Captain America #39 Cover

Since it's been popping up here and there on the web after being leaked on Marvel's site, I suppose it's safe for me to go ahead and post this here.

The cover for Captain America #39 -


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Conventional Thinking

The world tour begins this April as I will be appearing at two seperate conventions in a 10 day period. First up is the Toronto Comicon April 12-13 at the Metro Toronto Convention Center, and the following weekend I'll be attending the New York Comic Con - April 18-20 at the Jacob Javits Center. This will be my first time at both of these shows and I'm looking forward to it. Stop by and say hi if you're in the area.

Rock The Vote - Captain America #38 Cover

Marvel has released some of May's solicitations and therefore revealed the purpose of the Red Skull painting from a few days ago. Here's how Marvel describes Captain America #38-

CAPTAIN AMERICA #38
Written by ED BRUBAKER
Pencils and Cover by STEVE EPTING
THE SAGA OF THE NEW CAPTAIN AMERICA CONTINUES!
Bucky Barnes never wanted to be Captain America, but he's doing his best to carry on the legacy of Steve Rogers, in his own way, while trying to save Sharon Carter from the Red Skull and his minions. But maybe he's not the only one running around in a Captain America outfit!
Part Two of "The Man Who Bought America" by the acclaimed team of Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting.
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$2.99

Ed suggested doing a cover featuring the Red Skull in the style of an old Soviet propaganda poster and this is what I came up with-


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You Say You Want A Revolution...

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Red Skull

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Portrait

Just goofing around again in Photoshop, trying to get the hang of this "painting" thing -


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One From The Vault

Back in the latter half of the 90s, I found myself working on various mini series, annuals, and one-shots as opposed to an ongoing monthly title. This left me time in my schedule to do work for Marvel's Creative Services department. These were the people who commissioned art for liscencing, coloring books, toy packages, statues, and a million other projects.

You may remember that in the 90s there was a boom of theme restaurants, like Planet Hollywood, Hard Rock cafe and a zillion others. In 1998, Marvel decided to get in on the act and opened "Marvel Mania Hollywood" on CityWalk alongside the Universal Studios theme park in the greater Los Angeles area. Creative services asked me to draw some character shots for the restaurant's menu and provided me with a template of odd shaped panels to place them in. Here's the results, inked by Scott Koblish -

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Marvel generally wanted the characters to be "on model" and provided me with current reference for some of the characters. I'm certain, for instance, that the Fin Fang Foom drawing was based on John Romita Jr.'s version. The Sinister Six illustration on the other hand, was obviously based on Ditko's versions of the characters, which I'm sure was my own decision since, as I've stated before, it was my favorite comic as a kid. Anyway, I did the drawings, sent them off, and never heard anymore about them.

Flash forward 10 years to Christmas 2007. I received The Marvel Vault as a gift. It's full of reproductions of various collectibles and little seen memorabilia from throughout Marvel's history. I didn't really get a chance to look through it too much until last week when I was sick, and guess what I found on page 169? If you said "the Marvel Mania menu", then you were obviously actually paying attention to this rambling post. Here it is, in all of it's full color glory -



The restaurant only lasted about 2 years, so I never expected to see this long forgotten art actually in print. It was a nice surprise.