2012 Bel Juz Space City Con Commission by Robert Wilson IV

All-Time Awesomest Alien Atlas Art brings back the girlie show for February! As I've mentioned previously, attending Houston's first Space City Con was a last minute decision, since it looked like a pissant operation compared to Comicpalooza. That is, until guys like Art Adams and Whilce Portacio suddenly signed on, which in turn attracted other artists to attend in part simply so they themselves could meet the comics superstars. I'm hoping the organizers are smart enough to do the same thing this year, since so far, all their appearance money seems to be going toward the Seventh Doctor who got Who canceled after a quarter century on the air and the usual Autograph Whores of the Federation.

Moving forward, I didn't have a chance to research and meticulously assign characters to artists at this show. I did get to peruse the web site of Robert Wilson IV, and very much liked what I saw, so I approached him for a commission. I've forgotten his rate, but I'm confident that it was reasonable ($40-60.) Smart artists are like drug dealers, giving you a good price for that first taste to get you hooked, then raise their rates once they know you know they've got the goods. There were a lot of dummies at the con who overestimated folks' willingness to break triple digits for their stuff, and I didn't see them working as much. Wilson has a cool retro hipster vibe to his work, and when he selected the Bronze Age Martian femme fatale Bel Juz from the stack of reference I put in front of him, I approved of the match between creator and subject.

Wilson's 11" x 14" original art is at its heart what you see at the top of the post, but there's a ton of non-photographic blue pencil framework that dropped right out of the photocopy I scanned. It's kind of neat, since they include the ghost of a different hand positioning, eyelines, many more strands of hair, detailed breasts, etc. On the other hand, those inks really make the completed piece pop, and I'd say the cleaner version is superior. It was also extremely easy to reproduce and to apply my crappy MS Paint coloring. I'd be very interested to see how Wilson would have colored it himself, since my favorite thing about his work is his muted, restricted color palette, recalling old school concert posters (probably because he actually does produce such posters for current bands.) I highly recommended you check out more on his tumblr feed!