One of the first, and frankly, least successful jams I started in 2014 involved Porto, among the most obscure Silver Age Martian Manhunter foes. I asked Herbie Rivera to draw the character, which he did in his baseline entertainer appearance. Unfortunately, in black and white and sans any of his costumes like “The Human Fly” or “Bird-Man,” all the drawing looks like is a random dude. Further, the jam was a mess of unrelated sketches of varied perspectives, with lots of dead space. I wanted to try to better unify the total image, and I needed to better communicate “The Man of 1,000 Disguises.” I've been very impressed with Antoine Mayes' imagination on a different jam piece that he really set off, and so I handed him a copy of Showcase Presents Martian Manhunter volume 1 and let him go to town. As you can see, he didn't disappoint, supplying five additional figures in wildly varying costumes derived from Porto's sole story. I actually forgot to collect the art and the book from Mayes at the con, and then we had a few missed connections before I finally got to see my goodies again. I'm sorry for the anxiety that gave Mayes, but I do not at all regret the results that protracted time frame yielded.
There was a long delay both between the efforts of Rivera and Mayes and between initiating the commission and receiving it. I chose to make this the first new art posting since September 30, 2016 because it works so well symbolically. While it wasn't my intention, this blog went nearly a year with barely any updates, and in the meantime Photobucket ceased to offer hosting for the thousands of images that I used to illustrate this site across its now ten years in existence. Jeez, if I'd realized we'd hit a decade, I'd have gotten a post up on the first, our actual anniversary. Eh, I'm not much for pomp anyway. Point is, I'm now reclaiming this blog, slowly fixing what's been broken in my absence and returning to weekly posts. The podcast should be back on a seasonal schedule by Halloween with a special guest, and I've begun daily updates on the salvage efforts on Twitter. I appreciate your patience, and hope I can dazzle you the way Mayes dazzled me...
1 comment:
Just a tip: the Wayback Machine has a lot of the art posts saved from before Photobucket broke, so if there's some pics you don't want to/can't rescan or reupload there's a way to get around Photobucket's crap.
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