Jack B. Quick "Flying Cats" pencils, page 5

For some reason, I made copies of the pencils for this page at three different stages. My suspicion is that I didn't do a tight, preliminary, letter-size layout so I was working those things out on the 11 x 17" board.

In the first panel, I moved the balloons around to show the dormer and the edge of the roof. In the second, I realized I needed larger "display" lettering for the chanting pigs.

I think you can still see that Mr. Murk is smiling in panel five, even though he's facing away from us.

Superman Gallery cover sketch

I found this pencil sketch for a wrap-around Superman cover that I did back in the early '90's. The editor, Mike Carlin, didn't ask for anything specific so I suggested a big robot battle.

Rough sketches for an old Defenders commission

Looks like this one was done in 2003. I couldn't find a scan of the pencils so I'm showing three stages of layouts along with the final inks. It might seem like a lot of preliminary work but sometimes it takes me several revisions to get everything worked out and it's always better to make those mistakes in the sketching stage than it is when you're doing the finished art.

Superman card art

This one seems to be a little Mignola-inspired. I like the lighting effect but the flat colors didn't go over very well with a lot of the card collectors who wanted "paintings".