A quick Ultimate Spider-Woman to shuffle things up!
Great costume, great reinterpretation of a character. (Bagley’s fantastic at doing remixes of the Spider-Man outfit, isn’t he? Between this and the Ben Reilly suit, he gets all the points from me…)
Looking forward to seeing her finally have a proper conversation with Miles Morales in the current arc of Ultimate Comics Spider-Man…
Concept:
Thinking on the armed, official agencies with which a young, rogue Captain could tangle in a revamped series.
I believe S.T.R.I.K.E., the British arm of S.H.I.E.L.D., has been disbanded, so with MI:13 on its way to becoming a semi-autonomous entity, the government would want their own loyal attack dogs, who can bend the laws in their favour and stamp down on dissension - from the powered and disenfranchised alike - with extreme prejudice.
Enter S.C.E.P.T.R.E. - the Strategic Crime & Espionage Prevention, Terror Response Executive - an extension of the regular police force, with extralegal powers.
Formed in response to the London Riots and the oscillating terror threat, and outfitted with the latest weaponry and tech - not to mention equippedwith most nimble, Parliament-led contraventions of Human Rights laws and due process, they are an increasingly visible elite.
While wages and numbers decrease in the regular service, S.C.E.P.T.R.E. sees its funding ringfaced - with word on some leakblogs pointing towards large and tax-free sources of private income, and even hefty corporate sponsorship of certain of its wings.
S.C.E.P.T.R.E. are the public face of counter-superterror, and one that the public are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with.
Forgot I did this, too! ;)
Exploring what a movieverse Brian Braddock could look like. In the context of the other films, he’s more likely to be a science-enhanced physicist, in the Ultimates mould - well, unless Marvel Studios went the ‘Weaponised Harry Potter’ route! Which is entirely possible. Magic tends to work better at the cinema than in the comics market… But this is the ‘British Knight’ science approach.
Based on some Adi Granov Iron Man concept art, with a whole bunch of other things lifted and composited from the usual Google Images search.
I first ‘met’ the super-talented Will Sliney when I commissioned him to work on the Star Wars: The Clone Wars comic.
Now, he’s blowing up (and deservedly so) because of his work on his creator-owned Celtic Warrior: The Legend of Cú Chulainn and Marvel’s Fearless Defenders with Cullen Bunn.
I finally met him in person at this year’s London Super Comic Con, where he kindly (and unexpectedly!) gave me this sketch. I’ve just coloured it up for fun. :)
Here’s a bunch of quickly-scribbled alts over the earlier redesign sketch. I like the red boots/gloves version (quite Captain Scarlet-y, which is never a bad thing), but I think the winner might be the ‘Hitch gloves’ version up top.
I know no-one but cycle couriers wears them in real life, but they do keep an element of humanity in an otherwise all-covered uniform (and, presumably, express the subtext that the person or government who supplied the uniform didn’t expect the person wearing it to be involved in any event where they would mind leaving fingerprints behind…).
The build on this guy is a bit tall / developed for the ‘All New’ version of the character, so I’ll revise that as I take it forward.
Putting semi-transparent (but not stark white) lenses into the helmet really does make a difference - as does reintroducing white ‘piping’ around the red areas. At least the piping has precedence in the actual flag! ;)
This was a Valentine’s gift from the fantabulous Shannon L. Gallant, aka a great friend and, hopefully, near-future collaborator!
Just to put it into context, this is the kind of art Shannon puts on the outside of envelopes.
He’s an insanely talented chap, currently working on G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero for IDW. Go check him out at slgallant.com or his blog.
I’m trying to beckon him onto Tumblr in the meanwhile…
It does seem like this Tumblr’s got a bit obsessive since I started posting again, doesn’t it? :)
It’s an unfortunate side-effect of not being able to show anything from the three books I’ve been illustrating freelance for the past eight months or so (Orcs War Fighting Manual, Elves War Fighting Manual, Dwarves War Fighting Manual), and that none of the great Titan Comics creator-owned titles I’ve been editing have made it into the wild yet.
So, I’ll try to vary things a little, but from June onwards the diet should get a little more mixed of its own accord!
For now, backseat driving and idle fan-art on things that won’t get me into trouble is the order of the day… ;)
I’d been looking forward to this one-shot since the solicits, and it didn’t disappoint. Terrific stuff all round, and I highly recommend you pop out and buy it or download it from comiXology (as I did), because even if you’re not following the crossover, it’s a great read.
(If this turns out to be testing the water for a new ongoing, or a revival of MI:13, I’d also be very happy. It even raises the pleasant spectre of a ‘Captains’ miniseries… and I’m a big fan of the Captain Marvel redesign. Throw Americap in there, around the release of Winter Soldier next year, and you could have some globetrotting fun, with sales buoyed by interest in the movie.)
It’s worth saying again, though, that Captain Britain’s new powers are as evasive as ever, and it’s often hard to make them work effectively in-story.
Some of that comes from the off-stage wardrobe change back to the most iconic outfit between MI:13 and Uncanny X-Force/Secret Avengers - two differing takes on the character are now resident in the same suit, and thematically in competition with each other.
There’s a bit here, for instance, where Brian passes on all of his magic (in his helmet), but then still keeps his powers because… He’s feeling confident?
It all works perfectly with the well-played character bits, so it feels churlish to complain, but putting the Cornell Captain in the Moore suit still comes off as a mish-mash of competing intents.
That the suit allowed him to tap into wildly-occurring ‘magic’ always seemed like an elegant solution to the ‘infinite powers of a magic amulet’ problem, fusing pseudo-science to the hokey-cokey, Movie Thor-style, and giving him some tangible limits (as well as some Alan Davis iconography). The risk of having the suit or helmet damaged, and that connection impaired, was an Achilles Heel that was easy to understand.
I guess that the idea now is that the old suit gives him an added boost of confidence? That dress-shirt swagger… I’m sure there must have been a throwaway line in Remender’s run to that effect.
Anyway, don’t mind me. This one-shot was great, and if it leads to a series, I’ll be buying the heck out of it.
