This is my first drawing of Greg Buchanan, in preparation for his appearance in “Johnny Saturn” no. 1.  Initially, the plan was for him to never remove his sunglasses, and we held to that for a long time.  After Greg became Johnny Saturn in his own right, the sunglasses issue no longer made sense, nor did the facial hair.  I’ve never been completely happy with Greg’s hair in any of his incarnations.

Attempted as a cool upshot, this illustration more just looks sadly out of proportion.  It was also a vain attempt to work out the details on Johnny’s scarred epidermis.  I took pride in keeping all those scars and wounds consistent as the series went forward.

This piece was a proposed cover for Johnny Saturn no. 1, the black & white edition.  It’s drawn entirely in design marker, and it uses the collage method of cover composition I’ve used so many times.  I loved those collage covers, because so many Marvel Comics, especially those drawn by Gil Kane, were composed this way when I was a kid.

This was a shaded graphite drawing I did to entertain myself.  By this point, Greg Buchanan had been Johnny Saturn for a while, and John Underhall retired, but I kind of missed drawing the old guy.  I later tossed the original of this in with a customer’s order just because I wanted to: Sometimes, it’s more fun to share.

Inked in marker, and roughly water colored, this was a proposed cover for the trade-paperback, “Johnny Saturn: Synns of the Father.”  This wasn’t bad, but it came nowhere near the attitude I wanted to capture for graphic novel’s cover.  It had good foreshortening, but overall it lacked in dynamics.

This sketch was the cover of the “2006 Special Edition Scott Story Sketchbook,” and that’s the only time it’s seen print.  I was well into taking open studio at the Indianapolis Art Center, and I was more than a little influenced by the inspirational pen & ink stylings of my friend, Paul McCall.  My pen & ink get’s more refined as I go forward in my sketchbooks.

What can I really say about a picture like this one?  It was drawn to amuse myself, and it serves no conceptual or story-based angle.  I’ve always dabbled in more traditional cartooning styles, as you will see in upcoming “Inside the Book” entries.  The colors here are done quickly and dirty with Design Markers.

Drawn years before the storyline in the comic caught up with this, this was my first concept for John Underhall as king of Elysium City and the Mole people.  It’s not too far off from what I actually used, really.  I dropped the bandage “mask” and cowl, because it struck me as a little too “Hush” from the Batman storyline of the same name.  There was no longer a logical reason for Johnny Saturn to have a secret identity anyway.  The cloth bandages on Johnny’s workbooks also got dropped.

Johnny Saturn is almost in his final form!  The design process had not been long, but a great deal of thought had gone into the character.

It’s interesting to note that in this version, much of Johnny’s uniform was made of puncture resisting webbing: I had been doing quite a bit of research into modern body armor.  It had always flabbergasted me that much modern armor is good at turning small arms fire, but not particularly useful in stopping puncture weapons, such as from a knife or shiv.

While you can see some the cloth folding on Johnny’s left flank, his costume has not yet taken on the well-worn, heavily folded look it later achieved.  I was getting sick of the useless and insulting Neoprene or molded rubber suits that superheroes often wore in the movies, and I was no fan of spandex, which wouldn’t be that useful for real world superheroes.  I had different ideas about the utility of costumes and what looked cool.