Fans of art that isn't drawn inside panel borders will have no trouble spotting my swipe of Myron of Elutherae's "Discobolus". For the rest of you, check it out:
The commission itself was super simple -- so simple, in fact, that it kind of presented a problem. I had a blank copy of Avengers X-Sanction #1, and the order to "just draw a Captain America". Probably unfortunately, I am enough of an eggheaded Serious Comics Artist that those instructions don't get me juiced to bang out a dope superhero drawing, but instead get me worrying about how to make a single drawing of a character a million better artists have drawn even remotely interesting. I had to worry about simplicity too, since the paper that Marvel prints these blank cover variants on is pretty wretched and doesn't stand up to much working over. (I know because I did a Daredevil one of these a while back that interested parties can see on display above the counter at the world's best comic book shop.)
Anyway this thing sat on my desk blank for day after day until the "duh" moment that the Discobolus suddenly popped into my head. After that I did it in about an hour. Captain America's creator, Jack Kirby, was always drawing poses that called back to classical statuary, so I figured I might as well go right to the source. I had to mess with Myron's pose a little bit to make it work in silhouette, but in the end I think I managed to do a decent job of capturing the mix of contortion and relaxation that makes the original so enigmatic. The graphic figure-on-graphic background approach is a total swipe from Kyle Baker's awesome "Truth" covers for Marvel, which made a big impression on me as a kid. As for my "Kirby Lives" defacing of the Marvel logo... well, fucked if I'm gonna make a piece of art that advertises a company whose practices I can't even talk about without starting to hyperventilate in rage, ha ha.
So yeah, I do commissioned drawings now too, if anybody wants one.
5 comments:
that Kirby Lives thing is amazing, stealing so hard
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Awesome, dude! I wonder if you are the first artist to make de Cap/Discobolus Connection... it seems so obvious -and perfect- in restrospect.
Also, the disconnect between the minimalist elegance of your art and the infinite garishness of basically every piece of text in the cover is very very jarring. Of course, there's no way around the fugliness of those logos.
You're a pretty good artist.
I think as well as the contortion and relaxation the ilhouette also has a bit of weariness or tiredness to it. Like Steve Rogers is near the end of a battle.
The boots look nice too, his otherwise pretty sweet costume usually suffers from his crummy boots.
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