Wolverine #12 cover art

By special request from Alfredo, here's the cover for Wolverine #12.  Sorry I couldn't locate the sketch, but if I remember correctly, it was pretty weak.  I worked out the bugs when I did the final pencils and this ended up being one of my favorites in the series.

Two notes about the car:  I tried to find photo reference for the decal on the door, but came up empty.  And I wasn't thinking when I drew those tires; cop cars don't have white walls!  

Color really helped this one.  I wasn't happy with the coloring on the cover for issue 11 so they let me do my own guides for the rest of the series.

Update:  Thanks to Shabby Walters for finding the sketch on line and sending me the link.  Moving his left arm down makes it a little more clear that he's escaping from the car instead of just joy riding.  And you can see that I didn't even think about the light source when I did the sketch.  I'm guessing it was done quickly to get approval so I could move on to the pencils.  This was done back in the days before fax machines, let alone the internet so we'd have at least a 24 hour delay waiting for a FedEx package to arrive.  I don't miss those days.

"Just a Pilgrim" #3 cover

Jimmy Palmiotti asked me to do this cover for a book he was editing in 2001.  He wanted to see the title character drooling and wild-eyed in a Hannibal Lecter mask/muzzle.

The coloring made all the difference, especially after Jimmy suggested making the background blood red.

Flying man meets flying gorilla

This is the cover for DC Comics Presents: Hawkman #1 (and only), a series of books that DC put out in 2004, paying tribute to long-time editor Julie Schwartz.  




It's a reworking of a memorable Murphy Anderson cover from the sixties.  As you can see, José's pencils were amazing and I tried very hard to retain as much of the middle tones as I could in the inks, especially the ape fur. 
He improved the layout by moving things around a little and he made the ape a bit more realistic and a little less cuddly.

Here's Murphy Anderson's cover from 1965.  This was the kind of image that could really warp a young mind, especially one that's only recently recovered from the sight of those flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz.

"Desire" designs

I'm not sure what these were used for, if anything.  As is often the case, the pencils look better than the inks, especially because of the last minute clothing additions which don't really work, at least in my eyes.