Friday, July 22, 2011

The Krypton Crawl

This year I'll be exhibiting at FanExpo for the first time ever at the Koyama Press booth (many thanks to the wonderful Annie Koyama for the space at the table).

I've worked the show a number of times for the Silver Snail who always have a super gigantic booth (which was a lot of fun - never have I gotten to sell so many big items like Lord of the Rings swords, Green Lantern power batteries, Cap shields and more). Let me tell you - people save all year and they spend a ton of dough at this show! Plus hanging with the Snail crew, talking comics and having a large space behind the table where you could move around was great too - unlike the aisles which are jam-packed! One year we even had Rosie at the booth in a playpen with Ciaran's son! A family affair for sure.

I've never had a table at the show though because I've felt that the stuff I do wouldn't go over very well at such a mainstream show - figured I'd be sitting at a corner and hearing crickets you know? I know that Kevin Boyd has been trying very hard over the past few years to showcase the diversity of comics work and talent though, and I know from friends that things have changed and indie stuff gets some decent attention now.

Special Print for FanExpo

Those of you who know me well, know that I'm a hard-core nerd. My true love are 1960s DC comics, the stranger the better - stuff like Angel and the Ape, Rainbow Batman, Legion of Super-Pets and of course Jimmy Olsen comics!

I wanted to do a special print for the show (my first ever print in fact), inspired by this love. Since I'm also a fan of Robert Goodin's Covered site (where indie artist draw their version of an old comic cover), I decided to do a crazy Jimmy Olsen cover. Believe me, there's no shortage of material to work from here. But here's the cover I picked...

This cover has it all, Jimmy playing the guitar, Supes swinging and singing. Superman too busy doing the Krypton Crawl to get to the emergency he's having so much fun! References to Elvis and the Beatles! Drawn by Curt Swan! It doesn't get much better.

Here's my version.
 Note I did make some differences:
  • I added in the DC "go-go checks". This is the checked top line, it ran across DC books for a couple of years in the 60's. I just really like it aesthetically. 
  • I took out the drummer (the cover is pretty busy already) 
  • Removed the weird banner-type thing running across the top. It looks slapped on and out of place to me.
  • I don't know what kind of instrument Jimmy is strumming on the Swan cover (in the interior he plays a regular guitar), but I wanted him to have a "real" guitar. 
  • Finally, I wanted to make the Elvis connection stronger, so posed Jimmy after this Elvis pic I found online that is just too cool.
This Elvis poster is just so neat, I'm going to have to do something just on it someday.

Please let me know your feedback, especially the colour! I was thinking of doing a blue-tone version of it as well as the red. Cost will be $20.00 or $25.00. Size is roughly14 x 18 inches.

Update: Not sure how I liked the red colour, so I tried it as well in Blue. Let me know which one you like better. I think I will do up prints in both colours! Will be limited. Probably just a run of 12 of each colour.