VINTAGE ODDS & ENDS: Mainly TITANS: SPS-related material! (Patreon)

Just got around to scanning some late-90s-era odds and ends recently unearthed as I was clearing some studio space to deploy my long-neglected Cintiq.

This first one's a bit of a mystery, as it's an apparent linen-finish con sketch dealie from the late 90s, yet unsigned, undated & unsent, given that I still have the original:

Yes, that's Jamadagni & "Captain Thug" from my 1997 one-shot Titans: Scissors, Paper, Stone. "PEEL HERE," indeed!

Speaking of Titans, here's a lone straggler of a layout page from the project:

While this super-tight layout format ultimately proved to be a creative dead end and a ridiculous waste of work time for my comics work of the late-90s and early 2000s—seriously, after the subsequent stages of finished pencils and inks, that meant I was drawing the same page three g-d times—this one single time it worked out entirely to my benefit.

See, this story was originally a 38-page dealie intended to be one of DC's annuals for 1996 as part of a far-future SF-themed crossover, Legends of the Dead Earth, that ran through all the annuals for that year. However, my super-tight and fully readable layouts for the story impressed my editor, Dan Thorsland, and the DC honchos upstairs enough that they upgraded it to a Prestige Format, 48-page one-shot released in 1997. (Let's just say that getting a 10-page expansion of pagecount on a mainstream comic project is a stupendously rare—if not possibly unique—occurrence, folks.)

Immediately after Titans, I did a few one-off illos for DC before they tired of me, as I never again did any work for the company. (Gen13 doesn't count, as I lined that gig up before DC bought Wildstorm; the ill-fated Batman TV pitch I worked on for Warner Bros. Animation might count, though.)

Anyhoo, here's the very, very tight rough for a leprechaun-skewing Mister Mxyzptlk illo that was part of a collection of 3D pieces:

And finally, the rough sketch for a never-completed Y**i Dirty Pair commission; I might've posted this before, but if not, enjoy for the very first time:

Bit of the dreaded "Escher girl" torso twistiness to this pose, but I'm fairly sure this image was photoreferenced, so take that, would-be Anatomy Police! (Seriously, I can't tell you how many times I've done life drawing poses that even I would've thought were "impossible," as a certain portion of comics Twitter loves to declare.)

Gotta say that I'm tempted to redraw this old pose with my contemporary sensibilities and preferences, which I can guarantee you would make for a verrrrrry different image of Yu--nay, Lily in the variant "opera gloves, hot pants & garter belts" DP costume.

NEXT TIME ON THIS HERE PATREON: Not sure, but I'm planning to roll with every-weekday posting to finish off the month of May, so you should see something tomorrow.