SPECTATORS - Part 105
Plus, a new Artopsy from Niko Henrichon!
Happy Birthday!
Brian here, and one of my favorite relatives/Exploding Giraffe readers is celebrating his big day today, and the odds suggest that at least a few of you Tauruses are doing the same, so I hope it’s your best one yet.
Sorry that artist/co-creator Niko Henrichon, letterer Fonografiks and this writer-boy didn’t have time to get you a proper gift, but you can still download the first 250 pages of our our NSFW graphic novel Spectators, which ain’t nothing.
And now, our spectral protagonists’ story resumes with some all-new spectacle (following a couple pages of recap to help reorient you), as Val and Sam continue to observe a rapidly evolving future.
Thanks to Niko for another batch of hand-drawn magnificence, especially that eye-popping double-page spread.
As if he hasn’t given us enough already, Monsieur Henrichon also offered to give away another page of his original art, normally only available for purchase over at Essential Sequential…
…and for this gem, our intern Genesis the Exploded Giraffe randomly selected lucky reader Ken L.
Congrats, Ken, and Niko himself will be reaching out to you soon about getting you your one-of-a-kind treasure.
We’ll be handing out a few last pieces of original art (and many other exciting prizes) to you generous paid subscribers in The Tower over our several remaining months together, so get in while the getting’s good, giraffes.
And never fear, loyal lurkers of The Tower: you don’t need to comment in our weekly chat threads to be automatically entered in those monthly art drawings… but we do love hearing from you.
Longtime reader BuzdViking recently shared:
Thanks to Exploding Giraffe, I was able to find out and attend the Comic-Con Graphic Novel Book Club Chula Vista! What a bunch of cool folks and I am now a member! Funny story as it is a graphic novel club, I showed up with all my Vol 5 Saga comics (#25-30) from my box. I was happy to share with them how amazing Fiona’s covers are, showing them her very unique and clean wraparound one-color covers. Also, since I am a comic reader since day one, it took a lot of concentration to not spoil anything, lol. Anyway, they were all very excited to hear you shouted out their post and so am I because I can’t wait to attend each month.
There’s a lot of negativity surrounding our medium/industry at the moment (always?), but Viking sharing the joy of monthly comics with a local group of graphic novel readers genuinely warmed my heart, thanks.
And further proving that we have the best readers anywhere on the internet, beloved Tower member Uncle Phil wrote:
I’m participating in the Parkinson’s Unity Walk being held by The Michael J. Fox Foundation to raise critical funds for Parkinson’s research. Please consider supporting my efforts. Your support helps speed new Parkinson’s treatments and moves us closer to a cure.
100 percent of the Unity Walk proceeds go directly to The Michael J. Fox Foundation’s high-impact research and policy programs. Thank you!
Than YOU, Phil. You rule.
Attention fellow collectors of original art: you may want to set an alarm for noon eastern time tomorrow, Tuesday, April 30, as that’s when awesome artist Aron Wiesenfeld (who graced a few covers of Y: The Last Man with his haunting imagery) will be releasing his latest “Drawings on Post-it Notes,” miniature masterpieces that will be available for purchase at his shop.
Lovely, no?
You Tower members can check out the Wiesenfeld Post-it Note I’m lucky enough to have on my own wall—and read tons of other paywalled past bonus nonsense—in our Archives:
Before I turn the controls over to Niko for his latest artistic autopsy (which involves two of my all-time favorite cover artists), I wanted to share an update about dearly departed cartoonist Joe Matt, whose life and work I discussed a few weeks ago:
Incredibly, Joe’s longtime publisher Fantagraphics just shared this surprising development:
When cartoonist Joe Matt unexpectedly passed away in 2023 at the age of sixty, it appeared that any hope of seeing new work from the master cartoonist would die with him. Matt, notoriously slow, had been working on a new issue for 17 years – since the previous issue was published in 2006. After his death, it was discovered that the entire issue was complete aside from four uninked pages. Thanks to Matt’s cartoonist friends, Peepshow #15 will finally see print, and it’s an event worthy of celebration. The issue is quintessential Matt, as if he had never left us: utterly shameless, completely self-absorbed, crafted with an exhibitionist’s enthusiasm for his favorite subject, himself. Detailing his move to Los Angeles in 2003—“trapped in a world he never made!”—to pursue an ill-fated HBO series. Peepshow #15 is Joe Matt at his Joe Mattiest.
Seventeen years in the making!
That new issue will be on sale July 17 (hey, that’s MY birthday), and you can pre-order a copy from your friendly neighborhood comic shop today.
With that, I leave you in the ink-stained hands of my artistic better half, but please have a great week, eat some cake whether or not you turned a year older, and I’ll see you back here next Monday evening for more free Spectators.
Hello everyone!
Today I will talk a little bit about my small career in science fiction book covers.
A few years ago, I was contacted by a French publisher, Editions Critic, who specialized in science fiction and fantasy novels. The passionate illustrator in me was immediately interested, and I ended up doing a bunch of covers for them on a regular basis.
Are you familiar with illustrator/painter John Berkey?
Since I was five years old, I’ve been obsessed with his work. Why so young, you might think? See, when I was five, in 1980, I had to wait in my bed, sometimes for hours on weekend mornings, for my parents to finally wake up and take care of my sisters and me. So I had this book, Our Universe, by Roy A. Gallant, that was very thick and filled with extraordinary illustrations.
I’m sure a bunch of you also owned that book; it was a very popular National Geographic edition.
I don’t know if I would be drawing today if I didn’t have that book, 42 years ago. It was my Instagram. I spent hundreds of hours flipping through the pages, inspecting every detail and getting inspired to draw my own spaceships and extraterrestrial monsters.
So John Berkey is the cover illustrator. For a long time, his cover was the only painting I saw from him and I was really fascinated by it.
When I was asked to do illustrations depicting huge spaceships and futuristic cities, I was necessarily inspired by Berkey’s work. Take a look a a few of his finest:
Now let’s dig deeper into my own work with a look at three different covers:
1: Pyramides by Romain Benassaya
Here are the layouts I presented to the editor:
Once we settled on one of them, I worked on the final illustration. I rarely use 3D softwares, as I generally think they take the life out of drawings. But in some cases, especially when dealing with precise geometric shapes, they can save a bit of time. In this case, I used Sketchup to model the pyramid shape.
Here’s the base of the drawing:
Some basic colors:
The wraparound final version with highlights, shadows and special effects.
