LAYOUTS FROM AN OLD SF-ADJACENT PROJECT: Chapter 1, pt.1! (Patreon)

So, yeahp, the time has come at last: I'm kicking off serialization of my insanely tight layout pages for the 2005 Marvel miniseries Iron Man: Hypervelocity, the first issue of which I wrote and laid out long before an artist had been chosen;  of course, the great Brian Denham wound up tackling the art for the project, but I had already rolled with these time-consuming roughs out of, I dunno, sheer perfectionism and unhinged micro-managing. 

Either that, or these layouts represented the sum total of artwork I actually wanted to produce for this project. As I've noted here before, cranking out finished artwork is the bane of my g-d existence as an artist; I like (or even occasionally love) drawing loose, relatively spontaneous comic pages like this, but bog down toute suite upon having to painstakingly render my usual tight and precise completed artwork.

Even though we're coming up on the 20th anniversary of Hypervelocity's creation, I am loath to publicly acknowledge to non-Patrons that I'm serializing these layouts here, hence the "Old SF-Adjacent Project" monicker; if any Patrons have a better idea for an ambiguous nickname for this recurring feature, feel free to sing out in the comments. 

Anyhoo, the image gallery above begins with a few preliminary images before the actual layouts kick off. First off, my approved rough for Hypervelocity #1's cover illo, featuring the final Iron Man armor design that won't actually be appearing in the earliest layouts (as I hadn't yet worked up those finalized designs):

...and an earlier rough, which I wound up repurposing for issue #6's cover:

Here's a collage of my earliest sketches for the Hypervelocity armor:

...and a slightly more finished design:

Anyhoo, this slightly ambiguous, "work-in-progress" design is what you'll see in the first few pages of issue #1, starting here:

For reference, I bought a nice, (very) big, expensive coffee table book on the F/A-18 Super Hornet, which I passed along to Brian once he started work on the miniseries months later.

BTW, I drew these layouts using Fine and Extra-Fine Sharpies along with, ehh, probably 3B 2mm pencil leads for shading (and the unseen initial underdrawing, which I didn't record).

Yeah, fully dialogued and lettered layouts; not the most cost-effective use of my g-d time, to put it mildly.

Note that this scene predates the first Iron Man movie by three years; alas, poor, ill-fated Hypervelocity had the misfortune to debut before IM's cinematic renaissance, and was a fairly grisly failure in the ol' sales department. (Didn't sell quite as badly as Livewires, though.)

Anyhoo, future installments will probably cover 4-6 pages of layouts at a time; I decided to break here for narrative clarity, okay?

NEXT TIME ON THIS HERE PATREON: No idea, TBH, but something should be coming up in the next M/W/F slot. Let's find out together, shall we?