From the vaults. Supergirl #59 The Final Issue.

I almost made this my christmas card, LOL.

 

 

I've been trying to figure out what to say about this issue. What I could say about the art and the time but I keep falling short of the proper grandeur I keep reaching for.

I think there really is only one way to approach this.
Thank you.
Thank You Sterling, for being one of the best creative partners I've ever had. Thank you Keith Champagne, Jon Sibal, Marc Deering, John Dell and Robin Riggs for keeping up with my maddening exponentially growing obsession with detail. Thank You Nei Ruffino, Blond and Tom Chu for the beautiful color work you did. Thank you to all of the letterers who worked on the series. Thank you Nachie Castro, Wil Moss and Matt Idelson for showing faith, allowing me to experiment visually and pushing me to imrpove.
Most of all, Thank you Supergirl fans, for the love and occasional ire that you showed me over the years.

We wanted to bookend the series and I think the matching splashes from issue #34 and issue #59 say it all, don't you?

Supergirl #53, the beginning of the end

After the end of War of the Supermen, I was looking for a creative change. I decided  that I was going to leave the book. At that point I had been on Supergirl for almost 18 months, creatively for some of us that's a very long time to be on a single project. I knew I wanted to go out on a high point, while I was still into drawing the book and didn't want thew work to slack or look uninteresting. So I decided that if I was going out, it was going to be in style. I'm exceedingly proud of the work Sterling Gates I did on Supergirl and I think that this issue, which began the Bizzarogirl story arc is the best work we did.

The initial change in hair sketch for Kara and the original Gangbuster redesign.

The idea was to harken back to the original version of the character, but make it slicker and more streamlined.

Thumbnails for the issue

This was also the first and only cover that I had drawn for the series after being on for so long. they went from Josh Middleton to Amy Reeder but needed a cover for this issue.

Sketch and pencils

inks and solicited version (colors by Tom Chu)

Later Mark Chiarello would me to add a background element to the cover.

So I drew a new background, cleaned up the original speed lines and superimposed them in photoshop

Final published cover.

Layouts for pages 17,18 and 22

 

This would also be the last issue colored by Nei Ruffino, who did a magnificent job. Inked by the always awesome Jon Sibal.