Making a Marvel Comic book Cover

Wolverine Costume Variant cover for Marvel. A few months back Marvel asked me if I was interested in doing another variant cover for them. I did an Iron Man one before and I was looking for another shot at a cover. What's that you say? It would feature Wolverine? WOULD I?!

They were planning on doing a set of covers to feature the life and times of our favorite adamantium enhanced mutant. I immediately zeroed in on the Patch persona. Why? I had not read those stories that was set in Madripoor so I had no attachment to it. What did it was the look. I am a big fan of the paperback covers of Robert McGinnis and Mitchell Hooks. This was a chance to try my hand at it.

A quick round of thumbnails first. I find that I solve big design problems right off that way. Once I had the ideas narrowed down I test it again in color. These thumbnails are about an inch wide. It keeps me from noodling. I did two versions though I thought I liked the first one already. I just had to make sure that I'd be happy to do either version regardless. Marvel liked the one I wanted. Yeah! That starts another round of prep and solving design problems. That's for the next post.


I mocked up the image against a Wolverine banner just to see what clearance I needed for the banner, whatever book the cover might appear in. Marvel didn't know at the time. Now we know It's for Uncanny X-men #7. Lucky! Love that book.

Wild West Iron Man: A variant cover

I snapped an iPhone pic of the work in progress on my cintiq. Pencil illustration finished off in Photoshop.

Outlaw Metal. Joe Quesada and I almost worked on an feature a long time ago but it was not meant to be. Flash forward to Marvel being part of Disney and I get the call from Joe asking if I would be interested in doing an Iron Man cover. How fast could I say, "YES!"without tripping over myself? I mean, ol' Shell-head was THE very first super hero I ever drew as a kid (hey, no human features to stumble over like eyes, ears and such). And I am still a huge Iron Man fan (though don't ask me what happened to Tony in the last decade or so. Love the Gene Colan and Don Heck illustrated ones). So, not only, yeah, but HECK YEAH!

Those of you who are old enough can see the homage right away. Yup, "Wild Wild West" was a TV show I grew up with and loved the characters. Sure, it's silly but the opening titles looked awesome. Like an animated comic book page. They did their titles right back then.

I wanted to show the mask as it might be fashioned with the tools of the time, rivets and screws, so I needed the head to be big. It made for a more movie poster approach for the design.



If you like to see more check out Bill Presing's WWII Iron Man. It is a study in grace and metal. Check out his post in Daily Peril, his blog. My cover will be a variant for Invincible Iron Man #27, goes on sale June 9. Bill Presing's variant for Iron Man: Legacy #3 hits stores on June 23.

Marvel Sneak Peek