Classics and Comics Final Cover Artwork

Remember last week when I wrote about the cover I'm doing for an upcoming book from Oxford University Press called Classic and Comics. The idea was that I drew several pastiches of famous superhero covers with the superheroes replaced by Olympian deities. I showed several such sketches, as well as their inspirations, but we finally went with Action Comics #1, the first appearance of Superman. Here's the final piece below, but click on over to my Olympiansrule blog for a step by step of its creation.

Classics and Comics cover tryout

A few months back I was approached by the editors of a new book coming out from Oxford University Press called Classics and Comics about doing the cover. Classics and Comics will be an exploration of the influences, both subtle and less subtle, that classical literature and myth have had on comics, something that is pretty much the whole point of a series like Olympians.

We talked about a few cover design ideas, and one of the ideas I came up with was this piece, which references the myth of Athena being born from the head of Zeus (not to mention my self-portrait from the back inside cover of each volume of Olympians)



Ultimately, we went with another idea, of paying homage to some classic comic book cover designs, but replacing the modern superheroes with their Olympian forebears. Please click here to see a gallery of super-hero cover designs on my Olympiansrule blog.