This page might come as a bit of shock, compared to what the cover wound up being. In the beginning, it hadn’t occurred to me to use an art reference for the cover image. I assumed I’d use an image of my character, Agent Ian Anger.
I couldn’t figure out what kind of image I wanted for the cover for this project, for a long time. One of the first images I drew for this project was this one (below), dated 4/18/09, which was probably the same month BUT A WEEK BEFORE I began brainstorming for story ideas (my earliest dated note lists what paintings would make good villains for the story, and it is dated 4/23/09, followed by a half page of additional brainstorms on 5/27/09), two months before my earliest dated script brainstorms (6/15/09), and three months before I drew the first page of this comic, and which I scanned into my computer on 8/9/09 (On that same day, I scanned in the image of Agent Anger standing and pointing his gun from Page 17 – Published.)
So once I began thinking about this project, it came together quickly, and I became obsessed and eager to begin working on it quickly, and I began pounding it out as I went, without regard for where it was headed or what needed to be done to get there.
To sum up, this page (BELOW), was the first Agent Ian Anger drawing I ever did – no prelims or sketches, JUST THIS – on 4/18/09. Then I began prepping for and then scripting around 4/23-6/15/09. THEN I made the The Global Agency of Protection – Drafts! ($7 Patrons) full-body sketch on 6/15/09 (THE ONLY prelim sketch I ever did for this project – EVERYTHING ELSE was just straight onto the page, directly, and ready to publish), and after drawing that one sketch, basically straight into producing pages of this project in earnest before 8/9/09.
So getting back to the below image. Notice I had in mind to use some texture lines, and also some solid bars of gold. But I wasn’t thinking of this as my composition, I was just drawing elements that I knew I’d be shuffing around for a composition, in Photohop. I think I may have drawn Ian Anger first, and then added those additional elements onto the page later, since I had all that extra space. But I don’t remember for sure.
I then took that image and those additional elements, I put in those lines and stretched them longer in Photoshop to create some borders for a series of images which I felt would help sum up this first story arc: The Arneson character making a deal with the Pope character for some gold.
I had tried coming up with a font. Notice the wonky one below. I already more or less had my bi-line!
The Arneson image with his tongue out I pulled directly from Page 12 – Published, and the Pope was an unused panel from Page 12 – Drafts. I liked using that Pope image, because I thought it was a nice image, even though it didn’t work out to include on the final cut of Page 12. But as a result, I didn’t like that the Arneson had been used in the comic. It made me want to design a different (new) Arneson for the cover.
This next image is interesting, because it makes me wonder if perhaps, early on, I didn’t know I should use this image as a cover, or as Page 17 – Published. Notice the font is even simpler (and wonkier) than above, which makes me wonder if it were done earlier. Notice also I hadn’t yet super-imposed the Van Goghs onto the page. If this is the case, then I had just drawn two images of Agent Anger, and didn’t know yet how I planned to use them, and was trying them out in different places to see what worked best where.
I was clearly never totally pleased with this as a cover, if I was experimenting with using it as a title page. In 2011, my best friend Steve Buell started coloring some of my work, and he designed and colored this below poster/cover.
As for the Francis Bacon Pope image (001 Splash) that I wound up with, it was drawn between 8/18 and 8/23/14 – FIVE AND A HALF YEARS LATER! I’ll discuss how I came upon this idea as a cover theme, on Brush with Peril, page 003 – Commentary ($7 Patrons).
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