The Creation of a Firestorm Cover!

THE FURY OF FIRESTORM #1 has SOLD OUT. New Printing coming.

Farmhands

Excited to announce that The Fury of Firestorm #1 has SOLD OUT and has gone back for a second printing! AND I can also announce that the series has been expanded from it’s original 6-issue format to 9-issues! I’m really happy that the book seems to have struck a chord with retailers and readers. To celebrate I thought I would share the process behind a new Firestorm cover which was pencilled by the legendary Denys Cowan and inked by me!

Denys Cowan has long been one of my favorite artists. In the 80’s and 90’s he brought a unique edge to the mainstream, especially with his work on the classic run of THE QUESTION with writer Dennis O’Neil. Denys always seemed to be pushing the boundaries of what mainstream comic art could look like with his expressive line work and sense of design. I was lucky enough to work with Denys a few years ago on our 4-issue DC Black Label series, The Question: The Deaths of Vic Sage.

When starting work on this new Firestorm series, the first thing I did was go back and look at all of the Firestorm series from the past. And, when pulling out my back issues, I was immediately struck by this cover that Denys did with Klaus Janson for Firestorm #50 in 1986. In fact, this cover sort of became the tonal touch point for my whole story.

So when my editor, Andrew Marino, and I were discussing potential variant cover artists I requested that Denys do one for the new series. A month or so later, Denys emailed me asking if I had any requests for the new cover and I mentioned his #50 cover from ‘86 as a jumping of point, but I also worked up the nerve to ask Denys if he would be open to me inking his pencils for this cover. When he said yes, it was a fanboy dream come true. I was going to ink one of my heroes!

A couple weeks ago, Denys sent over these incredible pencils…

I was beyond excited to get started inking the cover, but also, intimidated. I didn’t want to ruin Denys’ incredible work. But, the key to inking well is attacking with confidence, and, I also knew I’d be printing Denys’ pencils off as blue line art, so if I really messed up I could start over.

I mostly used a steel nib pen for the line work and a brush for the blacks..

As always, I started by inking the face and head, and was feeling good about how that turned out, which helped me relax into the rest of the cover…

And, a few hours later, I finished the inks and sent them to Denys for his blessing.

The cover was then colored by Francesco Segala who gave it a cool retro dot-pattern look…

This cover will be a variant for #4 out in July! And if you missed #1 a 2nd printing is coming soon.

I’ll be back soon with updates on Black Hammer, Absolute Flash, Minor Arcana and Mr. Oblivion.

J