2016 Armek Commission by Rick Hoberg

I returned to comic conventions after something like a decade and started collecting commissions in 2010. I'd been daily blogging on J'Onn J'Onzz for going on three years at that point, and it seemed like a great way to visually realize the potential I saw in the non-franchise. I kept up that pace until a month after the seventh anniversary in 2014, the same year I began all those jams that took forever to finish (where applicable) and still await posting. Even though I'd pulled way back, I kept up with (on average) weekly posting for another couple years, but only bothered with seven total posts in 2017. My priorities shifted to podcasting sure, but also, I was just kind of sick of putting so much time and money into something that had made me that guy who shoehorned Martian Manhunter into conversations where he (or I) weren't wanted. I've kept my Alien Atlas art to a minimum in the COVID era, but old habits die hard, and I was still gathering a substantial body of material through at least 2017. So much of it, over such an expanse of time, that the process started to fall apart for me.

For instance, I approached Rick Hoberg at a convention. I'm pretty sure that it was in Houston, but I don't think it was Comicpalooza. Both Space City Comic Con and Amazing were still operating in town in 2016, the date on the finished piece, but it was a take-home that ultimately got to me later. For all I know, we might have first talked about it the previous year. I'd been getting 1950s-1980s characters done in modern styles, so I thought it would be fun have a comparatively recent (1996?!?) character created in the post-Image school done by a more classical Bronze Age veteran. There was an added layer of irony, because Hoberg is likely best known for his work on DC's Golden Age heroes in All-Star Squadron, but I mostly associated him with the Ultraverse's Image-adjacent team book The Strangers. I dug his clean line, and I think I gave him a choice of characters (I usually do,) with him picking the Hyperclan's robot member, Armek.

It turned out great, and I think you can tell that he had fun working on something outside what was expected from him. This poor guy probably never wants to draw another archer or old-timey mystery man again. His Armek reminds me of Geoff Senior's Death's Head, with all the armor layers and battle damage. There's another blog I could have threatened. Anyway, the same year as the art arrived, I was working on the first volume of Who's Who in Martian Manhunter, making a bunch of mistakes with it while chasing a stupid self-imposed deadline. That project was a ton of work, but I had every intention of getting back to it, and "saved" Armek for the first page of Vol II. Eight years later, I wouldn't hold your breath over that happening. So here I am, poorly serving Hoberg's efforts by sitting on them and forgetting most of the finer points behind the piece's creation. John Cassaday, twenty years Hoberg's junior, died today, and I'm still playing around with time like it's infinite. Sorry, Rick. The piece came out awesome. Thank you!