Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen by Justin Zyduck

You have always accepted the conventional explanation that the "Paul is dead" theory was a hoax. Jimmy Olsen does not. That is why Jimmy Olsen is Superman's pal and has time-travel adventures and dates a foxy stewardess, whereas last night you debated whether the five-day-old Chinese food in your fridge is still good, decided it probably wasn't, but then ate it anyway.

All men are chumps before Jimmy Olsen.

(Looking forward to the fake JO covers y'all are gonna come up with, dudes.)

Robot Versus Robot by Justin Zyduck

Two robots fighting.

About their relationship, that is.

Minions of Apokolips: Glorious Godfrey by Justin Zyduck

Of all the Fourth World villains, I find Glorious Godfrey the most fascinating. I mean, take a look at this page and all the wonderful richness it suggests. A salesman disguised as a televangelist, Godfrey isn't a total sham. He does believe in anti-life (or at least he tells Darkseid he does; I choose to believe that he's telling the truth), but only to a point. To him it's really just a marketing campaign for Darkseid. It's like if you were an adman for Apple, and you sincerely believed that Apple products are the computing solution for every man, woman, and child on Earth -- and then Darkseid comes in and is like, "You shortsighted fool, don't you realize? APPLE IS LIFE ITSELF!"

Spider-Man Villains: Electro by Justin Zyduck

I've noticed that modern-age artists often think it's a good idea to get rid of Electro's starfish-mask. But like--there's dozens of superheroes and supervillains with electric/lightning bolt motifs on their costumes...but there's only ONE DUDE with a mask like that. Why would you fight it?

Tried to recapture the same face Ditko first drew on the character. The black around the eyes is something I saw in the Spider-Man Manga and always really liked.

WWII: Hitler's Head Explodes by Justin Zyduck

This is not actually a reference to Inglorious Basterds, but rather one of my all-time favorite video games: the NES classic Bionic Commando. If you are unfamiliar with that game, and specifically its ending, let me drop a little education on you.

The game, as originally released in Japan, dealt with a neo-Nazi group seeking to bring Hitler back from the dead to complete a doomsday weapon. During the English translation process, Nintendo of America--somewhat notorious for censoring anything that might be considered offensive for the U.S. market--removed all explicit references to Nazism, calling the enemies "Badds" and replacing swastikas with a falcon-like emblem.

NOA, however, apparently did not vet the game's ending, or else they'd surely have made alterations to the following game elements:

• Although Hitler is never named--rechristened "Master-D" for the translation--his character model is unmistakably Hitler.
• Hitler/Master-D calls you a "damn fool," which was strong language for the family-friendly NES.
• When you beat the final boss by firing a bazooka into the cockpit of a helicopter, you are treated to an intensely graphic portrayal of a man's skull bursting apart in a bloody explosion.
  

I must admit: I had fun on this one.

(If you're interested, see the 20th century's most hated man explode in black and white.)

The Mighty Thor Annual #2 by Justin Zyduck

Sketch!

TNG Poster: Deja Q by Justin Zyduck

As a kid, the Q episodes were always my favorite, so when this week's assignment came down, I immediately knew I wanted to do one of those. I thought I'd approach this episode with sort of a Farrelly Brothers-type poster; re-imagining the episode as a sort of high-concept '90s comedy. Indeed, Q episodes were frequently very funny, owing in part to de Lancie and Stewart's work as an unlikely comedy duo. The show's writers and producers seemed to be aware of this as well; most Next Generation episodes carry fairly respectable sci-fi titles, but one gets the sense that whenever it was time to do a Q episode, Gene Roddenberry would burst into the writer's room and go, "All right, men, it's wordplay time." And then they'd go around the room: "What about 'Q or False'?" "Or maybe 'Red, White, and Q'." "'Q-Cumber Salad'?" "'Q Live Crew'!"

Sadly, though, because of my struggles to capture recognizable likenesses, the part of Q will be played tonight not by de Lancie, but rather by some sort of genetic mixture of Ed Sullivan and Richard Nixon. Oh well.

Romantic Kirby Covers by Justin Zyduck

I had a little trouble with the composition, and then I ran short on time, but I went full-on airport romance novel.

Young George Washington vs. The Cherry Tree Beast by Justin Zyduck

Young Washington could not tell a lie...but neither could he tell the whole truth, for the hidden facts of the cherry tree affair were far too unutterably bizarre and too horrifyingly fantastic to be believed.

Darth Vader (Kirby Style) by Justin Zyduck

If only you knew the power of the...Darkseid?

For whatever reason, it occurred to me that a 1970s Jack Kirby-style Darth Vader would be cool. I didn't want to do too much of a stylistic pastiche; I think when artists "do" Kirby, they should focus more on the dynamism in his work rather than his specific artistic quirks (although I couldn't resist putting in the Kirby squiggles on the metal bits). To that end, I went through some Kirby comics of that vintage looking for a pose to base this piece off of. My first instinct was to go OMAC or New Gods, but neither one had quite what I was looking for. I finally found the pose I was looking for in Mister Miracle #5...in a drawing of Big Barda, actually! I think using a "crouching Kirby" pose gives it an interesting effect, because most Vader images are vertical compositions.

Oh, by the way, I know I didn't draw Vader's...waist cape, or whatever you'd call it...but I couldn't figure out how to make it work in this drawing. NERD JOKE: Actually, I penciled it in, but Vince Colletta erased it in the inks.

Couples: White Queen and Cyclops by Justin Zyduck

Sorry this is late and just a quick sketch, but I was ill all weekend (like, not in the hip-hop way).

Anyway. EMMA + SCOTT = TRU LUV 4EVA, right? They are miserable together, but they are miserable together, dig? Strangely enough, their relationship seems to be the part of the Morrison's New X-Men run that has had the most lasting effect on the franchise.

Daredevil, the Man Without Fear by Justin Zyduck

So the reason that I suggested this theme is because I've been wanting to try out this style on Daredevil for years now.

The first time I ever saw Cowboy Bebop, I was totally blown away by the main title sequence to the point where I was disappointed when the show actually started that the whole thing wasn't done that way. So that's basically what I'd want to do with Daredevil. I sent everybody this long, rambling e-mail about how Frank Miller still exerts this huge gravitational influence over how we think of Daredevil after thirty years -- all film noir and anguish. If I were doing DD, I'd want to move on from that without rejecting Miller (because why would you?), so what I'd really like to do is what Bebop did. Bebop takes film noir as a starting point in a lot of places, but then totally goes off the rails -- it's not slavish to film noir in the way that I think artists and writers tend to be slavish to Miller.

So yeah, if I got the keys to Daredevil, I'd want it to be bright, stylized colors with an emphasis on graphic design, and "Chick Habit" by April March would be the theme song. (Appropriate stylistically and lyrically given Daredevil's history!) I didn't draw enough of him for you to really be able to tell (although maybe you could from the lips), but Matt Murdock is to be played by James Spader in Pretty in Pink.

Money Inc. ("Million-Dollar Man" Ted DiBiase and Irwin R. Schyster "IRS") by Justin Zyduck

Link to black 'n' white version

I loved WWF as a kid, just like every other boy in my elementary school in the early 90s. My first thought, initially, was to draw either IRS or the Million-Dollar Man, because I think both those concepts are really funny for bad-guy wrestlers ("What if an accountant was a wrestler?" and "What if Donald Trump stripped to the waist and got in the ring?", respectively), but I couldn't decide which one would be more fun to draw. Then I did some Wikipedia research and found out they at one point had formed a tag team called "Money Inc." PROBLEM SOLVED.

Playing around with some rudimentary coloring. Just flats, with a bit of cel-like shading. I think I was reasonably able to capture DiBiase's Jonathan Frakes-like arrogant pout-and-raised-eyebrow, and I love the way IRS's giant Popeye arms and fists turned out (he was actually a huge dude), but the likeness looks less like than IRS and more like...Kurt Russell in glasses?

Create Your Own Master: Ant King and Hypnos by Justin Zyduck

A couple rough sketches of what I came up with for the contest. I always enjoy the challenge of having a set of rules and then having to work within them. In this case, the contest's official rules say to minimize new sculpts and re-use standard torsos/legs/etc. wherever possible. I also gave both my villains the famous "He-Man crouch" until I realized that the new MoTU figures have articulated knees and elbows (!!!)

I don't have a better name for this guy than the Ant King. I came up with him because a surefire formula for a MoTU villain is "animal head with humanoid body" and I thought he filled a void in He-Man's list of adversaries -- an underground-dweller. The gimmick here is I thought he could have pose-able antennae like those bendy toys they used to make. The sword is weird, but I think I had an action figure with a sword like that. Maybe it was a Ninja Turtle? Anyway, you could tell the kids it's good for digging underground tunnels to break into Castle Greyskull.

This is Hypnos, Skeletor's psychic interrogator. I came up with the gimmick first of having armor that contains one of those spinny hypno-wheels. I came up with the helmet after my first drawing of him just looked like Hugo Strange in a funny outfit. The helmet is clunky and crude and seemed to fit perfectly with the original MoTU aesthetic.

Lobo the Hobo by Justin Zyduck

So all I had time for this week was this rather rough cartoon, but I didn't want to miss out on Lobo (and the wordplay that his name makes just so easy) entirely. Being short on time, I didn't have time for extensive research or reference, so let me just ask...does Lobo have black fingernails and toenails? Just an assumption on my part.

Batman Villains: Prometheus by Justin Zyduck

Technically a Justice League villain, but I think he's been in a few solo Batman comics as well, and moreover, Prometheus was designed to be the Anti-Batman. I didn't do the whole Jim Mahfood thick black outline thing I usually do in the inks because I feel like the thinner, scratchier, trembling lines get across the nerviness in his character that makes Prometheus one of my favorite villains ever.

I was a Marvel Comics kid all the way until about late middle school when two comics introduced to the modern DC Universe: Mark Waid's The Flash (WALLY WEST 4-EVA, BARRY ALLEN NEV-A) and Grant Morrison's JLA. The first issue of JLA I got was #10, the first part of "Rock of Ages," and it seemed too fast and slight to me at the time -- I wasn't quite certain what I'd just been hit with. But then, on a friend's recommendation, I picked up the Prometheus storyline. When Prometheus first meets Batman, Prometheus goes on this whole kick about how he has the thirty greatest martial artists in the world on a disc, and how he can use his helmet to download their fighting styles into his central nervous system. Batman, as you'd expect, indicates that he is not intimidated. Prometheus' response? "What if I told you that one of those thirty...is you, Batman?"

That is exactly what I wanted out of a superhero comic book at the time, and truth be told, it is still what I want out of one. And so began a love affair with Morrison's work.

Rob Ayotte by Justin Zyduck

Most of the Minions posting here, I gather, know each other from MCAD and the general Minneapolis scene. I, however, really only know Josh Lynch and live in Wisconsin ("the Other Minnesota"), and so the rest of you are all mysterious to me. So when Josh picked this week's theme in which each of us would draw someone else, I had to do some investigation on the subject of Rob. Through digging I found out that he can play the violin, which I do not know how to draw. I also found out that he has teaching experience and did a mural with high school students, but I do not know what this mural looks like.

Then he told me he likes Masters of the Universe villains, and I sure as hell know how to draw those. I've always been dodgy with likenesses (it took me about three years before I could draw a reasonable cartoon of my wife), so I hope the Skeletor body mod makes up for it.

(P.S. - Super lame colors, I know, but it had to be colored somehow (just isn't Skeletor if he's not blue and purple) and I don't have your guys' fancy Web tablets and Photo-shoppe.)

Justin Zyduck in low rez, by Eric Schuster

I have never met Justin Zyduck, but I know that he's the writer of several horror stories and this crazy Wyatte Earp book with fellow minion Josh Lynch.  He sided with Jason during Freddy vs. Jason.  He is at least three times this resolution in real life.

Spider-Man Villains: The Rose by Justin Zyduck

Ah, the Rose. The original Rose was crime boss Richard Fisk, the Kingpin's son, who teamed up with the original Hobgoblin (revealed much later to be business and fashion mogul Roderick Kingsley) in an attempt to take down Fisk the Elder. However, '80s Spider-writer Tom DeFalco supposedly intended Fisk to be the Hobgoblin and Kingsley to be the Rose, which I actually think works better. But oh well.

The Rose is perhaps a lesser light in the grand scheme of the Spider-Man mythos, but I've always loved the design. As he first appeared in Amazing Spider-Man shortly following the debut of the black symbiote costume, the Rose wore a cream-colored suit, a lavender-colored mask...and a pair of enormous Sally Jesse Raphael glasses. The glasses are what makes the design for me. The Rose is a guy who's paying lip service to supervillainy, but doesn't really commit. "I'll put on a mask if it'll make other costumed villains respect me, but I want to wear a nice suit, and I'm not going to put in contacts."

This image is shot directly from pencils. Unlike the other Minions who contribute here, I don't actually consider myself a proper artist, and I'm way out of practice. But I was pretty happy with the way the pencils turned out, so much so that I didn't want to ruin them with my crappy inking.

Etrigan by Justin Zyduck

Yeah, what Beth said goes for me, too. What is Etrigan without Jason Blood? Jason's not just Etrigan's "secret identity." He'd be a compelling enough character to lead a book on his own (he's even got the distinctive visual attribute necessary for a comic book lead in that silver streak of hair); the fact that he swap out with Etrigan is just gravy.

Well, not gravy for Jason, obviously, having that demon deep inside him the way he does.