Earlier today, I finally posted to the “JessicaDrewtheSpider-Woman” Yahoo Group my old page of homegrown comic art, from 1986, which was an exercise whereby I took the script from a page of West Coast Avengers vol.2 #12, and redrew the page myself. This was posted in response to artist, and picture this!-member Tom Burgos’s request to view it, based on his having done a pic of the villainess Half-Life, who had appeared in that comic for the first time. (Well, maybe #10, but anyway…)

I decided to draw Tom a new version of Half-Life, as I illustrate today, and while I’ve given it to him privately, I’m posting it here as well for you to see, in case you might be interested. Sadly, no Spider-Woman in this pic. But my all-time favorite character, Iron Man, is involved!

Anyway, enjoy the pic, and thanks again to Tom for expressing such interest in my work, and reminding me about this character in the first place!

Also, below, find the original page, 19 years ago! Too bad I haven’t gotten much better. Hahahahahahaha…..

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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This piece was done to commemorate the release of Chris Nolan’s Batman Begins. It accompanies the dual-reviews we’ve done for the R3 Forum, which you can read here:

http://www.thirdraildesignlab.com/forum … php?t=1320

I managed to convey, somewhat unintentionally, some of the remaining stiffness in this incarnation of the suit, though it’s far better than the previous versions. There’s also the difficulty of translating to comic art from film, a costume translated from comic art FOR film. But overall, I think it worked out OK. Again, I didn’t go to town trying to capture Katie Holmes’ likeness, but more my mental impression of her Rachel Dawes character. Dig those rockin urban chic boots! Anyway, hope you like this piece, and if you feel like some suspiciously dense bedtime reading, go check out the reviews and add your comments!

View the full illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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This was done for the This Week Jam…

Character: Marrow, originally a Morlock, sort of a next-gen version of Callisto, originally hideous, then cleaned up a bit but still a tough nut by the time she joined the X-Men. This is how she originally looked:

Then this is how she was done in X-Men:

You see, they vastly reduced her grotesque physical appearance, so at this point, she was comic hottie with massive bone growths everywhere. During her X-Men days, she was a direct metaphor for teen hormonal insecurity, you know, the pretty, passionate, insecure teenager with massive acne or whatever, struggling to find her self-identity in a severe social system. Now, eventually the vetted the character from the X-Men, and she languished before being used in the Weapon-X comic where… you guessed it… someone instantly cured her of her horrible bone growth problems, giving her the ability to grow them at will, but where, and when, she wanted. Suddenly, she’s an assassin in the Black Widow vein.

I’m not a reader of Weapon-X. I don’t particularly like when a more complex or challenging character is simplified and prettied up just to be more aesthetically pleasing and to market to a different target audience. I think that’s the reason to, you know, invent a new character.

That said, I can’t draw Marrow anymore. I had a curious commission about a year and a half ago, where the client asked me to do a series of Marrow pics. I have nothing against drawing her, and it was a fine, if strange, commission in the end, but it just really burned me out on the traditional X-Men version of the character. One can only draw bony, unattractive angry girls so much. The client was mildly disappointed that I didn’t make her pretty enough, though the agreement early on had been that the character was intended originally to be hideous, as evidenced by her earliest appearances, then revamped to be otherwise pretty, but marred by the bone protrusions, frequently in the face (hello, acne, scarring, hello, obvious metaphor) and that I would draw her as such. I think, in the end, he didn’t really realize what he wanted, until he realized what he wanted. The whole thing was one of those jobs where in the end, you just want to move on. He never actually gave me the approval to post them, so I never showed them on my site.

Why do I tell you this?

Because I drew this week exactly what I normally would not be interested in: the wholesale revamp of Marrow, the Asian Psylockification of a more complex source material. Because frankly, the latter design looked cool, and allowed me to dodge the original character which has long exhausted my creative energies.

I hope you like Weapon-X’s Nu-Marrow…so to speak…

You can view the image herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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This is Blindside (Blind Betty) and I really dig the haircut.

Concept and Art: Thom Chiaramonte
Abilities and Origin: Thom Chiaramonte

:::

Blindside

Name: Betty Bodascu
Affiliation: Gaia

Attributes:

Melee: 40
Reflex: 20
Muscle: 20
Vigor: 30
Acumen: 20
Observation: 20
Will: 20

Life: 110
Influence: 60

Abilities:

Blindness Generation: Blindside wields a unique form of psychic suggestion: she can convince targets that they have lost their eyesight. She does not actually have the ability to physically change the optic nerve or any physiological vision component, but her ability affects targets at a deep level of cognitive processing. Her victims believe they have been struck blind, and without specific psychiatric therapy, will remain so permanently. Her teammates have all undergone conditioning and are immune to her ability, though she herself was not conditioned when the ability first manifested, and has been driven nearly blind, retroactive therapy only partially restoring her vision. She can see clearly only at close range (3 rounds) and suffers from uncorrectable nearsightedness. The team is aware of her condition, though the public is not. Her power manifests itself through physical contact [50 IV].

Fighting Proficiency: Blindside has trained in close-quarters melee and hand-to-hand combat, and has been educated in multiple fighting styles. She takes a +2CS to strike in these conditions, and +1CS to parry or dodge. However, due to her concealed weakness, she is at -4CS to perform ranged attacks.

Origin:

Blindside, known to her teammates as ‘Blind Betty,’ is an extremely powerful psychic with a focused latent ability to cause mammals in physical contact with her to believe they have suffered blindness, though there is no physiological effect to their vision. When her power first manifested, she suffered it’s effect personally, and intense specialized retroactive therapy only partially restored her vision. As such, she is legally blind beyond a short distance, a fact not publicly known. She is a member of Gaia, a posthuman team funded by Greenfirst, a global environmental activist non-profit corporation with ties to several eco-terrorist cells worldwide, following the military action at the Greenpeace headquarters that left 347 civilians dead. Bodascu joined the radical group under the mistaken belief that her abilities, which caused her partial-blindness, were as a result of exposure to a biochemical spill, which was subsequently determined to be false, though the Greenfirst did not inform her of this. Her role on Gaia is second leader, and she also acts as the groups spokesperson in media affairs. She takes a psycho-suppressive sedative when in contact with civilians, so as not to affect them with her latent abilities. This tenuous risk is under scrutiny by both team leader Flashpoint, and the Greenfirst Gaia Support Program, but her role has not been changed, since her media ratings are at nearly 85% approval.

:::

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This was done for the This Week Jam … the subject being Marvel’s Sersi. I remember her not from the comics, but from my old Handbook to the Marvel Universe, and later, from the Marvel RPG, where I’m afraid to admit it took my players about three hours of gaming to bring her down. These Kirby-God characters are tough! If I remember correctly, they took her out with a heavy artillery shell while simultaneously freezing her brain internally, something like that. Nasty business. But anyway, Sersi seems to have a long history of being at the right place at the right time in pivotal historical moments in the Marvel universe, being immortal and all that, and in her time with the Avengers and in and out of a few costume variants, was working on Captain America for awhile before settling on the Black Knight. From what I read, she got a little crazy god-head and destroyed Avengers mansion and wigged out before they got her under control again, so the similarities with Scarlet Witch seem to go beyond them both being sultry brunette magical mystical mystery seductress types. Ha.

You can view the image here in the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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Blood Knight is a vigilante that ignores borders when perusing criminals.

Blood Knight is an international vigilante that targets violently suppressive military regimes that have taken control of their states through fear and fist. Since she’s fighting oppression with what amounts to global terrorism, she’s either a hero or villain in the world press. The ethical paradox of taking lives to save lives is made even more difficult, as the wearer is trained as a medical doctor, and is betraying her Hippocratic Oath. Her assassination of the heads of state of foreign governments has brought her into direct confrontation with the US national posthuman team, the Liberty Group, on two occasions, both of which she narrowly survived, escaping with severe injuries. The identity of the wearer of the armor is not publicly known, though Interpol believes at least three people have worn the Blood Knight visage since the late 90s. The gender of the wearer also appears to be male, from the size and design of the suit. The armor’s origin is likewise unknown, though rumored to have been funded by a CIA think-tank designed to foment rebellion in nation states not cooperating with American foreign policy in the Pan-American region.

:::

Concept and Art: Thom Chiaramonte
Abilities and Origin: Thom Chiaramonte

:::

Blood Knight

Name: Dr. Tamara Heras
Affiliation: n/a

Attributes:

Melee: 30
Reflex: 30
Muscle: 40
Vigor: 30
Acumen: 20
Observation: 10
Will: 10

Health: 130
Karma: 40

Abilities:

Body Armor: polymer cellular sheathing provides protection from physical attacks [ 20 AP], energy attacks [20 AP], and thermal attacks [40 AP]. It also provides fluid recycling, waste management, IV nutrient drip, and oxygenated plasma, yielding life support in a non-atmosphere environment for up to 1 week.

Combat Acuity: blood knight’s armor includes an onboard combat AI which assists in motor responses and reactive logic, allowing the wearer two actions to opponents single action.

Danger Sense: the armor’s onboard sensor array includes 360 degree visual surveillance monitored by a host processor, which scans telescopic, thermal and motion fields. This allows the wearer to predict an incoming ambush attack by rolling a Yellow Observation Action. If successful, either an active dodge (-2cs vs attack roll) or a weapon parry (+2 cs to parry)

Hardened Weaponry: both of Blood Knight’s weapons are of remarkable construction material of a similar makeup of the armor itself, but with an additional hardening layer, providing an additional resistive protection [30 AP], with any damage passing through being halved.

Blood Knight is trained to use either weapon alone or in tandem. The sword causes remarkable damage and offers +1cs to parry when used alone, while the psythe causes 20 points of damage, and +3cs to parry when used alone. When used in tandem, the psythe offers +1cs to parry one-handed, while the sword may be used to strike without penalty.

Origin:

Blood Knight has been the scourge of violently suppressive military regimes on an international scale. While the origin of the armor is unknown, it is rumored to have been a CIA-funded propaganda weapon used to incite rebellion in certain South American countries which opposed a North American weapon sales embargo. There have been at least three wearers of the armor, none with a public identity. The current wearer, Dr. Tamara Heras, was a field surgeon at various South American refugee camps before returning home to start a free clinic in her Basque home region. Her hospital was unintentionally destroyed when a secret cache of ordinance was detonated, hidden within the storage sub-basement by resistance fighters. Her actions as Blood Knight have made international headlines for their ferocity and calculated accuracy, minimizing civilian casualties. However, while she believes herself to be on a moral mission, the ethical paradox of taking life causes her extreme emotional distress. While her exploits have garnered her both praise and condemnation in the world press, she has been confronted by the us national team, the liberty group, on two occasions, surviving both encounters with severe injuries, but narrowly escaping capture.

:::

You can see the illustration herein the TRDL Universe Gallery.

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This was done as a commission for a client who has a large Poison Ivy collection, and liked the way the LAST Ivy commission went. So we talked a little bit about what he wanted, which was sensual without being nude, and among other things, specifically referenced red lips and nails. Now, most of the images of Ivy that I have seen seem to show her with green lips etc, so I figured the red was of special significance to the client, and as a result, decided to leave her legging-less to you can see her little red toenails. I had a blast with this piece, largely because I took a different approach than last time, making her hair straighter, adding more light tones to her bodice, and really having fun with her nest of vines. The Bat symbol spotlight is kind of overdone for what it is, I guess being an outgrowth of looking at a few shots of real spotlights, and too much Shirow Masumune, in whose manga everything is a custom, techie design. But anyway, I like the idea of a big red button to activate it, like the missile launching glass-breaking button on the Phoenix in Battle of the Planets. Hahaha. Anyway, I think this one turned out pretty nicely.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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This piece was done for the This Week jam, the subject for the week being the classic Iron Man villain, Madame Masque, which coincidentally, was one of my selections randomly-chosen because not coincidentally, Iron Man was always my favorite comic as a kid. Madame Masque was also one of my favorite villains, though frequently terribly drawn. As in, chick in leather, with a Luger, and a yellow face we are reminded is supposed to be metal by the rivets along the perimeter. Over the years, I only saw a few artists try and create a truly mask-like visage, largely unsuccessfully, I think because it looks to rigid for the dynamic emotions and scenery-chewing drama this character employs in an effort to derail Tony Stark’s fleeting states of blissful sublimation and denial, with brainless bimbo girlfriend X. I chose to take a middle ground approach, rendering it metallic, giving somewhat less detail than I might otherwise use, and playing up the stylization factor by allowing her to be heavy-lidded in satisfaction at somehow having de-helmeted ole Buckethead. I thought it was a sexy pose, so I gave her lounging position a shot, with the playful toying with her boot that some women have down to a science (particularly with heels) but I admit one serious misstep was the fact that her legs look compressed in a way that suggests her IT bands have been torn and her kneecaps shattered, and I made it worse by choosing this inopportune time to use a realistic knee-shape that I frequently see but never draw because it doesn’t look right aesthetically on paper to me (the double groove shape, or what Jack Hamm calls “overlapping rounds” in his classic Drawing the Head and Figure. But anyway, fun fun fun Iron Man villainy!

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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