DC Comics Zero month; Batman and Robin.

Mock-up of Batman and Robin issue #0

This month, DC Comics launched a whole month of Zero issues. One of the great things about it was that all the covers followed the same template. Namely the books main characters bursting out of a mock up paper page from the l comic book. I personally love this idea. It was great fun and a nice challenge to come up with something simple and striking.

My little Scribble

Pen and Ink version

One night at the studio I was working up sketches for the cover and I thought 'If we were doing characters bursting out of a a 'paper' version  for the in-store books, why not have a glass screen version for the digital downloads of the books as well? It didn't seem like a bad idea so into my sketchbook went a little scribble of what it might look like. The next morning I sent it in to see if anyone else liked it.  To my surprise, It was enthusiasticly approved and I was asked to draw the template for the broken screen.

(Drawing broken glass is really cathardic by the way. )

Below are my thumbnails for the actual cover

I liked this version with the Bat-a-rangs coming out at us and including a background. But ultimately I figured it would be hard to pull off and get too confusing once the template was introduced in the final product.  

This version seemed to buddy-buddy. Their faces would have to be really close together and I wanted to avoid any accedental cheesy compositions.

This was better. More Classic. Coming out and ad veering away from each other seemed more powerful. More dynamic. 

Work In Progress

Final Pencils

Final inks (Grey) and Color (Kaliz)

In the end product we got a nice clean image to lay over the paper or digital template versions.

(And once again Damians untied shoelaces make the perfect vehicle for a signature.)

Thanks for lookin'!