Commission Trio.

Several more commissions drawn recently.  The Atom, Wild Dog (hey, people still remember!) and Wonder Woman.  Gotta love those primary colors!  

Wild Dog Breaks Loose!

After the four issue Wild Dog mini-series appeared, Max Collins and I did several serialized Wild Dog stories for Action Comics Weekly. Wild Dog appeared on some of the covers -- but none of those covers were drawn by me. Below is the cover of #615, penciled by Barry Crain and inked by Rick Magyar. Recently a client approached me about recreating the cover, to see what it would have looked like had I inked it -- so, with Barry Crain's OK, I did just that.

I scanned and enlarged the printed cover, dropping out the color to get a black and white version of the logo and DC bullet, etc. But the end result needed a lot of cleanup work. I replaced much of the type in Photoshop, and dropped in a cleaner version of the Wild Dog logo from a scan of one of my covers from the original mini-series. When I had all the copy cleaned up, I printed that onto a blank sheet of bristol board.

The next step was to use a lightbox to roughly trace the artwork in pencil. I then tightened up the pencils, using the printed cover as a guide. I did make some minor changes -- but mostly stayed faithful to what had gone before. I then inked the piece -- mostly with brush -- but also some pen work on the guns, crosshatching, etc. Rick's original inks were great -- and I don't think mine are better or worse -- just a little different. Barry certainly went to town with all those different breeds of dogs -- and the extra guns for our masked vigilante! All in all, this was a fun project, and a treat to revisit the character. Despite having had a fairly short run at DC, quite some time ago, Wild Dog's fans just won't let him die.

For further evidence of this -- here's a pic of me with an attendee at the recent Free State Comicon in Lawrence, Kansas.

More Wild Dog!

Sorting through my files, I stumbled across these Wild Dog cover roughs that I'd completely forgotten about.  Well, it was two decades ago, y'know! These are all very different from the final cover of the Wild Dog Special (WD behind bars).  Drawn with marker on typing paper.

The Secret Origins of Wild Dog!

Shown above is Ed Hannigan's rough design for the cover of the first issue of the Wild Dog mini-series.  You didn't know he designed that, did you?  Ed did a lot of uncredited design work for DC over the years -- and all four of the Wild Dog mini-series covers are from his designs.  A very (extremely!) belated "thank you" to Ed!

Max Allan Collins and I created Wild Dog for DC Comics some twenty-two years ago.  We produced a four-issue mini-series, a one-shot special, and several serialized stories in the ill-fated Action Comics Weekly.  That was it.  Wild Dog had a short and sweet life.  Hugely popular in the Quad Cities area where the series was set, it never quite caught on big enough with the rest of the country to continue.  Still, DC maintains ownership of the feature, squeezing WD into some company-wide crossover every few years -- for just a panel or two.

Several years after the initial run, Max and I pitched a revival to DC -- specifically to (much missed) editor Archie Goodwin.  We had some good talks and I did a few drawings - but eventually we decided DC wanted so many changes to the core concept that it wasn't working for us anymore, and we went on to other things.  We never did work on anything for Archie, darn it.

But despite his short time on the shelf, Wild Dog still has a (pardon me for saying it) rabid following.  When I (very) recently dipped into my "keeper" art files to sell some original comic art I'd held onto for years, it was the Wild Dog art, more than anything that caused a stir.

So, spurred by that interest, I started digging through my files for anything else Wild Dog related.  I found the material posted here -- most of which I'd forgotten I had.

Wild Dog began as "Machine," a name rejected by DC because of its similarity to "Machine Man," a Jack Kirby feature at Marvel. It seems we may have also considered calling him "Commando" for about two or three minutes....

After rejecting "Mad Dog," we settled on "Red Dog" as the character's name and proceded to put together a package to sell the series to DC.

A detail of the cover page for the 16 page series pitch written by Max Allan Collins.  The pitch ends with a suggestion that Max write the feature and I ink it over pencils by some classic silver age artist.  Thankfully, we all decided I should pencil the thing!

The first drawings of the cartoon dog mascot for Red Dog/Wild Dog's shirt.

Here's the evolution of the "pitch art" used to sell the series. He's still "Red Dog" here. I left the shirt blank on the second piece and made a stack of photocopies of it, on which I drew different versions of what would become the dog mascot design.

Logo concepts provided by DC.  I'm sorry to admit I've forgotten which talented letterer designed these.

Rough concept sketches for covers -- done when the feature was still being called Red Dog.  The first of these ended up being drawn -- but rejected by DC.  Eventually it was used as an Amazing Heroes cover.

"Red Dog" became "Wild Dog" after discovering a GI Joe action figure had already used the Red Dog name.  If we ever wanted action figures of the character, we'd need a name that hadn't already been used.  Never did get those action figures, darn it.

Preliminary roughs for a few Action Comics Weekly pages and photocopies of pencils for an ACW page and two of the mini-series covers  are shown below.

I hope you enjoyed seeing some of this long-hidden material.  Who knows if Wild Dog will ever return -- but I'm grateful that after all these years, his fans still remember the series fondly.  Stay wild, kids!

Art from the vault

I've been digging through my old art files and selling off some prime pieces lately, and I thought I'd share scans of some of the art before it gets sent off to its new owners.  Lots of memories here -- various Ms. Tree and Wild Dog originals.

Daring duos

Here's a pair of commissions done just before Christmas -- Huntress with Power Girl -- and the unlikely pairing of two gunmen, Jonah Hex and (once again!) Wild Dog.

The latest batch....

More commissions!  Above is the unlikely pairing of detectives Ms. Tree and Ralph Dibney (The Elongated Man).  Below we have my take on the lovlier members of the Inhumans family, Medusa and Crystal.  They're followed by another view of Wild Dog (still mighty popular for a short lived twenty year old comic book series), Adam Strange and Blue Beetle.  I have some more to do -- but still room on the list should anyone want something before Christmas....

As always, click on 'em for a larger view.

More custom drawings

Okay -- it's back to business as usual -- here are some of my latest commissioned sketches.   By request we have Jack Kirby's Mr. Miracle chained to a Nazi bomb, Batwoman from some rough pencil sketches by the late great Dick Sprang, Wild Dog, Hourman,  The Escapist, Ms. Tree, Steve Ditko's The Question and Dr. Fate.  I'm having a great time doing these commissions.  If you'd like to get on my list, please contact me for info.