FAILED-PROJECT FRIDAY: Rick Mays on DIRTY PAIR (Patreon)

Behold, some 2001 Dirty Pair character-design samples by the great Rick Mays, featuring coloring by my buddy Ryan Kinnaird!  Back in '01, Rick had just finished drawing issues of Gen13  (for Wildstorm/ DC) that I had written, so I subsequently tried to get him approved by the Japanese license-holders to draw a Dirty Pair miniseries for me.  Alas, I was never able to get any other artist than me cleared to do DP (and I tried on three different occasions), so this effort came to naught.  However, a few years later, I was able to get Rick approved to pencil the 2004 miniseries Livewires for Marvel.

Let this be a lesson to y'all, folks: Such are the consequences of working on comics that aren't fully creator-owned.  Years later, when I wised up and kicked off the creator-owned series Empowered, I was able to work with quite a few different "Guest Artists," as I was the one making the call on those choices. 

TBH, unlike the other two artists I tried to work with (more on them in future FFFs), I'm not really sure what DP story Rick would've drawn.  Ah, but we did get some fine-looking and intriguing sample art, didn't we?  (Sorry about the crappy repro quality, though; had to Photoshop these from low-res screenshots.)