This illustration went to my brother Dion and his wife Rachel up in Alaska.

This image was sorta supposed to be a re-imagining of the Vulture, one of Spider-Man’s early villains. The Vulture is one of those guys that works best in comics, you’d be hard pressed to have him seem threatening in a movie. The comic version is an old guy who flies using wings on his arms. His costume is green.

This card went to Doug Faxon aka the Evil Doctor Flaxon. It was on the FAIT site, over a decade ago now, that my art debuted online. I don’t think that Doug does much with the Evil Doctor these days. If I’d been thinking ahead I’ve have done a new portrait of the doctor.

Must remember to think ahead.

With color. Lots of colors. I briefly considered coloring this in monotone but … she’s Scraps, the Patchwork Girl! No monotone colors here!

This portrait of the Patchwork Girl went to Steve Ahlquist, the creator of Oz Squad.

Yes, I’m still working on the first issue.

And here is are our pirate queens with a little color in their cheeks.

This card went to Jeff Nicholson. It’s a portrait of the pirates Anne and Bonnie from his graphic novel series Colonia. Colonia is the story of a boy and his uncles lost in alternate America, one that’s only been marginally colonized by Europeans. This America has no Indians but it is inhabited.

This illustration looks better to me now than when I first did it. It’s not just the addition of color. If I don’t like a drawing adding color to it isn’t going to make me like it more. I’ll still see all the flaws.

I’ve got quite a few Batman sketches in my sketchbooks. I don’t really like any of them. The artist in me is caught between the kid in me (who thinks Batman rocks) and the adult in me (who thinks Batman is sort of silly at best). He never manages to satisfy either of them. I wish I had time to ramble on about the whys and all behind that. Not today.

This card went to Jason Lamb down in Portland. A while back we’d discussed working on a noir superhero anthology. I ended up bowing out of the project. I already had other commitments that I was (and am) slow to fullfill on. Hopefully someday we’ll manage to work on something together. Jason, if you read this, do you have a website you’d like me link to?

No, I don’t think she’d be able to pull back into that shell. So instead, she runs away from predators. The world’s fastest turtle!