With commission rates skyrocketing and my interest in paying them for corporate-owned characters plummeting, you might be surprised to see that I actually have some brand new art to show off on this blog. This piece offers remedies. Firstly, I'd still kind of like to complete a set of
Hyperclan spotlight pieces, but it especially bugged me that I hadn't gotten any of the female members. Heck,
Primaid's the second best known member. I mean, I have
an Armek because Rick Hoberg wanted to draw a mech, and
an A-Mortal because the dude sitting with Tim Vigil did good Halloween stuff. Only Primaid and
Protex were in the second big White Martian story arc and fought a member of the DC Trinity. Plus, she just looks cool, and can rarely by seen in full figure on the comics page.
The other motivator was that despite maintaining a career since the '90s on heavy-hitting properties like
The Flash,
Batgirl,
Masters of the Universe,
Raven: Daughter of Darkness,
Ghost Rider, and a mini-series of
The Demon, Pop Mhan still charges perfectly reasonable rates for high quality work. I've dug him since at least
The Impulse/Atom Double Shot in '98, plus he co-created
Spyboy with the late, great Peter David. He was also a cool guy who talked about the demands of the licensing work that he's been doing more heavily in recent years. He's work on another creator-owned project that he's developing, a sort of younger readers Hellboy, and I hope to see that come to fruition.
More Art Monday
4 comments:
This looks great. Have you had any bad experiences with ordering commissions ?
Nice! Pop Mhan is definitely an underrated artist. I lumped him in with the pseudo-manga crowd (late-‘90s Joe Mad, Humberto Ramos, Ed McGuiness, etc.) early on, but (like McGuiness) he developed his own cartoony style that was not beholden to his most obvious influence.
- Mike Loughlin
Mike, I honestly preferred his more manga influenced style, but I don't think that worked for his clients, and maybe not for the artist himself. I'm often curious about that sort of thing (I feel very similarly about Carlo Barbieri,) but I never want to be the guy who makes an artist defend their evolution. He delivered a super Primaid, so that's what counts the most for me.
Kevin, I've worked with many dozens of artists at this point, and the law of averages is that sometimes people are going to end up sucking. My instincts are better than they used to be, so I can often sniff out a probable pain in the butt, but sometimes the fanboy gets the better of you. I've also been a bad patron at times, not following through on a discussed piece, or not reacting to some pieces as well as I could have. I never dog a piece/artist in person, but a lack of enthusiastic response can be hurtful, and some posts are more effusive than other. I never stiff anyone financially though, and usually prefer to pay up front so that I'm not anyone's debt. I also have a problem with over-tipping, and paying an agreed quote in advance keeps me out of my own pocket.
I love it too. Thanks for posting this. :)
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