Well I just finished the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo program guide. The fun thing about it this year was I did an illustration for the cover. I'm still playing with the whole painting in Photoshop thing but overall I am pretty happy with the end result.
The idea for the cover came from a few sources:
1 - The event organizer came up with a video ad that will run in EB Games stores. It was kind of an Ultimate Fighter (I think) battle intro: The Guild vs Zombies…FIGHT!, Shatner vs Superman…FIGHT! and so on.
2 - I found out that DC Comics will be at the show, so this seemed like a natural marriage between our media guests and the comics industry.
3 - Neal-FRICKIN-Adams is coming to the show. I grew up on his books (I had all the Batman books, the Green Arrow/Green Lantern books, and of course his run of Deadman - but student loans and rent payments took care of my comic collection pretty quick) and who can forget the cover of the oversized issue featuring a boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Superman, so I wanted to pay homage to that cover and Mr. Adams.
4 - A recent poster/ad I did for the Calgary Roller Derby match being held at the Expo: Superheroes and Zombies. The reason I say that is not to plug my own work but to mention that to me Wonder Woman is Lynda Carter and by the same token Superman will always be Christopher Reeve and I wanted to keep my superheroes in the same era, - I remember sitting in a movie theatre as a kid believing a man could fly. For the record I think that Brandon Routh did a solid job in the last Superman flick and Kevin Spacey was a pretty good Lex Luthor.
So with all those inspirational sources in mind I began to go to work.
Shatner vs Superman…FIGHT!
One of the main things for me was to make it Calgary Centric, there had to be an element that said this is where it's taking place. I didn't want you to think this was for any other Expo or comic convention. So the Saddledome was chosen for the landmark (that's also where the Expo is being held, so really, it made sense). The other main thing it had to have - Shatner (as Kirk) had to look like the scrapper he always was. The shirt had to be ripped, the face had to be dirty, and the hair had to be mussed. And even though they would probably have their match under some sort of Red Sun device to even the odds, I just thought it would be fun to have Superman unharmed and Kirk roughed up even though I truly believe that Kirk would do one of those flying kicks and flatten Superman.
So there you have it.
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