Bob Powell's Jet Powers collection

 Cover

 Title page

 Title page Spread

 Contents Spread

 Essay Spread

Essay Spread

The Jet Powers book was great fun to work on. I got to play with design imagery from the '50s atomic age. I wanted it to feel space-agey but also energetic. There are a lot of angles and directional rules that will lead your eye throughout the page spreads. I think there is a lot of open space on the pages along with a sense of claustrophobic tension. I thought about Twilight Zone episodes, where the characters always had a nervous uneasiness, in anticipation of something about to happen. Even though they were in a large open room, they could feel the walls closing in on them. If it's possible to capture that feeling with shapes and lines and color, that was what I was going for.

Herb Trimpe's The Incredible Hulk Artist's Edition

 Cover

 Title Page

 Credits Spread

Contents Spread

I'm not sure if it's for nostalgic reasons or if I just like patterns, but I've always loved the look of the screen printed color. Unfortunately, whenever companies decide to reprint comic art, they re-do the coloring, and it always looks wrong. It either has too many photoshop effects, and overpowers the line art, or the color is too garish and looks like it's sitting on top of the line art. Either way, they are trying to meld 2 different things that don't go together. It's like wearing brown shoes with a black tux. It clashes, and it's unsettling. With this collection of Incredible Hulk stories, I attempted to give my own vision of classic comic book coloring. I deliberately made the coloring off-register and over lapping. I wanted the color to "soak" into the art boards, and make sure that the line art floated to the top. I guess it's kind of a "pop art" homage. It feels appropriate for the time period in which these stories were originally published.

Wally Wood's EC Stories Artisan Edition

 Cover

 Title Page

 Credits Spread

Table of Contents Spread

I got the opportunity to redesign the Wally Wood's Artist's Edition. Well, kind of. IDW came out with a smaller more affordable version of the book. This gave me a chance to go back and look at how I designed the oversized version and decide what worked and what had to be redesigned. The obvious thing is that I'm working with a smaller format. It's best in that case, to simplify. Because I looked at it as a companion piece to the Artist's Edition, I used similar images, but just cropped them and gave them a different feeling on the page. I'm pretty sure IDW has more plan for Artisan Editions, so this will cause me to reevaluate a lot of the work I've done... and perhaps make improvements??!!