War is cool. Unless you actually fight in one. Then it’s only cool if you lie about it afterward. 
Author Archives: skook
Three Children and It – Color
With the exception of the Heap itself I used most of the colors from the 2013 mock cover to color this illustration. I made the Heap a darker green.
Three Children and It – Black and White
The Heap was the first swamp monster to have its own regular series of stories. PS Publishing recently collected all those tales in three volumes under its Roy Thomas Presents series. There are a few good stories in the mix but they are rare and mostly in the last volume. I suspect that my lack of enthusiasm is more the result of when I started reading comics than the stories themselves. They were written during the so-called Golden Age of Comics when comics were expected to be read by children and comics creators were really still learning the form. During its day, The Heap was a rare comic that featured a hero monster. When I started reading comics in the 1970s, monsters were everywhere. Man-Thing and Swamp Thing had adventures much weirder (and longer and better written) than those of their four color ancestor.
Oh well, the Heap is immortal and its legend may yet surpass that of its descendants.
A couple of years ago I did a mock cover for a Heap comic. I had fun but I wasn’t satisfied with the results. So here’s another image using the same characters.
Prefers Lashing with the Stick to Offering up the Carrot – Color
Villains prefer underlighting. It highlights their evilness.
Prefers Lashing with the Stick to Offering up the Carrot – Black and White
Why do so many villains kill the henchmen that fail them? I can understand why it would work in the short term. But wouldn’t that cut down on your recruitment of future henchmen?
“Don’t work for that guy. He’ll just kill you. Nice uniforms though.”
A Sisterhood of Sorceresses – Color
A Sisterhood of Sorceresses – Black and White
I like to work on multiple illustrations at once. Because of that I have a number of pieces that were partially done with thicker lines than I plan to use in the future. Oh well.
Punching a Robot is Hard on the Knuckles – Color
Punching a Robot is Hard on the Knuckles – Black and White
First Issue Special!
Back in 2013 I did a mock cover for the imaginary first issue of a Heap comic book. Since 2013 was the year of Daughter of Spiders I didn’t post the artwork here, only on my Facebook pages. Silly me. Time to fix that. Below are process steps for the cover.
Pencils:
Inks:
Flat colors:
Final colors:
