Unused EMPOWERED variant cover, with work stages (Patreon)

Ah, a tragic tale indeed, folks! 

This is my never-to-be-used variant cover from a now-defunct EMP side project, a miniseries which would've been titled Empowered and the Mask City Meltdown. Without getting into the gory details, at various points over the last few years this singularly ill-fated story was slated to be drawn by not one, not two, but three(!) different guest artists. (One of the potential artists being me, before I came to my senses.) Each time, however, we just could not get the scheduling worked out, with the doomed project getting cancelled multiple times before I finally abandoned it for good.

Anyhoo, above is my cover for what would've been the miniseries' first issue, featuring line art by me and color art by my buddy Ryan Kinnaird, who did a bang-up job with an unusual, limited-palette approach to the coloring.  Well done, Ryan!

To be honest, the cover image is wholly misleading, as the story addresses the sheer weirdness of Emp's truly bizarre, ever-changing city and isn't really about "a bajillion Emps blooming." Ah, but by this point I was midway through drawing the endless cityscapes of Empowered vol. 11, and just couldn't cope with drawing more buildings. Instead, I wound up drawing something I could handle: a whole bunch of teeny Emp silhouettes, which I found surprisingly fun to draw. 

And now, work stages! First off was a remarkably crude rough:

Then, because I seem to have lost the intermediate figure roughs, we jump ahead to the pencils:

Next up, I tacked a mockup logo onto the project, including faux credits to see how the cover elements might work together. Note that Carla Speed McNeil was not, in fact, one of the artists attached to the miniseries; I just pasted in her credit from an issue of Empowered and Sistah Spooky's High School Hell "for position only," as they say. 

Then, onward to the inks, folks!

I worked up a quick 'n' dirty color guide to accompany the inks. The idea was that only the main Emp figure would be full-color:

Plus I added a close-up guide for Emp's masked face, which proved a bit tricky:

Then guides and inks went off to Ryan, and the rest was history! Well, not exactly, as no one would ever see this variant cover... until now. Yay?

(Once again, I'll tack on the work stages on as attachments, which might be a tad redundant. Alas, I'm not yet familiar with the workings of Patreon, having not even been a Patron as yet. Ah, but I soon will be!)