heart — it had a sweet, whimsical quality to it. It would’ve been a perfect fit for a Valentine’s Day-themed cover. Looking back, it had a lot of potential and adds personality to the piece.
X-Men #20
Release Date: May 26, 2021
It’s been a minute but the few things I remember about this cover was researching whether Mystique was able to shape shift into anything. Like can I make her a non-living object? Or an animal? Turns out there’s a lot of debate about it on the reddits so it’s safe to say that I went for the ‘yes’ answer, in order to get my Mystique Sloth in there 😂 I’m praying for a Marvel Legends version. I mean the cover needed to be interesting and this was a good chance to have fun with these pictures. So a few rap references and some of my favorite actors were utilized and I even had my daughter draw her version of Mystique.
Lastly, I do remember researching photocopy machines to get it right and I couldn’t find the right angle for it so I remember texting my wife (who is a teacher) the sketch of the cover and to please get a snap shot of the school photocopier in that angle. She delivered! Bless her.
Jason: Mike, remember how you were obsessed with incorporating CTRL+C into a concept because that’s what Mystique’s powers were and it’s what we all use?
It would have been a cool cover to have Mystique on top of CTRL + C keys. I stand by it but the photocopier conveyed the message better.
Excalibur #1
Release Date: October 30, 2019
This was definitely a bucket list of mine. Anything X-men really, Jubilee was one of my favorite characters growing up and I’ve always had this idea lurking in my head of a Jubilee themed Bubble Gum wrapper, juggling images ofa Big League Chew or a Bazooka Joe theme.
It was an Excalibur book and seeing that Jubilee was part of that team, I was gonna make this bubble gum idea happen and make her the focus. I think what really helped was that this was a variant cover so it didn’t really have to be story centric and you can kind of just run wild with it. That’s why I love variants, it’s where a lot of my favorite ideas get approved and I can have more fun focusing on the character traits and personalities.
Check out the video in the second slide below to see some process video. Looking back at it, the original sketch was done on pencil, scanned in and I actually painted right over the pencils. It’s a process I used to do to keep the original energy of the sketch. Lots of smudge tool and textures. My process is different now but it’s cool to revisit what I did before.
CARNAGE #4
Release Date: January 27, 2016
One of Carnages coolest abilities is to shape-shift his tendrils into weapons so when coming up with ideas I thought, what if I put all the weapons I’ve seen on past books and put them together on one cover. After sketching it up, it resembled a Swiss Army knife so the idea for that happened organically like some sort of divine intervention. I just added the handle on his arm and it was done.
DR STRANGE #390
Release Date: May 23, 2018
👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀 Drawing the small details that help bring the story home are my favorite things to work on like the Cloak of Levitaion covering ghost dog’s mouth. Cloak knows what’s up when that doorbell rings.
Hope you enjoyed issue two! If you like it please let us know. We’ll be back next week with more and if you have any requests, let us know.
I love that you were able to rewind and hit us with the remix with Spidey above Strange later on with Miles! Cool to see how your concept work can strike a chord with you and stay in your creative peripheral pocket for future projects.
Random question(s) for ya: 1) your signature is a distinct identifying feature which you often hide and blend into your finished work. Can you describe how you settled on the way it looks (capital D, lower case d, am I interpreting that correctly?) and what your signature means to you, maybe even coming from a tagging background and 2) do you get excited thinking of places to hide it, and would it make you laugh to think there are times I can't find the damn thing? XD