From the vaults. Supergirl #58... The finale part 1

So here we are,brethren..The finale of two years of often hard and occasionally overwhelming work. We took an issue off and the entire team returned in full force for the final two issues. Jon Sibal on inks, Blond on colors, a cover by Amy Reeder and we were off to the races.

Security guard 1 is based on my buddy Drew. Security guard 2 is based on my other friend, Victor

I really wanted to milk the emotion from the scene, so I played it small. I kept Toyman's movements limited and shy.

Kid one is based on a picture of myself about 10 years old.

I love this scene so much, All of the tension between Cat and kara for almost two years finally came to a head and played out so well. The hardest part sometimes, are the intimate moments, no broad action, just small moments.

We also have a minin Bat cameo in the form of Detective Harvey Bullock GCPD.

 

the entire idea behind the Dollmaker , in my head was to harken back to a bygone era visually, sort of the antithesis of modern character design. I initially had this image of a sort of broken, fractured version of Little Lord Fauntleroy but it was a little too similar to to Klarion the witchboy. Matt Idelson suggested version 2, which as much more modern looking kid. I went back to the well with the third design, actually looking at some old images of cobblers and toymakers from the 18th century. I'n my head, his apron was made of human skin. Sterling suggested a more steampunk approach but we ultimately went with version 3.

The final confrontation between Lois and Lucy

Thumbnails for issue #58

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.