Justice Legion of Aliens - Roughs

Everyone who visits this blog knows of my love of the Legion of Super-Heroes. And there are a lot of Legion fans out there. Which brings us to a series of posts I will be doing involving a unique cover recreation. I was approached by Aidan to do a couple of recreations of some classic Justice League of America covers but recasting the JLA with the LSH. How could I say no? Aidan has graciously allowed me to share the entire process here as it is created. There are two that will be done. I am going to start with this one.

The original cover to be used as the template is Justice League of America #72 by Joe Kubert. The original cover featured Hawkman, who had been turned into salt, and Hawkgirl blaming the JLA. Aidan's idea was to recast the Legion's Wildfire (Hawkgirl) and Dawnstar (Hawkman) in the leads. I believe he also asked for Colossal Boy (Superman), Shrinking Violet (Atom), 1970s Supergirl (Batman) and I came up with Mon-El (Green Lantern) and Saturn Girl (Green Arrow) to round out the cast. And so we have the Justice Legion of Aliens!

First pass at the cover was awkward, as seen below. Hawkgirl's pose was too feminine for Wildfire and I struggled with being true to the source. My substitute pose for Wildfire is stiff and not working. Everything else is looking fine though. After running it by Aidan, he reminded me that it's the spirit of the image, not a line for line recreation he likes. That helped a lot.

Second pass at a rough is starting to work better. I did some adjustments to the main characters, allowing Wildfire's characteristic body language to come out. There is more energy and power in his positioning. I also made a bit of a change to Dawnstar's pose. I made them both a bit larger than in the first pass as well. Now we are on to something.

I finalize the rough pencils below. Everyone is in costume now. I tightened up some of the loose ends enough to give me what I need when transferring the image to the final board. I don't want it too tight  because there will be some tweaking on the final board. And doing a straight trace is the quickest way to kill the energy of the lines.

The Legion of Super-Heroes © DC Comics

I will be posting more as I work on it. The final image will be inked and have all the logos and lettering in place on an overlay of clear acetate. I hope you will enjoy the process.

If you are interested in seeing the amazing collection of "Re-Legion" covers Aidan has commissioned from some outstanding artists, check out his gallery at the Comic Art Fans site.

Thanks again to Aidan for the commissions and for allowing me to share the process here.

This is Post #1080